Monday, April 22, 2013

Abracadabra!

A country’s GDP growth is typically a function of a host of factors: internal and global market conditions, the diversity of the economic base, competitive advantage, sensible fiscal and tax policies, a sound private credit system, the relative ease with which private capital can be accumulated and deployed, and so forth.

But under Obama – the most innovative American president in history! – the prescriptive powers of the dismal science have been augmented with a new tool: prestidiginomics. The Bureau of Economic Analysis has but to wave its magic wand, and – Presto! – the U.S. economy becomes 3% bigger. I believe they can also pull unicorns out of their hats, but this strikes me as an act of dubious economic utility (unless, as has been rumored, unicorn urine is effective in the treatment of rickets, hemorrhoids, lupus and the West Indian dry gripes).

On a more serious note, Monty at Ace of Spades, in one of his fine “Doom!” posts, makes a point that can’t be made too often:
The most ruinous cost of the welfare state isn't the drain on the treasury, or the burdens it puts on the productive members of society. It is the rot it generates in the civic virtue of the citizenry.
This is one way that tyrannies are born.

6 comments:

rinardman said...

I believe they can also pull unicorns out of their hats,...

No, lower.

Spiny Norman said...

Unicorns that shit Skittles.

It is the rot it generates in the civic virtue of the citizenry. This is one way that tyrannies are born.

Precisely. We have arrived at Serfdom. What is happening to our chronically unemployed and the multi-generational Welfare class is what happened to almost the entire Russian population in the Soviet era.

RebeccaH said...

This is one way that tyrannies are born.

And that is precisely the point.

mojo said...

"Nothin' up mah sleeve..."
Bullwinkle J. Moose

Robert of Ottawa said...

Paco, I have long since stopped believing government statistics; and this particular instance shows why.

I have a Yugoslavian (yes, he calls himself that) friend who says we are at the point of communist rule, where no one believed any government numner.

PS. My friend is actually a Serbo-Croat who lived in Bosnia. He escaped on the last plane out of Sarejevo, after loading it with potatos ... or so he says.

Robert of Ottawa said...

A new aphorism, invented just now by little ol' me.

When you start taking into consideration government responses to you actions, either you have become outlaw, or the government has.