A tale of two pundits: Sowell v. Huffington
Today, the RealClearPolitics, one of my favorite sites, offers an instructive lesson in economics, the power of myth, and the sadness evils of a mind gone rancid with ideology. To complete the course, you need simply read and digest two short and contrasting articles.
The strophe is by Thomas Sowell and is called “Another Great Depression?” One of Sowell’s great gifts as a writer is the ability to articulate and then explode a piece of conventional wisdom that is all consensus and no wisdom. In this column, he takes the contention, to which “everybody” subscribes, that “the stock market crash of 1929 was a failure of the free market that led to massive unemployment in the 1930s–and that it was intervention of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies that rescued the economy.”
In the space of a few hundred words, Sowell shows that every piece of that nugget of conventional non-wisdom is wrong. The market crash of ’29 did not lead to higher unemployment, as a look at the employment figures of the time demonstrates. After an initial spike to 9 percent, unemployment settled back down to 6.3 percent by June 1930. The skyrocketing unemployment of the mid- to late 1930s was due not to the failure of the market, but rather to government meddling in the market. Exhibit A was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in June 1930, and which raised duty on thousands of imported goods, thus bringing international trade to a screeching halt. Five months after the Act was passed, Sowell points out, unemployment hit double digits. “Before the Great Depression,” Sowell explains,
it was not considered to be the business of the federal government to try to get the economy out of a depression. But the Smoot-Hawley tariff — designed to save American jobs by restricting imports — was one of Hoover’s interventions, followed by even bigger interventions by FDR.
The rise in unemployment after the stock market crash of 1929 was a blip on the screen compared to the soaring unemployment rates reached later, after a series of government interventions. . . .
In other words, the evidence suggests that it was not the “problem” of the financial crisis in 1929 that caused massive unemployment but politicians’ attempted “solutions.” Is that the history that we seem to be ready to repeat?
That’s a very good question. It saddens me beyond measure to say that the answer might very possibly be “yes.” First, there was the downpayment: the $700 billion “bailout.” No-one, certainly not the Secretary of the Treasury, knows why it was $700 billion. As one Treasury spokesman put it: there was no particular data point: they just wanted to pick “a really large number.” Then comes Obama with breezy talk of $1 trillion “stimulus” package. (“Bailout,” “stimulus”: why can’t we call things by their real names: deficit spending funded by taxpayers?). Then there was the preposterous gift of billions of dollars to Detroit. Washington might as well have shoveled the money into the toilet. As I’ve said before in this space, Chapter 11 bankruptcy was custom-made for the likes of GM: it would allow it to restructure and get relief from the impossible labor contracts and benefit obligations it has been crushed by. As Mark Steyn pointed out on NRO, GM now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath and Beyond. Remind me: why is GM “too big to fail”?
General Motors [Steyn writes], like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small loss-making auto subsidiary. The UAW is the AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as “workers” (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people
Word!
Mr. Kimball,
I’m an Iranian-American advocate of regime change in Iran and a huge fan of TNC. And while I often appreciate Mr. Sowell’s interventions, I question his characterization of free markets as representing the sort of “traditional” institutions that ground the constrained vision he so admires. I think such a characterization fails to give credit to the human ingenuity, revolutionary struggle, and social upheavals that led to the birth of markets as we know them.
Thank you,
Sohrab
http://www.iranianfreedom.wordpress.com
Thomas Sowell’s writings are in usmistakably plain English.
Arianna Huffington’s pronouncements are all Greek to me.
“the stock market crash of 1929 was a failure of the free market that led to massive unemployment in the 1930s–and that it was intervention of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies that rescued the economy.”
The vastly overrated Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. is greatly responsible for converting the majority of Americans to this myth. We should never forget that he graduated from Harvard University. The so-called progressives associated with our “elite” universities seek power and adulation. A free market economy essentially tells these arrogant ego tripping individuals to shut up and get out of the way. Needless to add, that’s the last thing they want to hear! Socialist doctrines are much kinder to the pseudo-intellectuals. They, after all, revolve around the notion that “elites” should run society.
