Dear Congressman Hinchey:
I have a stimulus plan and I urge you to propose it to Congress. My plan is that Congress, the President and the US Supreme Court ought to convene in Guantanamo Bay, remaining there for the next twenty years.
They could occupy the cells left by the departed terrorists. Their decisions would be limited to Guantanamo Bay.
The three branches would then be able to begin to mend the damage that they have caused to this country.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Cc: President Barack Obama, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
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5 comments:
Dr Langbert:
Will the tax cuts that you propose stimulate the economy? We are in a liquidity trap and the government is the buyer of last resort. Cutting taxes alone cannot get us out of the trap. These basic principles are taught in every graduate economics class.
Do you have any other proposal or are you just a one trick pony?
Macroeconomics as taught in American universities has the same claim to being "science" as does astrology. Keynesian economics failed in the 1970s, but American universities preach it because, after all, banks' profitability depends on it.
If the field of economics has the the slightest credibility, how did banks create this problem in the first place? They don't have any economists on staff?
In the 1970s my life was up-ended by the claims of Keynesian quacks who destroyed the job market in the late 1970s. My hat is off to Arthur Burns and the Columbia economics department. True geniuses.
Moreover, you don't know what "the basic principles" of economics are.
If you are not familiar with Austrian theory, you do not know economics.
1. To remedy the gaps in your knowledge, I suggest that you read these two books:
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
Ludwig von Mises, Theory of Money nd Credit
When you are finished, "Anonymous", please do visit again and update me.
The government is necessary for nothing. Incompetent banks should be shut down. Their assets should be liquidated. The public should not be asked to subsidize banks whom they have already subsidized excessively.
I am not a one trick pony. You are because your only trick is "government". When something goes wrong, call the "government". Government knows best. Trust the government. You can't think of anything else because of a pathological lack of imagination. But government is a failed trick that ignoramuses advocate.
Government solutions failed in the 1930s, when Keynesian economics turned what should have been a two year depression into an eleven year one. They failed in the 1970s when they created stagflation. And they will fail now.
I have 300 million tricks. They are the ingenuity of the American people. But I do not include social parasites like bankers, investment bankers and government bureaucrats in the category of "the American people". They are blood suckers. They are not the economy.
Dr. Langbert:
"I have 300 million tricks. They are the ingenuity of the American people." You have contradicted yourself. In one of your posts you bemoan the inability of your students to read and write. Are these among the 300 million American people you are counting on?
"The government is necessary for nothing." Not even for national security, foreign policy, regulating interstate commerce?
Come on Dr. Langbert, a man of your intelligence can do much better.
"That government is best which governs not at all."
--Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience".
Murray Rothbard has some interesting ideas on how to replace defense and police with private contractors and insurance companies. See Murray Rothbard, "For a New Liberty".
Based on the performance of Rumsfeld, Bush and Tommy Franks, we might be better off with a privatized military. That is not to diminish the US military's great courage. But let's face it. Governments have done poorly at managing the military.
Most generals have fought the last war. Napoleon defeated Prussia and Hitler defeated France not because of brilliance on the victors' side but because of incompetence on the defeated parties' side.
In Vietnam, the US's strategic performance was a joke. LBJ and Robert McNamara were almost as incompetent as Bush, Obama, Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner have been now.
Also--You are right that the United States has been severely weakened by (government managed) educational institutions, especially the elementary and public schools. But there is still incredible ingenuity left among the people. Nothing motivates like necessity. I do have faith in the general population even as America's workforce has been damaged by progressive education. I see that every day, but I also see students who work hard and are willing to take risks to start businesses. If they could read and write better, we would be better off still.
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