The Road called "Government Meddling"

Our new president wants to stimulate the economy. What is puzzling, however, is that this staunch advocate of change wants to pursue a path that is eerily similar to the one taken by his predecessor and archrival. He too believes that the most effective way to stimulate the economy is for the federal government to round up a huge number of dollars, idle dollars that presumably are lying about loose, and expertly and judiciously inject them into various parts of our nation’s ailing economic system.

The plan offers some tantalizing possibilities, to be sure, if you are trying to gradually kill off free enterprise and replace it with some form of socialism. But is an incremental transition to socialism the best way for America to get back on its feet--and stay there? Socialism, you will recall, is an economic theory that advocates government ownership and management of the means of production as well as the distribution of the goods produced.

One of the things, among others, that makes socialism especially problematic as a suitable remedy for the nation’s economic woes is that our government’s record in management is dismal at best. So even if the executives at General Motors can’t manage their company, as they’ve clearly demonstrated they can’t, what earthly reason do we have for believing bumbling federal bureaucrats can oversee it any better?

Remember, these are the people who presently are managing the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Federal Drug Administration, and so forth. These are the people who ardently believe it takes four to five people to do a one-man/woman job. Sure, socialism will doubtless create jobs, but what will it do to production? And more importantly, will it create wealth, honest to goodness wealth?

That is rather doubtful. Only motivated individuals can produce wealth, individuals who can recognize, seize and develop an opportunity. Granted, once enterprising individuals have produced wealth, government may misuse its power and redirect it, but government cannot, of itself, produce it. And by arbitrarily redistributing it, government can and does kill the individual incentive and motivation that were indispensable ingredients in initially creating it.

If government would give back to the people a genuine sense that hard work and prudent living pays off in this country, then the nation’s economy soon would revive. But if government stubbornly continues its present course of robbing the industrious while rewarding the idle and unproductive, then the outlook doesn’t look promising.

And by the way, the course selected by our new president does not constitute change. It’s the same old slippery road we’ve been sliding down for decades. It’s the road called “Government Meddling,” and it’s the road that led us into our present crisis.