In your posts you constantly intimate, nay, shout from on high, that the left’s characterizations of events, theories, etc. are ideologies while those on the right pure non-ideological truth. Thus you claim that Huffington is an ideological fog merchant and Sowell is some sort of fog abatement agent.
If by ideology one means the articulation or interpretation of mental and external events by means of systems of ideas, then all communication is ideological in this sense. If by ideology you mean that ideologies are false representations of the true nature of things, then it is incumbent on you to provide convincing arguments that your characterizations are complete and self-consistent and thus are True, while all the rest mere sophistry. Now, in the events of the world, which are notoriously messy and noisy, any given state of affairs can be and is variously interpreted. If you are to maintain an ideological-free-zone where no contraband is allowed, then you are obliged to present to us the God’s eye viewpoint from which you can make this claim.
Would it not be better—that is, more intellectually honest–to say that windbags of both right and left (e.g., you and me and everybody else) are ideologues—purveyors of half-truths? And wouldn’t it be more honest to say that I prefer this ideology to that one for the following (contestable) reasons, rather than incredulously claiming that my (preferred) viewpoint is the pure truth while my adversary’s is just pure drivel?
Ms. Huffington has never let actual facts get in her way; she didn’t do it when she was a rock-ribbed conservative, she doesn’t do it now that she’s a leftist, and at some point when she decides it’s fashionable to be something else she still won’t.
If the US ever had laissez-faire capitalism it was over by noon on July 4, 1776.
However you also know nothing about Soviet communism. All you know is Stalinism and all. To describe it only in black colors.. it is SO… so IDEOLOGICALLY FRIENDLY.. You say there was 15 minutes “laissez-faire capitalism”? Then I can say that the mean death rate in GULAGS was 5% – it was not death camps. And.. every 2 years the same amount of people die in US because of not having health insurance as the amount of lithuanians died in Gulags during 15 years. You know nothing about culture, about other achievements…
An aside, related to Mr. Sohrab:
I have just heard (on the BBC, naturally…) that UK TV Channel 4 had asked Ahmadenijad (sp?) to record a Christmas message, which they will broadcast instead (or in addition to?) the traditional one by the Queen.
No. I’m not making this up.
No wonder Ahmadenijad thinks Britian is on the point of spiritual and moral collapse. Hitler would have been quite justified in thinking the same if, during WWII, the BBC had asked Goebbles to deliver speeches instead of Churchill.
>>>>Thomas Sowell’s writings are in usmistakably plain English. Arianna Huffington’s pronouncements are all Greek to me.
This is typical of pseudo-intellectualism: the belief that if one is hard to understand, then one is a profound thinker.
This is a basic logical mistake: even if all profound thinkers were hard to undestand (which they aren’t), it doesn’t mean that being hard to understand makes you a profound thinker.
An additional advantage of writing in an obscure way is that it hides the essential triviality, or obvious falsity, of the ideas expressed. Most (not all) articles published in peer-reviewed journals in the humanities are of this sort.
And another thing:
How much do you want to bet that Channel 4 would never consider, in its rush for “alternative” viewpoints, to have some “war monger” like Mr. Sohrab (or president Bush) delivering the message?
Brent asserts that this position is a pure truth: “And wouldn’t it be more honest to say that I prefer this ideology to that one for the following (contestable) reasons, rather than incredulously claiming that my (preferred) viewpoint is the pure truth while my adversary’s is just pure drivel?”
In other words there is no pure truth except Brent’s assertion that there is no pure truth. This is elementry logical balderdash, isn’t it.
Um, merry Christmas, Brent.
Let’s put the responsibility with failure where it belongs; On auto manufacturers and their unions; With “sustainability” being in the forefront of buzz words used today, sustainability was not employed in either the union or auto manufacturers business model. Based on their business model, planet earth shall be overgrown and not have the ability to provide enough for “Detroit” to survive. Detroit is like a pet that grows to eat its owner.
