From Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
An economy advances because human beings, by their nature, must work to produce the goods necessary to sustain their lives. An economy therefore has a natural tendency to grow, without government “help,” as long as people are left free to produce and trade.
A government doesn’t cause economic growth. Individual initiative does. Government’s can hamper growth. But they do not cause it. And hamper growth is exactly what Obama and previous administrations have been doing. In the past 20+ years, we saw a perfect storm of government interference—regulatory, monetary, and politicians’ affordable housing crusades under Clinton and G.W. Bush—inflate the biggest housing bubble in history, bust it, and cause the worst financial crisis is history. Then we saw an avalanche of regulation and spending as Obama’s “cure’ for the resulting Great Recession—and instead of a roaring job-filled recovery like the ones following the 1920-21 depression or the 1980-82 recession, we got a mini-version of the 1930s; not as bad, but still the most anemic recovery on record which took a decade for incomes to finally catch up. Obama didn’t lift “the shadow of the great recession.” He simply smothered the recovery.
Another evidence-free, “it feels right to me” assertion by The Old Man That Shouts at Strawmen.
“An economy therefore has a natural tendency to grow, without government “help,” as long as people are left free to produce and trade.”
Why does he think this is the case?
“A government doesn’t cause economic growth. Individual initiative does. Government’s can hamper growth. But they do not cause it. ”
Examples? Oh? Your source is a Randian blog post? Not an economic journal or, at least, an article from an economic news source? Just a Ayn Rand bubble? Got it.
” Then we saw an avalanche of regulation and spending as Obama’s “cure’ for the resulting Great Recession—and instead of a roaring job-filled recovery like the ones following the 1920-21 depression or the 1980-82 recession, we got a mini-version of the 1930s”
Oh, that roaring ’80’s recovery brought on by skyrocketing government spending? That recovery? Oh, and we’re just going to ignore a major contributing factor of the Great Rececession itself was deregulatory initiatives within the financial sector. You know. The deregulation made to allow banks to regulate themselves and thus go hog-wild with, just as an example, sub-prime loans that wouldn’t have been made under previous regulations. So, to Mr. Yells at Strawmen here, we’re going to ignore how lack of Government oversight encouraged a bunch of greedy people to tank our economy, but we’ll then pay attention to Government’s attempt to plug the hole and complain that what it did didn’t plug the hole and recover fast enough?
Who knew Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead were economic text books?
Good presentation, Trey.
Out libertarian seems to be using ideology rather than evidence to support his case.
Obama couldn’t have set up the recovery, because the Rand Bible says recoveries can’t work that way.
They just … CAN’T.