Every vacation time Case Western University has, I get to debate the young Keynesian skulls full of mush. They come to visit, and start regaling me with regurgitations of what they learned in their latest college level economics courses. (Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, and Fredric Bastiat must be rolling furiously in their graves with the state of economic study in today’s colleges.) Fortunately, the structure of our nation, which allows for 50 separate entities to act as laboratories as to which kinds of policies are effective, and which ones are destructive, can lend impartial testimony. Fifty years ago, Texas was governed almost exclusively by the Democrats, and California almost exclusively by the Republicans. At that time, Texas was a backwards economic blight on America, and California boasted an economy which if considered separately, would have been the Fourth largest in the world.
The story today is much different for those two states, as are the roles of who governs them.
Part of the problem with the self anointed intellectuals is that while they are able to eloquently describe in great detail how their theories are completely sound, and Keynesian economics are superior to other schools of thought, not a single one of them can adequately answer the question of why it has never worked, and in fact why it continually makes any problems far, far worse.
“We just didn’t do it big enough.” “We chose the wrong people to make the decisions.” “It would have been worse still, had we not implemented those policies.” Of course each of these answers forces one to completely ignore the harshest lessons taught by history, as well as completely discount human behavior. Businesses are fleeing California. Texas is booming. Every state with a Republican Governor is outpacing every state with a Democrat Governor in terms of job growth, per capita income, and consumer confidence. That fact alone is simply astounding.
Have no fear though, Barack Obama is around to inflict bloated and grotesquely overbearing bureaucracies upon those states that show too much positive accomplishment. The EPA has taken to flying drones all over Texas and North Dakota for the express purpose of slowing their job growth to match that accomplished by the Democrat run locations. And you thought he didn’t care!
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: California