Skeptic, appreciate your comments.
And with re to Ahmawhatever’s speech in England…I keep wondering if we can assume this sets a precedent whereby Franklin Graham or Rev. Warren might be able to get a slot on Al Jazeera in time for Eid or the Haj next year? ….just to provide a similar “alternative message” to the imams? Do you think we might have a chance at that?? Probably not.
As I see the Muslim PR machine and conventional wisdom crank out their stuff, I’m trying to get a list of “what works with them”. Based on a recent news, I now assume the following:
1. I’m going to throw shoes at them when they show up in my community making inroads into our traditions. Apparently, this drives them right over the edge. (Which they THOUGHT they would do to Bush…in spite of all their silly posturing, I keep wondering how many of them in their secret hookah pipe moments are thinking, “Crap–we insulted him hugely and publicly…and he just ducked, TWICE, grinned, made a joke and brushed us off!”)
2. Now I see that WE should plan to provide alternative messages on Al Jazeera.
Probably won’t work out that way, but I’m seeing more and more potential for turning all of their posturings into a monstrous joke on them. Of course, THAT reminds me that they can’t take a joke. They cut the heads off people who draw cartoons.
Islam is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS. It is BOTH an exclusive, terroristic religion AND a form of totalitarian government (even Muslims under their control can lose their heads if they don’t submit).
Merry Christmas, everyone. I have reminded myself recently that Jesus Christ was born into and lived His entire life and ministry in a nation occupied by Roman authorities and His death and resurrection took place under that same limited authority.
We will fight for our sovereign nation (within human contexts) and I will continue to trust the King of Peace who will also take care of His enemies when the time comes. Read Psalm 2 if you’re not familiar with that aspect of the work of Jesus Christ.
Brent doesn’t think there is an objective reality. Take some risks, Brent. If your wrong, objective reality will hand you your a$$ and a large dose of humility.
Arianna seems to have unlearned everything she ever knew when she was mentored by the
great Bernard Levin. To make these kinds of arguments almost makes me think she should return her Oxford degree. It is remarkably trite, and that says something about her recent output. The apologists for the gulag system, who try to defend her, are beyond loathsome but some how not surprising; with the latest outbreak of Che-filia.
How can you pretend to discuss the causes of the Great Depression without discussing the bank failures?
@Lee #9
What a disgusting putrid ideas are you advancing here? As an ex Gulag prisoner #EA2140 I say that millions were killed either by trials or the horrible conditions along the Kolyma river in Eastern Siberia starting from the dumping ground of Magadan.- I am Eastern European, just you to know.
Are you a Holocaust denier too? You are still too early dude, many of us still alive to relate our story about the life under Communism so you can praise the Stalinist Gulag when we are gone like our hero A. Solzhenitsyn.
Try to spew your “5% – no death camp” crap in Budapest, Prague, Moscow and see what people will do to you.
Thomas Sowell has proven himself, time and again, to be a clear thinking voice of reason. Arianna inherited lots of money; common sense and intelligence, not so much.
Lee in #9 states, “And.. every 2 years the same amount of people die in US because of not having health insurance as the amount of lithuanians died in Gulags during 15 years.”
Strawman gibberish from someone who also states other PM contributors “know nothing about Soviet communism.”
What I DO know is America presents each and every one of her citizens the opportunity to get off his/her a$$ and make something of themselves, rather than lay around and whine that working people aren’t providing enough free stuff for indolents.
My aunt died in childbirth in 1928, leaving my 18-year-old father to raise her 4 children, in addition to caring for his elderly parents and younger sister. He cleaned barns, cut and sold firewood, brought in neighbors’ hay, logged, worked in sawmills (when such work was available) and built houses to feed his family during the depression. Just as he was getting ahead, WWII broke out. He was drafted into the Army early in 1942, sent to Europe, fought in most major campaigns, never seeing home until late in 1945. He married my mother, at the age of 40, in 1950, and proceeded to father and raise 4 children. Not always successful (our family suffered business failure in the early 60′s), and plauged by war injuries (Dad was classified 100% disabled), he nonetheless persevered. I never once heard him blame anyone else, or complain of tough circumstances or bad luck. My Dad was the hardest worker I ever knew, slowing down only when heart failure brought fatigue and ultimately death, in 1996.
