Posted on 10/28/2010 9:29:36 PM PDT by jfd1776
“Hello, my name is Eco Nomic Illiterate, and I’m voting for Scott Lee Cohen.”
Sorry if that seems cruel, but there are some commercials in the current cycle that are really bothering me, and they exemplify a much larger issue: the problem of economic illiteracy across broad swaths of the electorate.
For most of our nation’s history, there was general uniformity in the understanding of what created jobs and wealth. The Founding Fathers – Republican and Federalist alike – understood that a small government was good for the economy, and a large government was not. They differed a bit on the margins, sure… Hamilton favored a national bank; Jefferson opposed it, for example… but they still agreed in principle that the capitol should be small; that it’s the private sector that creates wealth, not government.
Both the people and their politicians once knew, instinctively, that only the private sector can plant a seed and thereby produce a bushel of corn; that only the private sector can raise a sheep and produce wool and lamb chops.
They knew that it would be counterproductive to raise taxes to fund a crew of bureaucrats to supervise the plowing and the planting and the fertilizing (well, okay, maybe bureaucrats could manage the fertilizing). The American people understood that once government ensures a stable currency, safe roads, and the rule of law, commerce can proceed, and succeed, on its own, without further government meddling.
Continue reading in "Illinois Review" at http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2010/10/no-thats-not-a-jobs-program.html
(Excerpt) Read more at illinoisreview.typepad.com ...
“How is it that, 234 years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations… 67 years after the publication of The Road to Serfdom… we still have half a country that doesn’t understand what kinds of policies grow an economy, and what kinds diminish it?”
Well, it’s hard for kids to learn the principles in those books if the leftucators in the schools refuse to teach them. It’s even harder if the teachers never learned those principles themselves.
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