Interventionism

Consumer spending does not drive the economy. On the contrary, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship are the critical components of economic growth.

The economic doctrine of “externalities” has become an excuse for governments to intervene economically in heavy-handed ways, all in the name of “saving” the environment.

President Trump announced the tariffs aiming at two goals: protecting American producers and the relocation of foreign companies to the US. People have been “protected” by being disallowed peaceful, mutually-beneficial trades with others.

While the jury still is out regarding Javier Milei’s economic “reforms” in Argentina, one must remember that economic intervention in that country is thoroughly entrenched in political and economic life there.

While US politicians are presenting policy prescriptions to make life more affordable, none of them are proposing what really would end this crisis: free markets.

Politicians now are campaigning on “affordability,” but their idea of making things in life more “affordable” consists of numerous interventions into free markets that ultimately make things more costly.

As leftist politicians claim they will make life more “affordable” by imposing costly government intervention into the markets, others vote with their feet, moving to places with less intervention and more economic sanity.

Portugal’s Estado Novo, which dominated politics for more than 30 years there, and was firmly anti-capitalist. It has been 50 years since Estado Novo’s demise, but anti-capitalist thinking still dominates among Portugal’s ruling elites.

No one can legitimately create a monopoly on ideas. The problems of freedom are solved with more freedom and worsened with less.

Even as historians have softened on their outlook on Hoover, they usually still manage to avoid the obvious connection between interventionism and lack of economic recovery.