I presume this is why it riles me so to listen to this present generation of victims, as they whine incessently or blame others for their own bad choices and laziness. America needs to learn more from our “greatest generation” and less from Oprah and Karl Marx.
Sowell’s assertion that the unemployment of the Great Depression was due to government intervention is crap or at best debatable. That a two bit hack like Kimball accept this like the law of gravity shows how little integrity he has.
If you ask me, Sowell is a perfect example of right wing political correctness, he is accepted as God cause the reactionary geeks need some black man to co-sign their trash.
Since the population of the Gulags never approached that of the USA, lee’s comparison would be flawed, even if his statistics were correct, which I doubt.
Perhaps they come from the Lancet, which would never stoop to extrapolating rumors into absurdity to score political points, would they? Oh, wait, nevermind.
David Thomson,
you are so right, let’s get the elites out of politics, starting with the Bushs. We should have stupid, knee jerk right wing parrots like you run things. After all, why think when we can just regurgitate the usual labels, nostrums and generalizations? No wonder why Sarah Palin is so admired.
Horace says:
“That a two bit hack like Kimball accept this like the law of gravity shows how little integrity he has..”
Well done Horace, your total objectivity shines through in your reasoned critique. On this fine Christmas Day its nice to know that you feel the need to go online and be a spiteful little child. Happy Christmas. You embarrassing jerk.
“Sowell’s assertion that the unemployment of the Great Depression was due to government intervention is crap…”
Sowell is not alone in his ‘assertion’. There are many free market thinkers who agree.
“Sowell is a perfect example of right wing political correctness, he is accepted as God cause the reactionary geeks need some black man to co-sign their trash.”
No, rightwingers accept God as God. Your ad hominem screech won’t last in political discourse.
To: Horace Wells
Looks as if you could you a little Christmas cheer so, Merry Christmas!
Save the vitriol for another day. Take a break, enjoy the holiday, and look for some positives in life. If you look, I’m sure you can find them.
Wells – The idea that the high unemployment was caused by governmental intervention is beyond debating. We had recovered from the high unemployment rates following the Crash within a year, as had the rest of the world.
Only in America was the Depression “Great”. Only here did it last 10 years. The 30% unemployment rate only hit after that idiot FDR had been in charge for several years. His confiscatory policies caused the massive deflation that truly wrecked the economy.
In fact, he is on record as having been concerned that prosperity would return (as it occasionally showed signs of) before he had time to use the crisis to institute all his “reforms” (Socialism). He needn’t have worried. Every time things started to get better, his next reform would further tank the economy.
The only thing that saved us was WWII. See, back then, there was talk that the Great Depression was a permanent thing… that prosperity was a thing of the past. This was the mindset of the people who lived through it. They didn’t understand that FDR and the Dems were responsible for making the Depression Great (just as you don’t today) and re-elected the Grest Enemy of Prosperity. They just kept buying his promises, and voted for him because they ‘liked’ him. Sheeple.
The same thing is going to happen over the next few years. We’re heading into an exact repeat of the Great Depression. Bush is Hoover redux, and Obama is FDR. It’s going to get very, very bad, but people are going to keep buying into Obama’s rhetoric. The Dems will make it worse, and blame it all on the Pubs. Rememebr these words come the next election… then shed your liberal beliefs and face the economic truths. Governmental intervention always makes things worse, not better. Always.
Glad to see I got the usual crowd all worked up> My point, which some people seem to have missed, is that saying government policy caused the unemployment of the Great Depression is at best a debatable opinion that only an irresponsible hack or a small minded ideologue would take as fact, which is what Kimball has done.
That is so knee jerk, blame the government! While on the other hand, it is generally accepted that the war spending for WW ll, including the British and other allies, did end the Depression. Since war spending was mainly done by governments, then goverments did get us out the Depression. But why think deep when there is a simple, inaccurate knee jerk explanation to throw up?
Craig, your literal mindedness is a sign or a weak mind. Do you think that I believe there is a Church of the Sowell? Funny, but for all the rights self righteous ranting about religion, they seem more obsessed with fear, force, might, nationalism, money and judging, hardly very spiritual.
My point is that PC tokenism gets Sowell taken more seriously than he merits. I have never seen him say or write anything but right wing propaganda for the base base, so I would hold him the same way I would hold every other pundit. I respect thoughtful people who can think beyond knee jerk stereotypes, generalizations and slogans, no matter what side they are on. Neither Kimball or Sowell fall into that group.
Fred and Frank,
You’re right if I am claiming that my point of view is the truth. This is the standard argument against relativism. However, I claim my argument goes all the way down in my point of view—that is my claims are a function of my ideological framework, they are my fallible anthropomorphisms that are subject to revision given “better” reasons, arguments, and facts. I am not claiming that my point of view is the truth, just one of many truths. To this, I am sure you would retort that I have just stepped back to a prior truth–that truths are relative to their contexts. This then becomes an infinite regress that one stops via a positing of an anthropomorphism that says that the truth is relative to its frame of reference, including this one. This ploy entails that there is no rational solution to these differences for the various viewpoints reflect a way of life that is so basic that it defines the use of reason, the way the world is and how it hangs together,not the other way around.
Thus, I cannot say that your claims are false and mine True, only different. I argue that I—and the intellectual community that I inhabit–have better reasons for claiming that this ideological point of view about the truth and all else is more defensible than one who adopts a non-perspectival or an eternal stance concerning truth claims.
And as to Frank Logan who claims I need a dose of objective reality so I can disabuse myself of my relativist wrong-headedness, I’d simply rejoin that we would probably agree on most of the things in our objective worlds. There is an enormous base of literal truths—that water quenches thirst, that breathing is conducive to life, and the like—that we’d share. But, in this take, it’s the conceptual frames of reference in terms of which we interpret and warrant the “objective” things in the natural world were disagreements seep in: are natural calamities God’s will or just the blindsight of nature; do ends justify means; is reality at root a quantum randomness or does causality lurk beneath the aleatory chaos; or is it some sort of divine voluntarism that produces the real world, etc. In short, I am claiming that norms, ideals, and ideas, are human creations that we use to describe, justify, and interpret our worlds. We do not discover political truth in the objective world like we discover Paleolithic remains. The norms and ideas we use as we wend our way in the world operate not as literal guideposts but as normative figures of speech where we halt the slippage of the metaphoricity in our frameworks by declaring a stoppage of play, as it were, so that we can get on with our daily affairs. Accordingly, at the level of worldviews there is considerable murkiness afoot as to what common sense objectivity is all about.
“Craig, your literal mindedness is a sign or a weak mind.”
My point, which is lost on you, is- no conservative I know (in Horacian-speak, that means right winger)puts Sowell on that kind of plateau. There are other well respected black pundits who happen to be conservative.
“My point, which some people seem to have missed, is that saying government policy caused the unemployment of the Great Depression is at best a debatable…”
Apparently, you’re daft. Isn’t that what these 2 authors are proffering? Another opinion that has got us to debate its merit?
Government policy can certainly PROLONG a problem or make matters worse. To conservatives, FDR did just that.
My christmas wish is that we can have the turds who speak for amerika every night at 1830 balance their broadcast by dipping into this website and acknowledge that there are more than 65 million amercans who have an opinion.
A REAL OPINION!
I think Roger Kimball does well, dividing the truth rightly might hurt a little, i.e. sides do exist.
Brent, you take a lot of words to out yourself as a pompous pretentious buffoon.
Which is, I suppose, the point.
