Paul Krugman wants us all to know that the recent tax cuts didn’t quite work out like we were told they would. That’s possible, obviously, but the reason he gives isn’t that they were the wrong tax cuts. Rather, it was a big bill, no one had time to look at it right, therefore it was all written by wonks and lobbyists. Thus no legislator, let alone public commentator, was able to say what was really going on. Thus Krugman wants to correct it to be something more sensible.
Of course you, me, and Paul Krugman are going to disagree on what is sensible. But that basic point being made seems reasonable enough. Hundreds of pages of detail running past the dullards who manage to get elected is unlikely to produce a fine and well-oiled machine for our governance. I’ll agree to that.
But that’s basically the case against big government, isn’t it? Hundreds of pages of detail running across the desks of the flapjaws ends up with, well, take your pick. The Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. Government-built vertical slums called The Projects (with housing, the federal government eventually agreed that detail and planning were beyond them and now hands out Section 8 vouchers for people to go rent something not built by the government). No one who’s ever had government-made cheese thinks it’s a good idea for the feds to feed us — send food stamps instead.
Simply put, big government doesn’t actually work.
The specific example I think of given my industrial background is the Dodd-Frank law. We needed a big bill to clean up Wall Street, which included Section 1502 to try and sort out blood minerals from the Congo. Even the SEC said this would cost $4 billion in its first year in paperwork costs alone. For that money, we could have used a Marine Division to really go sort out those mines in the Congo once and for all. Or, you know, just don’t pass a giant law.
Perhaps you’d prefer Nancy Pelosi telling us that we’ve got to pass Obamacare so that we can work out what’s actually in the bill. As I say, big bills don’t work.
We can also take this as being a warning for the future. That Green New Deal isn’t in fact about climate change, it’s really, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff let slip, about how to change everything. So government can’t work out the mines in Congo, can’t build an apartment fit to live in, they can’t even make cheese right, but they’re going to sort out everything?
Well, sure. Or perhaps we should believe Paul Krugman is right here. Massive bills leading to big government don’t work. So, therefore, we shouldn’t do that. Going to be a bit of a disappointment for every Democrat in this election cycle, but Krugman does have a Nobel Prize. Surely it must be worth listening to him, no?
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at The Continental Telegraph.
