Economics

The Samantha-Stevens approach to political economics

Let’s take a moment to mourn the death of limited government in America, and to dwell on federal government’s baaaad example: debt accrual. Not that we should ever take our lessons from government. That would be a throwback to a time when freedom lovers growled ferociously in the face of government’s intrusion in their affairs, especially their financial ones. No, ours is Orwell’s needy, socialized citizenry and our government is charged with spending (excuse me…borrowing) any amount of our hard-earned money to protect the companies that profit from all the other money we freely gave these same companies.

The lumbering chimera that claws at the separation between corporation and state has just fondly remembered its fabulous feeding frenzy during the airline bailout and the S&L bailout. Every decade or so, we need to give corporations billions of dollars of our money to “stabilize” the economy for “ordinary Americans.” How incredibly stupid we are. I’m waiting for the day the energy companies roll over like beached whales and whine to American government for some bailout freebies, the kind that can end with 6 to 9 zeroes.

I’m a person, not a corporation or government, but I once accrued extraordinary debt and spent money like it fell from the skies. It took me years to whittle that down to nothing. Lesson learned? If somebody had offered to wipe the slate clean, to wriggle their nose like Samantha Stevens and make it all go away, I would never have learned any lessons. I wouldn’t have cared who footed the bill.

How should we react when squeezed between a corporate whore and its imperial pimp? The Wall Street Journal has a suggestion.

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