Sorry, David, But Socialism Won A Long Time Ago

Up until today, I had become an admirer of David Stockman, Reagan's former budget director, because he has so forcefully denounced the brand of supply-side economics he used to advocate.  Then I read this.

It's chock-full of bipartisan blame (going all the way back to FDR) for our current economic woes.  But undergirding all of that fair-minded prose is a fantasy that, apparently remains with Stockman from his early days in politics:  the idea that an economy with little or no government interference is both desirable, and possible.

To paraphrase "2001: A Space Odyssey":  I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid we can't have that.  Because nobody wants it.  In fact, nobody has ever wanted it.

Go all the way back to Adam Smith, the first advocate of capitalistic economics.  In "The Wealth of Nations," he advocates progressive taxation and government support for the poor, including public works projects, and denounces the role of corporations in economic life.

Fast-forward to the Industrial Revolution, when laws were written to ensure that the corporate masters of the writers could enslave the rest of us--until workers put there livelihoods and their lives on the line to ensure that there could be some equality of power between themselves and their employers.

Now move on to the Great Depression.  Oh yes, there were advocates of unfettered markets even after the crash, who said that any effort by the government to step in would only make things worse.  Well, things did get worse, when voters listened to them and voted Republicans into Congress to handcuff Roosevelt (who, BTW, gave us that great Glass-Steagall Act you so effectively champion, and your party destroyed with the help of another of your heroes, Bill Clinton).  Fortunately, he was not handcuffed forever, and the modern progressive state he helped to build gave the United States, in the middle of the last century, the greatest period of widespread and shared prosperity it has ever (and may ever) know.

Finally, consider the economic schizophrenia of the Reagan Era.  Almost thirty uninterrupted years of tax cuts, budget cuts and deregulation.  You many even recall a Newsweek cover with your face on it, next to the title "Cut, Slash, Chop."  I think it looked something like this:

Yes, that's about right.

And how did that era end?  When the financial house of cards collapsed in 2008, the investing class decided that socialism looked pretty good, and that they wanted as much of it as they could possibly get.  Amazingly, they got it, with the help of both parties.

I don't get the sense that you would disagree with much of this.  But your proposed solution is for a world that cannot exist.  Even if government was limited to purely police and military powers, it would still be a major purchaser, manufacturer and employer--in short, it would still have a massive involvement in our economy that would distort supply and demand for other goods and services.  And even YOU seem to be willing to add a "social safety net" to that involvement.

Socialism, David, has won.  It won a long time ago,  The best thing that we can do is to move back to an era, if that's even possible, like the mid-20th century, when government balanced its efforts between helping the working class and the investing class.  Above all, we need to curtail the current policy of socialism for the rich.

If we can do that, we won't have to worry about your proposed solution:  stuffing mattresses with cash.  After all, even cash is no good without a government to back it.