Flat-Earth Economics

 

flat-earthAny politician who said the Earth is flat would get booed — and probably laughed — off the podium. Everyone in the audience would know the Earth is round, and would realize that any politician who doesn’t grasp this basic fact of how our universe works is too stupid to entrust with their future.

But what would happen if a politician said something about how our economy works that is equally wrongheaded? Would he get booed and laughed off the podium? Or would he get a standing ovation? Obviously, it would depend on whether the audience understands how our economy actually works, and would realize what they’d just heard was nonsense.

Last week, while campaigning in Kentucky for Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, Bill Clinton said:

What’s being a senator about, anyway?…Nobody can tell me it’s not a senator’s job to create jobs.

Really? When’s the last time you got hired by a senator?

In a free market economy like ours, jobs are created by the owners and managers of businesses, and by entrepreneurs who are starting new businesses. A senator’s job is to create conditions in which business owners, managers, and entrepreneurs thrive. When they thrive, they create jobs for all the rest of us.

An economy is a kind of operating system, which means that if you want it to do something you have to go about it the way the operating system is designed to operate. Just think of the electronic device you’re probably using to read this essay — your computer, tablet, or cell phone. It’s got an operating system built into it, and that operating system determines how you browse the Web, click on a site, open a page and scroll through it. There’s no Republican way to do this, or Democratic way, or even a Libertarian way. If you don’t like how your operating system works, you simply get a different device. Trade in your iPad for one of those Microsoft Surface tablets, or dump your iPhone for an Android. But whichever device you’ve got, you do things the way its operating system requires, or nothing happens.

So, why aren’t we creating enough new jobs for Americans? Because too many of our elected officials have no grasp of how a free market operating system works. They’re like a bunch of flat-Earthers trying to launch a rocket into orbit; nothing they try works, and they’re too stubborn, or too stupid, to realize they’ve got it all wrong.

What’s so depressing, and so worrisome, isn’t that Bill Clinton has no grasp of how a free market economy works; neither does Hillary, who said virtually the same thing to an audience the next day. What’s depressing and worrisome is that no one in either audience started booing or laughing when the former president, and then the former senator turned Secretary of State and leading contender for the White House in 2016, said something so preposterous.

And here’s the lesson for conservatives: to win elections, we’ve got to have an accurate grasp of what the voters understand. Even the dumbest and least educated among us knows the Earth is round, and that the planets revolve around the sun. But the sad truth is that a huge percentage of Americans — even those among us with college educations — simply don’t know how a free market economy works. And until they do understand this operating system, conservative policies on taxes, regulations, health care and all the rest just won’t make sense to them. So they’ll keep voting for candidates who won’t be able to accomplish what they promise, such as creating more jobs.

Perhaps we should worry less about getting control of the Senate, and turn our attention to getting control of our local school boards.

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  1. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Senators create jobs, but only on Discworld.

    • #1
  2. user_1938 Inactive
    user_1938
    @AaronMiller

    Change two things in America and you will fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state:

    1. Replace the income tax with a simple, transparent tax system.
    2. Eliminate the Department of Education.
    • #2
  3. user_138562 Moderator
    user_138562
    @RandyWeivoda

    It’s like this.  No one is going to go very far in the Republican party if they admit to being an atheist.  So even if someone doesn’t believe in God, they are going to pretend that they do if they want to run for president on the Republican ticket.  By the same token, if someone wants the Democratic nomination for president they have to claim that the free market is the enemy of prosperity, even if they don’t believe it.  The Clintons are such accomplished liars, there’s no way to tell what they really think.

    • #3
  4. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    While I fully agree with the larger point, being a politician who “creates jobs” is also a now a figure of speech–it means being a politician who supports policies that allow jobs to be created. I don’t think we have much hope of wiping out that usage.

