Mark Steyn reports on the president's regular use of the proposition of "false choices"--at best a straw man argument.
Writing in the Chicago Tribune last
week, President Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics:
“But I also know,” he wrote, “that we need not choose between a chaotic
and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy.
That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.”
Really? For the moment, it’s a “false choice” mainly in the sense that
he’s not offering it: “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is not on
the menu, which leaves “an oppressive government-run economy” as pretty
much the only game in town. How oppressive is yet to be determined: To
be sure, the official position remains that only “the richest five
percent” will have taxes increased. But you’ll be surprised at the
percentage of Americans who wind up in the richest five percent. This
year federal government spending will rise to 28.5 per cent of GDP, the
highest level ever, with the exception of the peak of the Second World
War. The 44th president is proposing to add more to the national debt
than the first 43 presidents combined, doubling it in the next six
years, and tripling it within the decade. But to talk about it in
percentages of this and trillions of that misses the point. It’s not
about bookkeeping, it’s about government annexation of the economy, and
thus of life: government supervision, government regulation, government
control. No matter how small your small business is — plumbing,
hairdressing, maple sugaring — the state will be burdening you with
more permits, more paperwork, more bureaucracy. [...]
Borders give you choices. Your town has a crummy grade school? Move ten
miles north and there’s a better one. Sick of Massachusetts taxes? Move
to New Hampshire, as thousands do. To modify the abortionists’ bumper
sticker: “I’m Pro-Choice And I Vote With My Feet.” That’s part of the
self-correcting dynamism of capitalism: For example, Bono, the global
do-gooder who was last in Washington to play at the Obama inauguration,
recently moved much of his business from Ireland to the Netherlands, in
order to pay less tax. And good for him. To be sure, he’s always
calling on governments to give more money to Africa and whatnot, but
it’s heartening to know that, when it comes to his wallet as opposed to
yours, Bono — like Secretary Geithner — has no desire to toss any more
of his money into the great sucking maw of the government treasury than
the absolute minimum he can get away with. I’m with Bono and Tim: They
can spend their money more effectively than hack bureaucrats can. We
should do as they do, not as they say.
If you listen to the
principal spokesmen for U.S. economic policy — Obama and Geithner —
they grow daily ever more explicitly hostile to the private sector and
ever more comfortable with the language of micro-managed
government-approved capitalism — which, of course, isn’t capitalism at
all. They’ll have an easier time getting away with it in a world of
“global oversight” where there’s nowhere to move to. Unfortunately,
even then it won’t work. Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill
to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human
beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the
two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human
history: not billions, but trillions. [...]
Barack Obama, even when he’s not yukking it up on 60 Minutes,
barely disguises his indifference to economic matters. He is not an
economist, a political philosopher, a geopolitical strategist. He is
the president as social engineer, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. His
plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving, for example, is
not intended primarily to raise revenue, but to advance government as
the distributor of largesse and diminish alternative sources of
societal organization, such as civic groups. Likewise, his big plans
for socialized health care, a green economy, universal college
education: They’re about extending the reach of the state.
Unfortunately, all of it costs money he doesn’t have. So he has to
borrow it, in your name. Where does the world’s hyperpower go to borrow
more dough than anyone’s ever borrowed in human history? More to the
point, given that, partly at the behest of Obama and Geithner, almost
every other western government is ramping up national debt to cover
massive bank bailouts and other phony-baloney “stimuli,” is there
enough money out there to buy up the debt that’s already been run up?
Last week, at the official British Treasury auction, investors failed
to buy the full complement of so-called “gilt-edged” 40-year bonds. Two
such auctions have already failed in Germany. The U.S. Treasury, facing
similar investor reluctance to snap up $34 billion of five-year notes,
was forced to increase the interest it will pay on them. The Chinese
and the Saudis have long taken the view that it’s to their advantage to
own as much of the western world as they can snaffle up, but it’s
unclear whether even they have pockets deep enough for what America and
the many Bailoutistans of Europe are proposing to spend.
In
their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but
vaporize your wealth, and your children’s future. What began as an
economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to
return to the president’s “false choice,” that “chaotic and unforgiving
capitalism” is exactly what we need right now. It’s the quickest,
cheapest, fairest, most-efficient route to economic stabilization and
renewal. A regimented and eternally forgiving global command economy
with no moral hazard will destroy us all.