Thomas Sowell is one of the great minds of our time (and maybe any time). Huffington is a mindless twit. They shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same article. In fact she shouldn’t be mentioned as a member of the same species as him. She gives morons a bad name.
Brent In the real world, where people do things rather than pontificate, risks must be taken if one wants reward and independence. Most people who start businesses fail even after careful preparation, because what they think is going to happen and the objective reality are two different things. As an “intellectual” you are by nature risk adverse. You never test your ideas in the marketplace. You and your like minded friends reenforce each others beliefs at cocktail parties or faculty meetings smug in your intellect. The sad part for you is that you will live your entire life with your core beliefs never tested. What if you’ve been wrong? What a waste.
Wells:
“PC tokenism” is a characteristic of the right? That’s a joke, correct? How do you think we ended up with the President Elect we currently enjoy? Because the PC tokenism of the right elevated an obscure, unaccomplished, manifestly unqualified token to the office? Obama’s sole qualification is that he is black. Ask anyone who voted for him because “it’s time” or because of the “historic significance” of his candidacy. If it were not Christmas I might allow your hypocrisy to make me sick, but as it is, I merely point out the psychological projection inherent in your argument.
Thomas Sowell has been a distinguished intellectual for fifty years and he has the courage to say he doesn’t give a damn what the liberal black gatekeepers think of him. So not only is he smart and prolific, he’s also courageous. If you can explain how that makes him a “token,” I’d be interested to hear it.
Horace Wells:
Got up on the wrong side of the bed I see. You’re amusing.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 12/26/2008, at The Unreligious Right
And bringing Thomas Sowell’s skin color into the conversation resolved exactly what? Attacking the man’s logic or his reasoning is part of social discourse. Using his skin color to pander to any seeking to distort his reasoning, is pathetic at best & irrelevant in the extreme. If you contest his facts regarding dates & unemployment levels, then show he has the numbers or dates wrong. If you think government intervention is wise, show why. If you think socialism will save us….. well, all I can say for that one is look at history & then realize its never worked & has always led to high unemployment & serious social & political unrest. Solved by despotic socialists by killing off dissenters & by silencing voices reflecting opinions other than those proscribed by the elite in power!
that marxism jargon of arianna’s? her potshot back at those who have publicly observed that this is where our country is headed the next four years. it’s not the first time (nor only the second or third) she’s done retaliatory posts.
quite coincidentally, yeah, uh huh not, a day or so after i wrote in a high profile venue about michelle obama’s body language that speaks volumes of her (michelle’s) elitist contempt for those of us seen as beneath her, arianna’s site twisted the same against the republicans.
it was to LAUGH to see her post as confirmation miss a was irked: haHAAA!
ps in all seriousness, she seems not to have an original thought of her own. and like most media of her type, she goes out of her way to pick on someone, anyone purely as sensationalism solely to sell. nothing more, nothing less.
Horace Wells are you a racist? Your comment about Sowell sure sounds like covert racism seeping out….. Where would vexatious voiced Huffington be if not for her gay husbands money ?
Frank, sorry to disappoint, but I have run two business in the “real world”—one where I basically broke even, and the other where the wife and I did better than OK until we retired some five years ago. As I mentioned, I live in the same world you do, but I, it seems, interpret it differently than you do. And this is good—I’d hate to see a world in which everything is cut and dried for it would surely be a totalized world be it of the left or right.
Nor have I ever been an academician, but I am so trained and I do a fair amount of reading. And I do so under perhaps the misguided Enlightenment and Socratic ideal that the unexamined life—what Roger often derides as critical method–is scarcely worth living if one lives in a modern society such as ours that permits the leisure for reflection.
This questioning attitude doubtless reflects my rebellion against my overly strict Prussian childhood where authority, tradition, and absolute truth were never questioned. This may explain why I get exercised when Truth claims are made for that usually means that they are necessarily true and cannot be other than what they are. It seems to me that these are extraordinary statements that require a type of trans-historical confirmation that is beyond our ken. For these reasons I think it more appropriate to call our beliefs (what I call ideologies) to be just that–“our beliefs” (typically shared in our relevant communities of belief), nothing more.
