The evidence is only that jobholders and jobseekers are alike subject to a law which nature, perhaps unfortunately, has made universal. Like all the rest of us, they tend always to satisfy their needs and desires with the least possible exertion.
The second noticeable consequence of the state's activity in everybody's business but its own is that its own business is monstrously neglected.
In a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are 'good' in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors.
Trick names of this sort corrupt the language and confuse thought. It would hardly clarify matters to call a handout a 'negative deprivation' or having your pocket picked 'receiving a negative gift.
Consumer spending does not drive the economy. On the contrary, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship are the critical components of economic growth.
Some of the responses to my post on General Pinochet have reminded me that along with the f
People have been led to believe that shutting down entrepreneurship and the marketplace will improve the world. Actually, that way lies barbarism, and a system unfit for human beings.
On Sunday, December 10, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile died, at the age of 91.
Dobbs goes back and forth throughout the book, confusing capitalism with mercantilism, blaming mercantilism for bad policies that he calls capitalism, and blaming free trade for the consequences of protectionist policies … and then there's his actual understanding of politics itself. I hesitate to say what his understanding of economics is because there isn't any economics in War on the Middle Class. There's a lot of talk about how this nation was founded on a principle of economic opportunity, but that's as close as Dobbs comes.
Perkins called his job that of an economic hit man — the person who makes the initial case for the infrastructure development with such optimistic (and purposely misleading) biases that they become deals that cannot be refused.
