Economic ignorance is commonplace. Here are 3 examples from the past few days:<\/p>\n
1. I don’t know if a second stimulus will work, but I’m glad Obama is doing something.<\/p>\n
2. We’ll never get our economy back on track if the rich don’t pay more taxes.<\/p>\n
3. [The economics of] healthcare is too complicated for me to figure out. I’m just glad the government is stepping in to make sure I get it.<\/p>\n
For many of you, the\u00a0logical flaws in these statements is obvious. As for comment #1, why is “doing something” better than doing nothing if\u00a0what is being proposed has already been tried and failed? Why must the government “do something” whenever a problem exists?\u00a0Shouldn’t it act\u00a0only\u00a0when it can solve the problem.<\/p>\n
As for #2, the “rich” do most of the hiring in a free market economy, and they hire fewer people when they pay more taxes.\u00a0You could argue that the rich should pay\u00a0LESS in taxes before the economy will recover.<\/p>\n
#3 suffers from the same problem as #1, the idea that government needs to control our lives\u00a0when things\u00a0get complicated. \u00a0In both instances, I responded by asking the person what he or she was doing to learn more about the issue (stimulus spending or healthcare). Following the blank stares,\u00a0I had my opening and countered with\u00a02-minute presentations of some basic facts.<\/p>\n
I rarely win\u00a0free market converts in a few minutes, but I do try to make people think. Perhaps they’ll start listening more critically to the news, or maybe they’ll\u00a0come back to discuss the issue again later. Perhaps\u00a0someone else will pick up where I left off. If we are going to change Washington next November, I’m convinced we need to stay informed ourselves,\u00a0and educate our friends, neighbors, and coworkers. It won’t happen overnight.<\/p>\n
By the way, the runner-up for\u00a0“top 3” this week was “I’m not sure what’s going on\u00a0in Copenhagen, but\u00a0we need to do something about the environment.” I’ll save my thoughts on this\u00a0gem for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Economic ignorance is commonplace. Here are 3 examples from the past few days: 1. I don’t know if a second stimulus will work, but I’m glad Obama is doing something. 2. We’ll never get our economy back on track if the rich don’t pay more taxes. 3. [The economics of] healthcare is too complicated for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}