I’m not an economist. That’s good because I didn’t accumulate impressive grades when I took college economics. In fact, after that experience, I resolved being an economist wasn’t my vocation. Being a soldier was preferable to supply and demand curves and economy theory. Besides, market forces—if trusted—work well without the interference of economic and political meddlers who have never run a business.
We are beset in America with circumambient nanny-staters who spend their lives trying to run ours. That includes the economy. They love the idea that they know better how to run a business and prioritize an individual’s spending plan than a business owner or a man or woman poring over a family budget. After all, our money is the government’s, right? Wrong. Our money is our property. I recall a reference in the Constitution about not being able to deprive a person of their property, you know, the “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” stipulation in the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. Alas, just words.
The problem is that the fiscal confiscators who want to direct our lives, thinking, actions, preferences, indeed the very words we use to describe things in the course of a normal day, also love to take what is ours—our money—and use it as they prefer. I prefer they do not. I think you agree, of course, unless those uses have a basis in our Constitution. “Oh, there you go again with that Constitution thing,” the social and fiscal engineers would say. Yep, in case you forgot, it’s the supreme law of the land. But I digress.
Economists tell us what we should do. Some say we should spend like there’s no tomorrow because there’s no limit to the size and expansiveness of our economy. Tell that to the former owners of shuttered businesses, or the owners who are desperate for labor. When I recently made my way across seven states to a reunion with officers I served with in combat, many former businesses along my path looked like they had been in a war. Run down, abandoned, closed. Those that weren’t had a common plea: “Now Hiring” or “Help Wanted.”
That’s good news, some economists would say. But when you unleash trillions of dollars on the economy—as we did during the pandemic—that paid people to stay at home, workforce participation plummeted, adding to joblessness. Moreover, inflation spiked as people rushed to empty shelves of goods with buckets of COVID cash economists told us were essential to keep the economy alive. They forgot that too much money chasing too few goods causes inflation. And that inflation caused many small businesses to fail, sending workers home to await handouts from the government. It caused a vicious cycle. Sadly, even politicians who claimed to be conservative managed to rationalize in their pea brains that spending trillions on so-called pandemic relief was justified. Now these “fiscal conservatives” have trillions in endemic debt which will eventually be deposited into the laps of our grandchildren.
But fear not, the economists tell us that if we tweak this and adjust that—like interest rates that were artificially kept low for years—all will go fine, eventually. So, when is “eventually” in their estimate. In six months, one year, just when? They haven’t a clue. In truth, the economist class are professional guessers. They use graphs, theories, assumptions designed to bolster their guesses and when they fail, they blame other guesses for the things they guessed. I guess that’s what they like to do. They might do just as well with a dowsing rod stumbling across an unplanted corn field looking for water or gathering around a Ouija board waiting for it to spell out the next brilliant manipulation of our economy.
Somehow, the economists who think we can spend our way to prosperity missed the part of Econ 101 that discussed market forces. You know, innovation, individual risk-taking, and Adam Smith’s economic “invisible hand.” Smith’s 1762 advice is better than what we hear today.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
But I would be happy if economists would simply follow the advice of their kindergarten teachers. “Keep your hands to yourself.” And leave the invisible one alone. Meanwhile, what’s the solution to our economic woes beyond dispatching the gormless manipulators of market forces? Try this. If you took all the economists in the world and laid them end-to-end from Earth to the Sun…well…that would be a good thing.
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