Steve Horwitz totally nails it:
This [the stimulus bill] isn’t just your run-of-the-mill pork. What we are seeing happen right now is that Congress sees this crisis as an opportunity to enact a whole variety of programs that they’ve wanted to pass for years, especially (but not only) the Democrats who no longer fear a veto, and now finally have the chance. Just as the Patriot Act was a bunch of laws waiting for a political “crisis,” so is much of the stimulus package a bunch of programs waiting for an economic “crisis.” The current crisis is just a convenient excuse.
Disaster dirigisme.
'Disaster dirigisme' is good, but just too fru-fru.
'Rent seeking' has no intellectual force with the hoi polloi, they simply don't know what it means. 'Dirigisme' has no force for the same reason, and it's frenchified to boot. 'Fascism' has utterly lost its meaning.
So what to call this for the ordinary, non-intellectual concerned citizen?
Rand called it 'looting' but that does not capture the 'idealism' that gives such spending it's moral force.
The orgiastic exploitation of the crisis of the moment for the fraudulent gaining of power and money and attention, with an essential element of mugging the true producer, in the name of the social good. The concept is everywhere, but not the term that encapsulates it.
I believe someone once called this the “Shock Doctrine.”
Hrm. So if the stimulus bill is the Patriot Act, and the economic crisis is 9/11, then who is al-Qaeda?
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i am curious as to how you would evaluate the validity of this claim from e.j. dionn'e Post editorial:
With a few exceptions, Republicans and conservatives have largely stayed out of these arguments. They prefer to insist on more tax cuts for the well-off and for business, ignoring the reality that all but the most ideological economists dismiss such measures as having limited value in boosting the economy.
he is referring to the argument of whether we can simultaneoulsy accomplish a stimulus and large-scale reinvestment in infrastructure, or whether we should choose one over the other. have republicans taken themselves out of this debate, or simply been ignored?
We could also call it the “Naomi Klein Act”. Maybe some people would realize how backwards she got things.
Or exactly how right she got it.
How's that? Is her thesis that crises will be exploited to impose massive Keynesian interventions government spending?
Her thesis is that people in power will use crises to advance their interests. Just as we are seeing. Open your eyes.
Basically when the people get freaked out, the government is given incentive and license to do massive, stupid shit, so it does.
Iraq war, patriot act, TARP, stimulus. It's all the same.
Change I could believe in would be “you know what? After close analysis it looks like most of what we might do would be counterproductive. So I'll submit a revised stimulus bill, a third of the original size.”
The Porkulus Package was 40 years in the making. I must say that all of the promises (that people voted for) made by President Obama have a price tag. We just got the bill.
The Porkulus Package was 40 years in the making. I must say that all of the promises (that people voted for) made by President Obama have a price tag. We just got the bill.
“Her thesis is that people in power will use crises to” [dismantle and weaken the government to increase economic freedom]“, which is pretty much the opposite of what is happening and what happened with The Patriot Act.
I fixed it for you.
There is no “stimulus” to spending. Spending $1 does not create $4 in value as the money “flows around”. Paying $10 for someone to mow your lawn doesn't magically create $40 in income for other people. When you stop paying, there is no lasting increase in lawn work.
Would this be the Hindenburg dirigisme?
…it is all about the absolute and total centralized control of every facet of life…for $
Actually the people who crafted the bailout are the ones who actually regulate the market. Artificially low interest rates, inflation and boom-burst economic cycles are all created by a central bank, the greatest regulator of them all. Destabilize the economy, consolidate the wealth. Destabilize the economy, consolidate the wealth. That's the great economic cycle, with each concentric ripple getting bigger until the wealth of nations are consolidated under the international central bank.
very well said, Well our economic cycle had been in a bad situation now a days, that's why economic downturn is attacking us globally.
..it is all about the absolute and totally centralized control of every facet of life…for $
..it is all about the absolute and totally centralized control of every facet of life…for $