American agricultural policy offers many instructive lessons on how to cripple a major sector of the economy. For 60 years, the U.S. government has waged a war against the market. And for 60 years, American taxpayers and consumers have been the biggest losers.
The broadly held corporation was one of the most important developments of the 19th century. The capital of thousands and then millions of stockholders made possible the profitable development of large firms, which enriched not only their owners, but society as a whole.
There is no clearer demonstration of the essential identity of the two political parties than their position on the minimum wage. The Democrats propose to raise the legal minimum wage from $3.35 an hour, to which it had been raised by the Reagan administration during its allegedly free-market salad days in 1981. The Republican counter was to allow a "subminimum" wage for teenagers, who, as marginal workers, are the ones who are indeed hardest hit by any legal minimum.
American families need more affordable child care. But the answer is not more government involvement. When child care is run, funded, and regulated by the government, it can only make the existing problem worse. And it's bad for our liberty as well.
In the Keynesian tradition, the economic advisors to George Bush and Michael Dukakis share the same intellectual premises, and advocate government power over individuals and businesses, and extensive government intervention in the economy.
The Post Office has been a federal agency since 1775. And since 1872 it has been illegal for anyone but government employees to deliver a letter. In that year, at Post Office behest, Congress outlawed the low-priced, fast delivery of the Pony Express. It was to be the last express service available to regular mail customers.
The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone.
If a regulated airline system did not "work," and a deregulated system seemed for a time to work well, what happens when the winds of data happen to blow the other way? In recent months, crowding, delays, a few dramatic accidents, and a spate of bankruptcies and mergers among the airlines have given heart to the statists and vested interests who were never reconciled to deregulation. And so the hue and cry for re-regulation of airlines has spread like wildfire.
Winter is here, and for the last few years this seasonal event has meant the sudden discovery of a brand-new category of the pitiable: the "homeless."
It is well-known that bureaucracies, especially governmental bureaucracies, have an unparalleled ability to suffocate innovation. Perhaps not as well known is the ability of those same institutions to ignore systematically well-documented, empirically supportable precepts about how the world really works.
