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Who Do You Really Believe?
October 18, 2011 | 76 comments
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The New Normal
December 5, 2009 | 2 comments
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Obama’s Rock Is Not Capitalism
June 6, 2009 | 1 comment
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Demand and Supply
April 21, 2009 | 25 comments
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Unemployment and Stimulus
February 6, 2009 | 90 comments
Economics
(Page 2 of 2)
The free market capitalist system is the best system for supporting human dignity and pushing humans to behave morally. It does this by allowing individuals to take personal responsibility for their behavior. It allows individuals to find their most productive occupation, and forces people to face the challenges of the real world head on. It respects competition between free people. This is why it works and why only capitalism, of all systems, has led to permanently and significantly higher standards of living.
Today, the government spends roughly 40 to 45 cents of every health care dollar, while it also spends roughly 75 cents of every education dollar. These two sectors have more problems than any other two sectors of our economy. The greater the government interference in the competitive landscape, the higher the prices and the lower the quality. What more proof do we need?
In the end, undermining capitalism and supporting big government will harm the economy and hollow out people. Nonetheless, the economy is set to boom in the next 12 to 18 months and if every argument against bigger government is based on the performance of the economy right now, its advocates will appear to be wrong. If that ends up helping to push more government programs, it will be a very sad development indeed.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Brian Wesbury
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Judith Drinon| 10.17.09 @ 11:02PM
Thanks for Brian Westbury's insightful article. It explained to me ( a non-economic conservative) that I need to have faith in the free market while I work to change the people who represent me in government. That's real HOPE and CHANGE!
Alan Brooks| 10.18.09 @ 1:05AM
And remember, opposition to Obama is helping, or even causing, the economy economic activity-- as was the case '93- '94.
Economics in no science. The subjective factors are paramount.
Alan Brooks| 10.18.09 @ 9:31PM
Which is why Obama will be reelected, unless you good Burghers can run us another Reagan in 2012.
Unfortunately eveyone, as Mr. Murchison strongly implied in his "The Worst Years Of Our Lives", over the age of 70 is dead or heading in that 'direction'; and the younger set have been contaminated by nihilo-counterculturalism.
So social progress is what is the most dead of all.
What, now gays can marry in Iowa? So by 2040 gays will marry in Mississippi? THAT's progress?
Then there was no need for Tennyson to exclaim "Hush this cry of progress 'til a thousand years have past."
aware| 10.19.09 @ 6:57AM
Probably the stupidest article ever published in the Spectator. The only thing(besides unemployment and foreclosures)up is the stock market. This is the result of 8 trillion tossed to the bankers which they are using to speculate. Why do you think financials led the way?
After what has happened you wouldn't think you would have to point out an obvious bubble. With some stocks selling at 150 times earnings how sustainable do you think that is?
Building new houses at a time when foreclosures are at record highs, thereby flooding the market with firesale deals, is an example of idiocy, maybe even lunacy. Add to that the fact that deflation is still taking place in the housing market, I have to wonder what sense it makes to even start building now when value is falling out of the project before it is even finished.
This is NOT a "recession", it is a depression and it is just started. Recessions are corrections, depressions are fundamental reordering of entire ways of life. Talk to your friends who have been burned in this and ask if they are ready to return to their free-spending and borrowing ways. Those who have a brain are more interested in saving than spending.
Depressions end when its work is done. That work is beating all the bubbles out of all the bubble heads. Judging from this piece, it has a ways to go. Financial advisers will be the last heads to take the beating they richly deserve.
If you would just do a little historical research, like say Wall Street Journal articles from 1930, you would see the same kind of whistling in the graveyard, pie in the sky "hopefulness" expressed over the "recovery" they saw for 1931. You do know how that turned out, I suppose? Before long you will wish, as they did, you had not stuck your head out with this article. There were 14 stock market "rallies" in the Great Depression before finally settling at a 90% loss.
Pingback| 11.17.09 @ 6:38PM
Brian Wesbury – Not “The conservative’s big mistake” « EidosAndEkonomia links to this page. Here’s an excerpt: