Money For Idiots

by David Brooks - February 19th, 2009 - New York Times

A few years ago, the global economic culture began swaying. The government enabled people to buy homes they couldn’t afford. The Fed provided easy money. The Chinese sloshed in oceans of capital. The giddy upward sway produced a crushing ride down.

These oscillations are the real moral hazard. Individual responsibility doesn’t mean much in an economy like this one. We all know people who have been laid off through no fault of their own. The responsible have been punished along with the profligate.

It makes sense for the government to intervene to try to reduce the oscillation. It makes sense for government to try to restore some communal order. And the sad reality is that in these circumstances government has to spend money on precisely those sectors that have been swinging most wildly — housing, finance, etc. It has to help stabilize people who have been idiots.

This rationalization is the deluded logic by which the socialists always excuse their seizure of the reins of government and start the process of forever making decisions for everyone else. Their form of government is always rationalized and always a disaster and yet they never can see that the cure is worse than the disease.

Just as Barack Obama is playing his chicken little game of "the sky is falling, the sky is falling", the threat of disaster is always the excuse used to end freedom and free enterprise. Free enterprise always has down cycles but it always recovers quickly. Socialism has fewer and lesser down cycles because it is a permanent depression of the economy. I have never been able to understand how socialists can sell the idea that to avoid a temporary lull in good times we should accept a permanent abandonment of good times. To protect a few idiots from the temporary consequences of their actions we permanently turn control of government over to idiots who sympathize with them. Isn't that stupid?

What else would you expect from the extreme liberals of the New York Times but irrational gibbberish such as this?