If, though, you consider your beliefs to be rock certain and beyond dispute, then, truly, you are a man of uncommon fortune.
#20 Thomas: Amen. I don’t know why leftist fools like #9 bother commenting on our sites. They merely reaffirm our sense that they are devoid of reason, knowledge, and morals.
Not having read Mr. Sowell’s column (yet), I cannot comment on it. But, having already read Ms. Huffington’s, I must admit to finding myself a bit confused, to wit;
1. She admits that Commnism doesn’t work. Kudos to her, but that tends to fly in the face of the beliefs of her cronies on the left- many of whom are wearing Che’ T-shirts as they work feverishly on Obama’s transition team. (Maybe they haven’t gotten the memo yet.) She claims that Marxism’s only adherents are on “college faculties” today- which, by a staggering coincidence, is exactly where her newly-anoinrted Messiah, Mr. Obama, is getting his advisors from. Exactly how is this going to improve matters, may I ask?
2. She claims that the failures of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Big Three are due to unbridled “laissez-faire capitalism”. FM-Squared failed due to the Community Reinvestment Act, which compelled mortgage companies to make loans to bad risks they otherwise would not have. (“NINJA”- No Income, No Job or Assets, was the term I learned from my own bank when they had to make such loans-against their better judgement- driving my mortgage rates up in the process. Unlike the “NINJAs”, I qualify for a low fixed-rate mortgage due to having an actual income, and actual assets.) Speaking of assets, the Big Three are dying due to being weighed down by excessive non-performing assets (plants which are outdated and cannot be modernized due to union pressure not to replace workers with automation) and even more excessive benefits to union members (working or otherwise, notably the notorious “jobs bank” system). In each case, these procedures were mandated by the Federal government, under coercive threats of prosecution if they were not followed. Exactly how do you define either one as “laissez-faire capitalism”, Ms. Huffington?
3. Having “disposed” of both Marxism, and capitalism, Ms. Huffington then says we “have to do something”. Without stating what. Arianna, dear, you’ve just deleted the only two economic systems which survived Worl;d War Two. What’s left? Syndicalist socialism (Italy under Mussolini, 1921-43)? Out-and-out Fascism (Germany, 1933-45)? Labour socialism(UK, 1922-present, Sweden, 1931-date)? In case you haven’t noticed, they have all failed as well. In fact, the more socialistic an economic system is, the more likely it is to fail- as Tom Clancy observed, such systems are based on the fallacy that you can force people to pay more for something than it’s actually worth.
This leaves us with absolute monarchy, or absolute despotism. We tried both of those, too. They always failed. For the same reason Marxism did- “Central planning” is no substitute for the ability to react rapidly to changing circumstances. (Which “planned economies” are unable to do at all, let alone do well.)
Free-market capitalism is the only system that has a chance of working in a sustainable way. this has been proven at the micro level over and over again. So far, though, it has never been tried at the macro level, no matter what Ms. Huffington believes.
Maybe it’s about time we tried a bit of it. Letting FM-Squared and the (former) Big Three meet their natural fates, and punishing the government meddlers who helped them get into their present debiliated state, would be a sensible start.
clear ether
eon
The Greek Board still can’t speak good English after 41 years in this country and knows nothing about the real world or needs to be analogized on merrit of mind or mindless leftist opinions on economics .Tis’ a waste of time .
She like another devout SOCIALIST Geeorge Soros hates Capitalism but wallows in it from head to toe as do most on the Hollywood mindless left .
She was the Ultimate back door ”Capitalist . But was educated in the elite bastions of spoiled east coast Socialism .
She married a Billionaire Calif. Oil man “”RePublican”" playing that role to a Tee … Divorced him after he lost the election and got $ 371 Million dollars and 3 Multi Million dollar Homes plus other goodies …… All for free since she only slept AS LABOR with him if you consider that EARNED INCOME .
Isn’t that what a Wind fall Profit is while Gouging her Hubby for money .
