oilnwater’s got it completely right.

This Monday I had to sit through a speech at Rotary given by a bureaucrat working for the state of Kansas on health policy (i.e. socialized medicine). She gave a long speech about hard financial times and how the key to fixing our nation’s “health-care problem” was simply to raise taxes on smokers (who she claimed were leeching up all the resources) and greedy companies (the audience was a group of businessmen, bankers, and people who actually understand free-market economics). Then she tried to gain the audience’s sympathy about how her daughter’s health care was expiring because she was a full-time graduate student and almost 24 so if she didn’t find affordable coverage she might have trouble still going to school. My boss’ face went about 12 shades of purple when he heard that one…I think he was half-reconsidering his ban on me asking our speakers questions when I wondered out loud to him why taxpayers should have to subsidize her master’s degree and why she couldn’t work out a better budget or get a fucking job like billions of people who don’t expect the world to give them a living do.

Of course she loved the idea of more taxes, though…that money insured her office would get more funding. And keep in mind that it was the bureaucrats who gutted Milton Friedman’s proposal for a negative income tax because they saw it as a threat to them. To bureaucrats, the answer will usually be more government.

Do they have the discipline or will to do so?

HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAH

oh man, you kill me…..

but in exchange for avoiding the serious pain, our country is sacrificing our access to true risk/reward (freedom) as well as innovative potential. this goes hand in hand with socializing both the banking system and the real domestic economy without pause or end. there’s almost nothing that can be done about this process and it’s very painful and sad to see it happening.

Now that you bring it up, I’ve got to absolutely agree with you. In sniping at the big guys, I’d almost forgotten about the mid-level bureaucrats who really run things and who remain from Congress to Congress and President to President.

No matter what the higher-ups do or say, short of axing entire department’s (which ain’t gonna happen), these folks will be running the show. Since Keynesian thinking is the very reason for their livelihood, they won’t give it up. Ever.

(OK, that was a buzz-kill!)

what you’re seeing today is something that is actually now almost out of the Federal Reserve’s control, especially since the usual mechanism of T-bill used for both expansionary and contractionary monetary policy is getting close to exhausted. fiscal policy for increased government spending/purchases/tax cuts is not an effective option now either now that our national deficit is at a level where a government response (Bush,Congress)would do little to nothing. our national banking system is virtually non-functional at the moment and more at risk to global forces than ever before, in the form of global commodity demand competition.

the USD reserve currency status is not the same as it used to be, and its decline in global circulation is forcing this nation’s population to actually pay for its own government largesse and regulation. this trend will accelerate. i truly believe this country is going to choose the acceleration of socialism as a route to escape this crisis and that it will happen soon.

What do you think? ;-)

Do they have the discipline or will to do so?

Is that a rhetorical question?