Several years ago one of my many car magazines did an article on Soviet built Model A trucks. The Soviets produced these trucks into the fifties; long after they were obsolete. The trucks were such an embarrassment that they’d take them from the factory to a crusher plant where they were recycled into steel, which went back to the factory for Model A stamping.
In an economy that desperately needed trucks, the ones this factory built were such an embarrassment that they kept them secret. The reason they kept the factor working is that the employees had to have work. Now, you would think they’d re-tool the plant to make something different. But top-down economy’s simply don’t work. Therefore you end up with astonishing events like building trucks to keep the workers working and the crusher’s crushing.
The article didn’t go into the intricate politics, all of which must have taken place in smoke-filled rooms by men who reported only to the Politburo. The worker/employment aspect is paramount in Socialist economic fantasy. They turn the world on its ear with absurdities, like building ships for which there are no customers.
Obama orders business to hire people, with no reference to supply and demand.
On the good side. I believe that Obama is the Socialist flu virus that so sickens the body politic that it will either die or forever after be immune. I think that we’ll recover. Ronald Reagan reached us because he spoke to the Conservative immune system inside 63% of the body politic. When we’re done with Obama, we’ll be done with Progressives, Socialists, and Communists for at least the next fifty years.
About the time we completely recover and it’s another golden-age like the fifties, somebody will say, you know we can solve (homelessness/ poverty/ inequality/ (fill-in-the-blank)) if only we’d add a tax to supply money for... And, by that time, enough people will be guiltily well off and not remember the dark days of the Obama Flu that we’ll start down this dead end again.
I suspect there would have been a fair market for at least some of those Model A trucks here in the US (especially if they were priced just above the scrap value).