Obama's Keynesian Giraffes

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Ludwig von Mises Institute:

 

 

 

Obama's Keynesian Giraffes

 

Mises Daily:Wednesday, August 29, 2012 by Anne Wortham

 

At President Barack Obama's first rally of his 2012 reelection campaign at Ohio State University, he declared that, in the spirit of hope and change that he believes elected him, "We will finish what we started … and remind the world once more just why it is that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth." After reminding his audience that we have more in common as Americans than our political division suggests, he assured them, "I still believe in you, and I'm asking you to keep believing in me."[1] A month later, at a fundraising reception in Atlanta, he sought again to establish affinity and reciprocity with supporters by telling them, "I believe in you. I hope you still believe in me."[2]

What does one have to know and understand to believe in the president? One would have to believe that the source of America's greatness is the welfare state he enthusiastically defends and promotes, and believes is morally and practically justified. One would also have to share his mistaken belief that the nation he was elected to lead is organized around free-market capitalism, and that his mandate is to rescue the country from the failures of capitalism.

In fact, the nation's economy is a system of regulated capitalism and welfare-state paternalism, not one of laissez-faire capitalism based on a natural-rights legal framework that respects the sovereignty of individuals and their right to engage in noncoercive action.

Although there remain remnants of laissez-faire and its legal framework, those zones of economic freedom are under constant attack by politicians and voters on the left and right; by private- and public-sector workers and pensioners; by crony capitalists, unscrupulous financiers and investment gurus; by rent-seeking (privilege-seeking) lobbyists and interest groups of every description; by intellectuals, pundits, and entertainers; and, not least of all, by the president of the United States. The attacks have succeeded because political structure is not the constitutionally limited democracy it was intended to be, but an interest-group democracy driven by what Mancur Olson called "distributional coalitions" of pressure groups paradoxically spawned by the very liberties guaranteed by democracy.[3]

One can only conclude from Barack Obama's statements and actions across his career