As we’ve noted before, Keynesian central planners suffer from fatal conceit. They think they are smart enough to plan and direct the economy better than the free market. When you boil it all down, these people believe they can do a better job of making your economic decisions than you can. After all, a free market is nothing more than the aggregate of all of our individual economic choices. Paul Krugman serves as the poster child for central planning arrogance, but another Nobel Prize-winning central planner is making a name for himself by tearing down the free market. Joseph Stiglitz claims capitalism is “rigged.” But as economist Bill Anderson shows in an article recently published on the Mises Wire, Stiglitz has got it completely wrong. Capitalism – in the true sense of the word – isn’t rigged. Socialism is.
The US federal government posted the largest budget deficit since 2012 in fiscal 2018. Uncle Sam ended 2018 $779 billion in the red, adding to the ballooning national debt. The Bipartisan Policy Center called the Treasury report a “wakeup call,” noting that trillion dollar deficits during an economic expansion are a serious issue.
But not everybody is concerned. Peter Schiff appeared on RT this week to debate a socialist about the deficit.
As the saying goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein is usually credited with that statement, although there isn’t any proof that he ever said it. Nevertheless, it’s certainly a good working definition of insanity. And by that definition, I have to conclude that socialists are insane.
