Government vs. The Free Market

The last three books that I have read have been written by self-proclaimed libertarians. Thomas Sowell who wrote the book Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy claims that many of the social problems are can be ultimately fixed by the free market with no government intervention. Sowell explains that social welfare programs are counterproductive because to give more money in the hands of the poor, with no training for any specialty, will cost them dearly at the check out lane when new inflation numbers are factored in. The economy is the best protector of the poor by isolating prices from unnatural inflation that is often the case from government programs like welfare and Medicare.

The next book that was written from the standpoint of economics is Steven Levitt's book Freakonomics. This book primarily deals with applying economic tools and theory into other parts of society. The most interesting part of the book, and also the most controversial, was the idea that abortion was the reason for the drop in crime during the 1990s. Economists love to talk about supply and demand, but Levitt steers clear of this idea when talking about crime reduction. Levitt claims that more police on the field is a good thing as they are able to arrest people suspected of crime and take them off the street. But who is to replace them? After all the old saying is that if we arrest one leader 6 new ones will spring up over night. This is where the idea of abortion comes into play. Since most women who have abortion tend to be young and poor the kids they are not having by getting an abortion will not grow up to be future criminals. Abortion, according to Levitt, cut off the supply of future criminals thus squashing crime. The idea that Clinton can claim that his economic programs slashed crime in the 90s is total bull. Now of course Levitt admits that the argument that he makes for abortion and crime isolates the moral perspectives of the issue of abortion. However, Levitt, like most economists, do not consider moral arguments when they make judgment of programs and society. All they look at is the numbers and causality and correlation of X factor to Y factor.

The last book of the libertarian trio of authors is John Stossel's Give me a Break. I must admit after reading two books by world famous economists Stossel really knows his stuff. His main arguments is that journalists in today's society often are too dumb to realize that the more government intervention they promote on their programs leads to more problems in society not less. Stossel goes through an endless tirade on the programs he used to do and other journalists do end up hurting society by costing more to the consumer through price fixation to accommodate the increased government intervention in the economy. The greatest example is OSHA and their regulations in the work place. Since the time Clinton claimed the era of big government was over to 2004 the Federal Book of Regulations and Rules increased by over 400,000 pages!! Clearly many programs such as OSHA have had a hand in this as they continue to push out new rules onto the market economy to follow. Those who do not follow these endless lists of rules get fined for thousands of dollars. Most of the companies do not pay for these finds out of their own pocketbooks but push the cost onto the consumer through price fixing to make up for loses.

The main point of talking about these books is that government often creates more problems than it solves. As a person who has studied it and has worked inside its endless walls of bureaucracy it is just as bad as one may think. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a government that we have today. Programs such as Medicare, welfare, and OSHA are making the Founding Fathers turn in their graves. In the last 50 years government has grown a remarkable 5,000%. We went from the government controlling about 3% of the GDP for 150 years to the government controlling about 40% today. Something needs to be done about this astounding area of control by the government. We are loosing to international markets for a reason. We placed too much of an emphasize on government and labor, not supply and demand or costs of labor. That is why economic giants like the US and Europe are constantly loosing business to Asia and South America. There they place an emphasize on the costs of labor. Much is needed to be done in the near future. Or else the American power that we know today will not exist in 50 years.