Silly woman.
Linda McQuaig and the Cult of Evasion
Re: Michael's Interview with Linda McQuaig (Re: Her book -- Cult of Impotence) -- Mar. 22, 1998 -- CBC's This Morning
Dear Mr. Enright,
Your interview with Linda McQuaig convinced me that her new book, "Cult of Impotence," is not worth reading.
Consider just one example -- her suggestion that government should become less impotent with respect to unemployment.
Ms. McQuaig regards John Maynard Keynes as a genius for proposing that government spend its way to full employment. But where does the government get its money? It extorts it from taxpayers.
According to Keynes' "logic," a bankrobber reduces unemployment because he diverts our savings towards consumption. If you followed the bankrobber around while he spends his loot you would no doubt see an increase in economic activity and employment.
If you evade the fact that the money spent by the bankrobber is no longer available for the banks to finance those who actually create goods and services, plus the fact that certain individuals have been robbed of their personal savings -- you might conclude that robbing banks is "good for society." In other words, if you press your nose really hard to the tree in order to blank out the forest, you might believe that governments actually create jobs.
Ms. McQuaig had the effrontery to suggest that corporations are responsible for high unemployment because high unemployment allegedly benefits corporations. A corporation doesn't have the power to create widespread unemployment -- only the government has that power. She completely evaded the obvious role our not-so-impotent government has played in keeping unemployment high. It did so by artificially raising the cost of employment -- via the minimum wage, massive red tape, unemployment insurance, punitive taxation, etc.
In essence, Ms. McQuaig wants a government that is less impotent in job creation -- which in reality involves forcing people and corporations to become more impotent. Her book, entitled "The Cult of Impotence," appears to be just another example of what I call: "The cult of evasion."
Sincerely,
Glenn Woiceshyn