HILLARY AND DONALD’S ILLITERATE INFRASTRUCTURE PLANS ARE STRAIGHT-UP ‘IDIOCRACY’ BY BENJAMIN WEINGARTEN
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/08/hillary-and-donalds-illiterate-infrastructure-plans-are-straight-up-idiocracy
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both on the campaign trail hawking the wonders of still more “stimulus” spending via public works projects. The American economy be damned.
Their shared fundamental belief that politicians can solve all manner of problems through wise public spending — or at least that the key to winning elections is convincing voters that they are the politicians who can do it — calls to mind President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, the fictional president in the great political satire and social commentary of our time, “Idiocracy.”
Of the fictional secretary of the Interior, incorrectly named “Not Sure,” Camacho exclaims:
I know shi*’s bad right now with all that starvin’ bullsh*t, and the dust storms. And we runnin’ out of French fries and burrito coverings.
But I got a solution…
Now I understand everyone’s shi*’s emotional right now. But listen up. I got a three point plan to fix everything.
Number one, we got this guy Not Sure.
Number two, he’s got a higher IQ than any man alive!
And number three, he’s gonna fix everything! I give you my word as President!
He’ll fix the problems with all the dead crops. He’s gonna make ‘em grow again.
And that ain’t all… I give you my word, he’s gonna fix the dust storms too! And I give you my word, he’s gonna fix the ecomony!
And he’s so smart, he’s gonna do it all, in one week. [Misspelling courtesy of President Camacho]
While the President Camacho school of government may appear attractive to some on its surface, Clinton, Trump, and others who advocate central planning in general — and public works projects in particular — ignore its economic illiteracy.
One of the central problems with politics is that often the very policies that win votes are also the ones that are the most economically harmful.
Redistributing wealth to constituents, whether through “jobs” or direct handouts, is among the most common and pernicious of such policies. The system that the Founders bequeathed us would have limited such programs, but the legislative and judicial branches long ago neglected their fidelity to the Constitution and have created a vote-buying free-for-all not only accepted, but also openly celebrated by large swathes of the American people.
Front and center in the annals of economic boondoggles that make for good politics are the public works projects Clinton and Trump are currently pushing.
On this subject, both Clinton and Trump are in agreement: Our infrastructure is crumbling (or is it?), and the answer is for government — i.e., we the taxpayers, foreign and domestic creditors, or all three — to fund a rebuild.
Clinton’s plan calls for $275 billion in public spending over five years. To accept her infrastructure blueprint is to believe that the collection and disbursement of taxpayer dollars is the great panacea for human misery. Public spending will again make America an “economic superpower,” “improve quality of life,” and even “combat climate change and protect our communities.” Who knew it would only take a few hundred billion more dollars to fix all our problems?
Trump goes further, claiming he wants “at least [to] double her numbers” in terms of public works spending. “We need jobs,” Trump says. They will be financed by infrastructure bonds issued by the U.S. government, taking advantage of the abnormally low interest rate environment. Trump is the man to raise the capital, oversee the construction projects, and ensure they are done on time and on budget. You can bet the roads and bridges he builds will be beautiful, fantastic, and yuge.
Public spending comes from private pockets only. Government has no resources except those it expropriates.
Henry Hazlitt, the great classical liberal and author of the epic “Economics in One Lesson,” continues to provide the most cogent corrective to the arguments of Clinton, Trump, and all other public spending proponents of the last century and beyond. Hazlitt writes:
[A] bridge built primarily “to provide employment” is a different kind of bridge. When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to he [sic] invented. Instead of thinking only where bridges must be built, the government spenders begin to ask themselves where bridges can be built. Can they think of plausible reasons why an additional bridge should connect Easton and Weston? It soon becomes absolutely essential. Those who doubt the necessity are dismissed as obstructionists and reactionaries.
Two arguments are put forward for the bridge … The first argument is that it will provide employment … The implication is that these are jobs that would not otherwise have come into existence.
This is what is immediately seen. But if we have trained ourselves to look beyond immediate to secondary consequences, and beyond those who are directly benefited by a government project to others who are indirectly affected, a different picture presents itself. It is true that a particular group of bridge workers may receive more employment than otherwise. But the bridge has to be paid for out of taxes. For every dollar that is spent on the bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. If the bridge costs $1,000,000 the taxpayers will lose $1,000,000. They will have that much taken away from them which they would otherwise have spent on the things they needed most.
Therefore for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else. We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the $1,000,000 taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project. More bridge builders; fewer automobile workers, radio technicians, clothing workers, farmers.
But then we come to the second argument. The bridge exists. It is, let us suppose, a beautiful and not an ugly bridge. It has come into being through the magic of government spending. Where would it have been if the obstructionists and the reactionaries had had their way? There would have been no bridge. The country would have been just that much poorer.
Here again the government spenders have the better of the argument with all those who cannot see beyond the immediate range of their physical eyes. They can see the bridge. But if they have taught themselves to look for indirect as well as direct consequences they can once more see in the eye of imagination the possibilities that have never been allowed to come into existence. They can see the unbuilt homes, the unmade cars and radios, the unmade dresses and coats, perhaps the unsold and ungrown foodstuffs … What has happened is merely that one thing has been created instead of others.
Hazlitt shows us that at their core, public works projects and indeed all public spending merely represents the taking of resources from one hand and giving them to the other.
Public spending comes from private pockets only. Government has no resources except those it expropriates. The labor and capital — be it monetary or physical — used in projects for government-determined purposes are at best merely diverted from projects the free marketplace would otherwise fund and execute. Often, capital is destroyed in the process, taken from those who earned it and given to those who will ensure politicians stay in power.
It is also worth noting that with public spending programs, the politicians — rather than the people — determine how funds are used. Politicians are incentivized by reaping a return for their largesse in votes. Private individuals and enterprises, on the other hand, are incentivized by returns that can be generated only by ventures that are profitable by dint of serving the wants and needs of others.
However brilliant or charitable such politicians may be, central planning fails because no single individual can possess the knowledge necessary to manage an economy, nor can such a person operate to society’s benefit without being subjected to the competition, price signals, and need for profitability required by the marketplace.
Voters ought to demand not that their political representatives throw money at artificial jobs, but rather that they return the money to its rightful owners: those who earned it.
– See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/08/hillary-and-donalds-illiterate-infrastructure-plans-are-straight-up-idiocracy#sthash.cRqJK0ud.dpuf
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