The Ludwig von Mises Institute posted an interesting article today written by Murray Rothbard in 1971. The subject of Rothbard's article was Nixonian socialism. His article is not only interesting for its historical content but also the parallels between Nixon and President Bush. Bush unfortunately is more like Nixon than he is Reagan. Bush, like Nixon, has overseen a massive growth in government from new welfare entitlement programs to the creation of a new cabinet level office. He has not been a President who has favored smaller government at all, he doesn't even speak in these terms anymore. Bush has been a President of large government.
I oppose corporate welfare. Part of the business cycle is allowing a business to die out without the aid of government. Why is this important? Corporations die for a reason, they are poorly managed, consumers are no longer interested in their products, perhaps prices are to high etc... It's important to allow these companies to die because if there is demand for whatever they're producing, a new corporation will come into being and provide the consumer with a better, cheaper option.
The Bush administration doesn't want to allow the "major" airlines to die out. This despite the fact that they are poorly managed, terribly inefficient and are being out performed by cheaper "no-frills" airlines. The government has already bailed out United's pension fund while the other major airlines lick their chops in anticipation of requesting the same bailout. I say let United pay for their own pension fund and if they can't let them go out of business. I'm sure Southwest would be thrilled to rid themselves of competition with United and I'm certain that an abundance of new air carriers would come into being to take United's business. But the Bush administration doesn't do this, they bail United out despite the poorly managed failure that United has become. Why? Campaign donations no doubt. United is a certainty to donate money, new airlines are not.
This is the biggest problem with corporate welfare (or mercantilism as it was once called). The goal isn't to better America, the goal is to keep the President, Senators and Congressman in office. Sure it's sold to us as good for America, but that doesn't make it so. Perhaps we would be better off without United or any of the other companies that receive welfare from the state. Perhaps we would get cheaper goods to go along with the lower taxes we would have if we didn't have corporate welfare. We simply don't know because powerful politicians do nothing but court corporate dollars in exchange for massive welfare.
The same is true on the individual side. Politicians offer up a plethora of individual welfare benefits in exchange for votes. This goes from welfare for the welfare queen's to medicare for old folks to wasteful school spending for the middle class family. This is all done to keep our leaders in power and Bush has been pretty darn good at courting most of these welfare groups, save the welfare queen who's a consistent part of the Democratic Party. No matter how much the GOP salivates over the idea of getting the welfare queens to vote for them, the reality is that the Dems have them locked up, literally in some cases.
President Bush has been exactly like Nixon in terms of creating massive welfare programs designed to keep him in power. Medicare was expanded by Nixon and further expanded by Bush via the Rx drug plan. Never mind the fact that these are incredibly wasteful programs and completely unnecessary, they keep Bush in office and that's all that counts. President Bush has greatly expanded the role of the Department of Education via his "no child left behind" plan. In theory his plan is good, the problem is that he threw money at it to the tune of over $16 billion. President Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, Bush has expanded it. Some conservative.
The Republican Party has gone back to its roots as a tax and spend, mercantilist party. The party was founded on massive corporate welfare and massive spending on "internal improvements" back in the mid 1800's. The GOP as you will recall consisted of what was left of the Whig's. The Democrats were originally the party of small government, in fact they fought a war over it and lost. The Dems abandoned small government over a century ago. The GOP embraced the idea of smaller government with Reagan and to a lesser extent with Newt Gingrich and the 1994 GOP Revolution.
After almost five years of President Bush it is clear that the Republicans have abandoned the idea of small government altogether. Bush has done nothing to decrease the size of government and in fact has increased its size. Bush and the GOP Congress hasn't done a single thing to make government smaller. They've eliminated no departments and they've done little more than consolidate some programs. During the last election Bush didn't even pretend to be for small government, he rarely mentioned such a thing. Instead he bragged about all the welfare he created. Some conservative.
Source: The Open Diary
I oppose corporate welfare. Part of the business cycle is allowing a business to die out without the aid of government. Why is this important? Corporations die for a reason, they are poorly managed, consumers are no longer interested in their products, perhaps prices are to high etc... It's important to allow these companies to die because if there is demand for whatever they're producing, a new corporation will come into being and provide the consumer with a better, cheaper option.
The Bush administration doesn't want to allow the "major" airlines to die out. This despite the fact that they are poorly managed, terribly inefficient and are being out performed by cheaper "no-frills" airlines. The government has already bailed out United's pension fund while the other major airlines lick their chops in anticipation of requesting the same bailout. I say let United pay for their own pension fund and if they can't let them go out of business. I'm sure Southwest would be thrilled to rid themselves of competition with United and I'm certain that an abundance of new air carriers would come into being to take United's business. But the Bush administration doesn't do this, they bail United out despite the poorly managed failure that United has become. Why? Campaign donations no doubt. United is a certainty to donate money, new airlines are not.
This is the biggest problem with corporate welfare (or mercantilism as it was once called). The goal isn't to better America, the goal is to keep the President, Senators and Congressman in office. Sure it's sold to us as good for America, but that doesn't make it so. Perhaps we would be better off without United or any of the other companies that receive welfare from the state. Perhaps we would get cheaper goods to go along with the lower taxes we would have if we didn't have corporate welfare. We simply don't know because powerful politicians do nothing but court corporate dollars in exchange for massive welfare.
The same is true on the individual side. Politicians offer up a plethora of individual welfare benefits in exchange for votes. This goes from welfare for the welfare queen's to medicare for old folks to wasteful school spending for the middle class family. This is all done to keep our leaders in power and Bush has been pretty darn good at courting most of these welfare groups, save the welfare queen who's a consistent part of the Democratic Party. No matter how much the GOP salivates over the idea of getting the welfare queens to vote for them, the reality is that the Dems have them locked up, literally in some cases.
President Bush has been exactly like Nixon in terms of creating massive welfare programs designed to keep him in power. Medicare was expanded by Nixon and further expanded by Bush via the Rx drug plan. Never mind the fact that these are incredibly wasteful programs and completely unnecessary, they keep Bush in office and that's all that counts. President Bush has greatly expanded the role of the Department of Education via his "no child left behind" plan. In theory his plan is good, the problem is that he threw money at it to the tune of over $16 billion. President Reagan wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, Bush has expanded it. Some conservative.
The Republican Party has gone back to its roots as a tax and spend, mercantilist party. The party was founded on massive corporate welfare and massive spending on "internal improvements" back in the mid 1800's. The GOP as you will recall consisted of what was left of the Whig's. The Democrats were originally the party of small government, in fact they fought a war over it and lost. The Dems abandoned small government over a century ago. The GOP embraced the idea of smaller government with Reagan and to a lesser extent with Newt Gingrich and the 1994 GOP Revolution.
After almost five years of President Bush it is clear that the Republicans have abandoned the idea of small government altogether. Bush has done nothing to decrease the size of government and in fact has increased its size. Bush and the GOP Congress hasn't done a single thing to make government smaller. They've eliminated no departments and they've done little more than consolidate some programs. During the last election Bush didn't even pretend to be for small government, he rarely mentioned such a thing. Instead he bragged about all the welfare he created. Some conservative.
Source: The Open Diary
