Abandoning The Free Market Will Not Fix It
Dec 17, 2008 Political
The economic tough times we are going through are the result of many things. But one thing is certain and that is the tough times are not the result of free market principles. The free market takes care of issues unless there is intervention from outside influences. In this case, the socialistic practices and greed of past administrations and American businesses have combined to cause the problem.
The idea that we need to give people loans for houses they cannot afford is not a free market principle. Forcing companies to pay a minimum wage that government sets based on some arbitrary target rather than the supply and demand of a workforce is not free market. Allowing businesses to hire illegals for well under the market price for a job is not part of the free market. Developing gimmicky investment vehicles in order to turn a quick buck at the expense of others is unethical and not free market. Too much government intervention is not part of the free market and it stifles growth. Combine this with politicians lining their pockets at our expense and we have a recipe for disaster. These are the reasons we got into trouble.
However, President Bush and the Congress failed to see all this and they decided that the best way to fix things was to interfere even more in the free market so that it could go further into chaos. The financial bailout was an intervention that should never have happened. The economic collapse should not have happened but politicians decided that everyone needed a home and investors decided that they needed get rich quick schemes. Then, when it all went south the government got more involved and infused taxpayer money into the mess. The 700 billion dollars has morphed into trillions of dollars in bailouts and there is no end in sight. None of it has helped the economy because the infusion of money only prolongs the pain and delays the inevitable.
President Bush says that he abandoned free market principles to save the economy. He is only partly right. Free market principles were abandoned a long time ago. He is only doing more of the same of what has been going on and it will not help one bit. George Bush is using Socialism to try and fix a free market system when Socialism caused the problem.
Businesses should make it or fail on their own. Bankers and Wall Street tycoons should be left to fail. When they made billions of dollars they did not rush to DC to give money to the government and they did not hand it out to the taxpayer. When they got in trouble they had their hands in taxpayer pockets for help. They should fail. There will always be another ready to step in and take their place. This goes for the Big Three auto makers as well. If they are unable to make it then they should go under and someone can take over and buy them out or they can cease to be.
George Bush saying that he abandoned free market principles to save the economy is like a priest saying he abandoned religion to save people’s souls. It is like saying that we abandon morality to make people more moral. It is ridiculous and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
We need to get BACK to free market principles and let the situation influence the outcome. Employers can pay what the market will bear not what politicians dictate. People who cannot afford their homes can lose them and learn from the experience. Auto makers can file for bankruptcy and renegotiate the contracts with the UAW or they can go under and the union workers can be unemployed.
The reality is, we need to use the free market to get out of this mess and stop creating bigger problems by throwing more and more money down a hole. More money will not help and it will certainly make things worse because we do not have the money and must borrow it. We are going deeper and deeper in debt in a scheme that will not work.
We need to get government out of our business and let the market dictate what business survives and what does not. Darwin had that part right.
George Bush cannot abandon the free market and expect things to change. They will not get better and things will certainly get worse. We only need to look at the Great Depression to see that government intervention allowed it to go on much longer than it should have.
Mr. President, one does not fix the free market by abandoning the free market. One allows it to correct itself as it has done time and again when politicians were not screwing things up.
Sacrificing free market principles is what caused this mess in the first place.
Source:
Breitbart
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Tags: bailout, Bush, free market, socialism, wall street