Kimball saying Sowell had no Wisdom is Moronic and since Kimballs has never run a major Co or had a truly Capitalist based Job or any advanced economics training makes no sense what so ever .
Sowell is a long time Economics Ph.D. and has studies under 4 of the greatest economist( IN CHICAGO AT THE CHICAGO INST of TECH. UNDER THE GREATEST ECONOMIST IN AMERICAN HISTORY AND GAVE HIS EUGOLY UPON HIS DEATH 4 YEARS AGO ) Sowell has ever and taught economics as well at 5 colleges …. He has authored 4 great books on Economic (written 34 ) and 3 are the best out of 10 Books ever written in the last 90 years on economics in America . No Roger Thomas Sowell is not a Big Govt. .Kensyian theorist .Thank God !
6 Presidents from both sides of the ISLE have ask Sowell to be in their CABINETS AND FOR ECONOMIC ADVICE …….ROGER !!!!!
Say Brent (#5):
“Would it not be better—that is, more intellectually honest–to say that windbags of both right and left (e.g., you and me and everybody else) are ideologues—purveyors of half-truths? And wouldn’t it be more honest to say that I prefer this ideology to that one for the following (contestable) reasons, rather than incredulously claiming that my (preferred) viewpoint is the pure truth while my adversary’s is just pure drivel?”
You can indeed argue that there is some subjectivity in all points of view, in all articulation and in all propegation of theory – whether economic or political. But when one trained observer (like the prolifically published economist Sowell) present coherent fact based argumentation to present his theories and another (Huffington) appeals to political hackery to present hers, one must conclude that you’re better off choosing the conclusions that are more fact based. So clearly, all points of view are at least somewhat subjective – but some are based more so on facts and expertise than others. This is the an enourmous difference that you fail to point out between the two in your comments Brent.
Horace:
“That a two bit hack like Kimball”
Ah, the old ad hominem attack…nice…do you have something to say, or a means to support it? Rich…!
“My point is that PC tokenism gets Sowell taken more seriously than he merits.”
Since we are here to some degree comparing Sowell’s qualifications with Huffington’s, and I notice you’ve had nothing to say on that topic, what is your point? Ah, to tear down those on the right here…sure…not to coherently argue the point at hand. Based on Huffington’s assertions and Sowell’s, which comes closer to the truth of the historic and current economic matters and assignment of responsibility and understanding for the current imbroglio? After all, it is in learning from these mistakes that we can at least blunt our tendencies to repeat our mistakes in the future.
Horace Wells,
But before you do, name me one instance of the government ever doing anything, other than the marshall law era of WWII, that reduced unemployment. Better yet, one instance where government created any wealth through its productivity projects. By the way, although I don’t sanctify Thomas Sowell because he is a free market libertarian who derives his uniqueness through his blackness, I do very much respect his point of view as a free market libertarian who derives his uniqueness from his cut through the crap writing style. Go back to your field of dreams and, in the future, cut with the racist crap.
She lacks what Sowell has in abundance: brains. She will never get over being tossed out like dirty laundry by her ex!!
Thank you for the intellectual gravitas in your summations of Thomas Sowell and the empty vessel that is Ari Huffington. The well thought out, emotions aside comments leave hope for me in this often times decaying-like world of ours.
More importantly, Mr. Kimball thank you for bringing such interesting discussions to the tableau. Admittedly or not, PJ receives its fair share of people with differing views by your providing material that encompasses more involved discussion compared to the numerous emotionally driven Left’s ‘Bush did it’ anthem. JMO. Again, thank you.
‘If you think you know, you don’t know. If you know you don’t know, you know.’ -Rumi
It seems almost blasphemous to even mention the profound and almost always interesting thinker, Thomas Sowell, in the same headline with the shifting sands, difficult-to-even-listen-to HuffPo hostess.
If Arianna has an actual brain hiding inside her own déluge of verbiage, you’d need tweezers to find it.
Isn’t Arianna Huffington the missing Gabor sister?