Other Schools of Thought

In Krugman's world, prosperity is created by spending, and it does not matter who spends what on whom just as long as someone is spending.

And if we must have government, let it remain small and insignificant, spending its time cutting ribbons and bickering over nonsense like the color of street signs. Let the rest of us enjoy the freedom to pursue our own happiness.

The downturn might eventually end, but with ever more regulations imposed on the system, we might find ourselves never again living in a vibrant and prosperous society.

The reversion in this century to ever-greater statism threatens to plunge us back to the barbarism of the ancient past.

The State is the group within society that claims for itself the exclusive right to rule everyone under a special set of laws that permit it to do to others what everyone else is rightly prohibited from doing, namely aggressing against person and property.

Remove all government impediments to effective entrepreneurial planning: avoid protectionist measures internationally; allow prices and wages to adjust as needed to restore market equilibrium. Not only cut tax rates, as was done in the incomplete reforms of the 1980s and early in this century, but, per Rothbard, drastically reduce the government budget, both taxes and expenditures.

The problem is not really economic but political. And as long as "the leadership of the Party" and "Marxism, Leninism, Mao Ze-dong thought" remain enshrined in the preamble to the Chinese constitution, the solution is likely to remain as elusive as ever.

Suppose in 2007 you were handed a piece of paper and a pencil, and were asked, "Come up with a list of bullet points for how to generate severe stagflation in the years 2010 through 2019."

Wouldn't your list look pretty similar to what has already happened?

As I see it now, democracy is not to the advantage of the demos, it is to the advantage of the power elite.

The progressives demanded efficiency in government and spurned traditional American practices as obstacles on the path to needed reforms.