The good news is that the
Republican Party primary season with its endless quasi-debating will only last
another seven months. The bad news is that people still have to put up with
seven more months of all but one candidate trying to convince the voting public
that he’s the best person to run the economy.
The problem is that no one can,
or should even try, to run an economy for 300 million people. Not even a
535-member Congress should attempt to run the economy. Consider how well the
economy is doing with government trying to do just that:
It was less than a year ago —
April of 2011 — when some among us were complaining of a national debt
exceeding $14.3 trillion. That was 98 percent of the country’s GNP. Now the
debt is in excess of $15.2 trillion and the debt ceiling has again been raised
to more than $16 trillion.
Such a financial state is not
only unsustainable, but is fiscal suicide. Yet neither of the front-running
candidates for the Republican nomination can admit that the problem comes from
a government knows best attitude.
It all comes down to spending.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle have been spending the people’s money
— money from taxes — as if the public were a cash cow that can be milked
forever. The soon-to-be impoverishing debt says otherwise.
Things have deteriorated to the point where the
United States has dropped to having the 10th freest economy in the
world. Hong Kong, Singapore,
Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Mauritius and Ireland have
freer economies, according to the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom, a joint
project of The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation.
As reported
in Digitialjournal.com, “Increased tensions between government control and a
free market is most notable in developed countries where the reckless
government behavior has, in many cases, consumed any gains economic freedom may
have achieved in different policy areas.”
A free economy can’t —
shouldn’t — be controlled by a government. A free economy is made up of the
myriad decisions made by a free people: what individuals choose to buy, where
they choose t shop, whether they invest, save or squander.
When individuals make a mistake
with their money, they hurt only themselves. When government makes the mistake,
we all suffer.
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