Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? I mean, one segment of the class structure destroys abundance for everyone else in order to aggrandize and cohere its own power? It doesn’t make sense. But it does work, and there are plenty of historical examples. In today’s Wall Street Journal columnist Mary O’Grady gives a masterful explanation of the process. Here’s what she says:
“The pathology of a government power grab is not hard to discern. The state creates the conditions for crisis. Crisis strikes. Politicians seize extraordinary powers. Crisis passes. Left behind is a popular perception that complete annihilation was averted due to government genius. Politicians are permitted to expand their power.”
What O’Grady generically refers to as politicians is in fact “the political class.” It is not just “politicians” who benefit from the process she describes, but the vast and growing archipelago of government bureaucrats, employees, unions and other functionaries, both inside and outside of government who thrive on its exploding size, power, and largesse.
O’Grady is writing about Argentina today. But Exhibit “A” for the process she describes is in America’s own history, i.e. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Depression. The problem was originally caused by the economic meddling of Republican Herbert Hoover in the early 1930’s, then exacerbated and prolonged into a 10-year depression by Roosevelt and the Democrats (here’s an explanatory essay on what happened).
Today in America? O’Grady cites Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who claimed last week that federal government intervention in 2008 basically saved civilization. What if the federal government had not massively intervened? It “would’ve been basically the end,” O’Grady quotes Bernanke.
Oh please…what B.S.
All we need do is look at the Obama Administration, Congress, the state of our national economy, and our unsustainable socialist spending and borrowing. We have huge and growing economic problems, and everyone knows it. Thanks to the ongoing federal government intervention in the economy, the 2008 financial crisis has metastasized into the beginning of “Great Depression 2.0” which will kill our economy for many years to come unless national economic policies are dramatically reversed.
Either way, the political class will not be hurting. They will prosper. That’s why the richest counties in America even now are clustered around Washington, DC.
So will America reverse course? Is it even possible to block the political class from enriching itself and impoverishing the rest of us? Stay tuned for the GOP national convention in August, and the election to follow in November. Then we’ll have a better idea.