    • #4
  5. Z in MT Member
    Z in MT
    @ZinMT

    I think our next Senator from Montana, the current Rep. Steve Daines has figured out how to market conservative free-market ideals to economic know-nothings.  His campaign slogan is: “More Jobs, Less Government”

    • #5
  6. Herbert E. Meyer Member
    Herbert E. Meyer
    @HerbertEMeyer

    Hi, Claire,

    It’s a great pleasure to be communicating with you, if only by email. I’m among your many fans.

    I take your point, but I think it’s worth making a big fuss about this. We’ve simply got to educate voters to understand that the politicians don’t create their jobs. If we let them get away with this, it won’t be long before they’re claiming credit for the meals we eat, the movies we watch and, at least for younger voters, the dates they get on Saturday night.

    • #6
  7. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Liberals that I interact with believe that government creates jobs.  They believe that government does this by creating programs that spend government money which hires people to do a thing.  Maybe it’s building a bridge or running a program in the inner city or its regulating the toothpaste industry, that’s someone who’s got a job and is getting paid.  It doesn’t matter that they had to take the money out of the economy to do it.  When you raise this question, they’ll just tell you that it’s the rich that pay for that.  Of course then they tell you that the rich don’t pay their fair share.  So it’s like this endless circles of things that don’t connect.  But none of that matters.  Because all that matters is that they want to help the poor.  Let’s go down and get a caramel mocha frappuchino at Starbucks and I’ll explain it to you.  Oh, sorry, you have to go to work?  Boy, the man has you by the short and curlies, doesn’t he?

    • #7
  8. Fake John Galt Coolidge
    Fake John Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    I know people made fun of him, but Ross Perot did a very good job of explaining stuff in his campaign. His infomercials explained economics in a way that my grandmother could understand. He had the right of it, if you want somebody to believe in your goals you have to actually set out to explain them to people in a simple enough language and concepts that they can relate to. If a party was to do that, it might have a chance on getting the American people to follow their lead.

    • #8
  9. user_645 Member
    user_645
    @Claire

    Herbert E. Meyer:Hi, Claire,

    It’s a great pleasure to be communicating with you, if only by email.I’m among your many fans.

    I take your point, but I think it’s worth making a big fuss about this.We’ve simply got to educate voters to understand that the politicians don’t create their jobs.If we let them get away with this, it won’t be long before they’re claiming credit for the meals we eat, the movies we watch and, at least for younger voters, the dates they get on Saturday night.

    It’s certainly true that Thatcher very often made a point of saying, “The government doesn’t create jobs, people do.” But just as an empirical question–can you think of any major American politician, of any persuasion, in recent memory, who has never used the phrase? (Asking you to prove a negative isn’t fair, I know, but maybe you’ve got an obvious example in mind–one that’s suggestive, if not proof.)

    And thanks for the kind words about being my fan!

    • #9
  10. user_435274 Coolidge
    user_435274
    @JohnHanson

    Since many people do not understand economics, it should be taught.  It never was when I was in high school.  One had to go to college to be taught Econ 101, for either micro or macro economics.  Unless one is trying to develop new extensions to economic theory, all one needs is what is taught in Algebra I, for the math needed for Economics, so it should be taught in High School, as a Junior level subject.  A basic understanding of economics reflecting ideas of Adam Smith could be taught in 7th or 8th grade, and precursors for economics could be woven into curriculums as early as 4th grade.  We need to take a long view, and try to improve economic education.  Now if we could just keep Marx and Keynes out of the teaching except as examples of ideas that don’t work, over the next twenty five years, maybe we could make some progress.

    • #10
  11. Grendel Member
    Grendel
    @Grendel

    The Clinton ideas about economics are as skewed as their ideas about family and marriage:

    Here’s Hilary saying “Don’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs–they always say that. . . . Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,”

    • #11
  12. Underwood Inactive
    Underwood
    @Underwood

    Herbert E. Meyer:

    [B]ut I think it’s worth making a big fuss about this.

    I agree, but we should keep in mind that politicians do create jobs for one of their chief constituencies: public sector workers.

    That Scott Walker’s modest reforms provoked so intense a reaction shows that the public sector unions and their allies understand what is at stake.

    • #12
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