Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Bleeding Washington...


While reading up on the founding fathers I learned that George Washington's doctors literally bled him to death. Washington approached them with a sore throat, who insisted on bloodletting, which made him even more ill, which prompted them to further bleed Washington.

This vicious cycle reached a peak in which Washington lost over a quarter of his blood in one day. To make matters worse, Washington was given a strong laxative and an emetic which caused vomiting. That day America's 1st and greatest president died in agony.

This terrible episode in American history best describes how the interventionist state functions. Very rarely do politicians successfully diagnose the cause of our economic and social ills...especially when their policies caused those very ills.

The "cures" that they propose are often worse than the "diseases." But, just like with Washington's doctors, the failure of their "cures" compel them to declare that the solution is to further administer them.

Any Chicagoan can tell you that even as spending has soared, our public schools have remained awful, with a graduation rate of approximately 50%. Yet the solutions are always the same: more spending and greater federal involvement.

And of course we encounter this problem with our current economic crises.

Clearly government involvement was one of the major factors in the formation of the housing bubble, yet so many politicians and their pundits declare that the market is the illness and even more state intervention is the cure.

Massive debt and irresponsible spending in the public and private sectors were key factors that contribute to our economic ills, yet Bushbama proposes even more spending, which will lead to even more debt.

What irony - in 1799 Washington was bled by his incompetent doctors and in 2009 Washington bleeds our great nation.

6 comments:

  1. Jason,

    Love the history you are infusing into your blog, and I think it would be even better with links to websites that go even deeper into the examples you talk about.

    Adam

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adam,

    That's a good point. I will go back and post some links for anyone interested in reading up on the historical or economic back ground of what I am writing about. Because, I stand on the shoulder of the giants that came before me.

    -Jason

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  3. you decry govt spending without making any distinction on type of spending. Just because one treatment from a doctor is wrong doesn't mean that all treatments and all doctors are wrong.

    The problem isn't with govt spending, the problem is how and where and why they spend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. We read today the economy contracted last quarter by the most in 27 years. 27 years ago was the economy carter left Reagan. Obama and Reagan share inheriting a bad economy. Reagan's response was massive tax cuts. And it worked beautifully. As he said, "it's dawn in America". Obama's response is massive debt and government spending (which was also Bush's response). His message has been "it's going to get worse before it gets better..." "it's the worst economy since the Great Depression (he wants to pretend the early 80s and the Reagan success never happened)". It's all doom and gloom, and that's because Obama is smart enough to know that trillions more debt and the expansion of government is antithetical to prosperity and economic growth. But his goal, the democrat and liberal goal, has never been prosperity. It's "equality" and "fairness" and "progressiveness" as directed from Washington D.C. by our wise bureaucrats.

    This train has left the station and nothing good can happen until an election puts some fiscal conservatives back into Congress.

    The reaction against Clinton was swift, and Republicans stormed into power in the House in 94. Let us hope the correction to this madness is just as quick.

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  5. "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." - Friedrich Hayek

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  6. To: the Way
    From: Jason

    Comment: My post wasn't a blanket condemnation of all government spending. The main points are indisputable:

    1. We spend more than we have.

    2. When a policy or program fails our usual response is to spend more on that program. The best example of that is Chicago public schools. Per capita spending has doubled in the last 25 years, but the graduation rate hovers at 50%.

    The Way said...
    you decry govt spending without making any distinction on type of spending. Just because one treatment from a doctor is wrong doesn't mean that all treatments and all doctors are wrong.

    The problem isn't with govt spending, the problem is how and where and why they spend.

    ReplyDelete