How does one get beyond the WSJ paywall?
“These are basically good people brimming over with good intentions”
These are basically people who have no compunction about confiscating the wealth of others to distribute it in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. Throwing other peoples’ money at problems, with no thought of freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility.
The closing paragraph sums it all up nicely.
Ms. Shlaes’s chronicle is not just a story of how good people’s good intentions went wrong. It is also a story of how the assumption that the near future will closely resemble the recent past can lead even the best intentioned and most well-informed people to pursue policies that turn out to be mostly counterproductive and often destructive.
Most of all, they [i.e., policy makers, bureaucrats, politicians] were intoxicated with the unexpected postwar prosperity, which was producing so much revenue that Lyndon Johnson thought he could pay for both guns and butter and which prompted Richard Nixon, in 1972, to sign a revenue-sharing law that diverted federal money directly to the states. The ascetic Michael Harrington, in 1964, blanched at asking for $1 billion to fight poverty, but the ebullient Sargent Shriver was happy to pony up. “We have plenty of money,” he later said.That perpetual Democrat belief is on display at every single Democrat "debate" in 2019:
"We have plenty of money. I propose we spend $30 trillion."Nothing has changed in the Democrat party in almost 70 years. As Ms. Shlaes writes, they learn nothing from the past and failures of previous programs."I'll see your $30 trillion and raise you $10 trillion."
"You pikers! I'll spend FIFTY trillion and give EVERYTHING to EVERYBODY for FREE! Vote for me."