Jul 15, 2010
A Little Less Hubris and A Little More Humility
The US Chamber of Commerce recently issued an open letter to President Obama and Pals taking them to task because, “Through their legislative and regulatory proposals the congressional majority and the administration have injected tremendous uncertainty into economic decision making and business planning.” It’s a crying shame eighty years after the carnage of the Great Depression that we learned absolutely nothing from it - we still hold fast to the idea that political intervention into economic matters is proper, rational, and just.
Amity Shlaes, in her excellent The Forgotten Man, makes the very same point as the Chamber, using FDR’s unending assault on private property as her example and, taking a page from Robert Higgs, she lays the blame squarely (and convincingly) on the New Deal for lengthening and deepening the Great Depression.
Naturally, the people who make up the Obama Administration are all deep admirers of FDR and the New Deal, and they responded to the letter by stating, “we are all working toward the same goal of putting Americans back to work and getting our economy back on track.”
I agree with that statement, as I am sure Obama and his friends are working with that very goal in mind but, like an auto-mechanic tasked to perform open-heart surgery, they simply have no idea how to do what they wish to do. To the man, they all suffer from a bad education, so they cannot even fathom the possibility that through the simple act of obeying the Constitution and leaving well enough alone the economy would recover without their “help”.
A little less hubris and a little more humility on their part would go a long way for the rest of us.
Amity Shlaes, in her excellent The Forgotten Man, makes the very same point as the Chamber, using FDR’s unending assault on private property as her example and, taking a page from Robert Higgs, she lays the blame squarely (and convincingly) on the New Deal for lengthening and deepening the Great Depression.
Naturally, the people who make up the Obama Administration are all deep admirers of FDR and the New Deal, and they responded to the letter by stating, “we are all working toward the same goal of putting Americans back to work and getting our economy back on track.”
I agree with that statement, as I am sure Obama and his friends are working with that very goal in mind but, like an auto-mechanic tasked to perform open-heart surgery, they simply have no idea how to do what they wish to do. To the man, they all suffer from a bad education, so they cannot even fathom the possibility that through the simple act of obeying the Constitution and leaving well enough alone the economy would recover without their “help”.
A little less hubris and a little more humility on their part would go a long way for the rest of us.