I’m pretty pissed off about the bailouts, “stimulus” plans, and other government distortions of the economy as of late. I’m happy to learn that many other people are as well. There have been a number of “tea parties” to protest these socialistic government plans. The biggest one I’ve heard of so far was in Cincinnatti this Sunday.
About 4000 people showed up. This is pretty good for a conservative oriented protest that spread through word of mouth.
Wish I was there...
Some great quotes from the article:
Five-year-old Kaylee McChesney posed for pictures. Her tongue-in-cheek “Where’s my free pony?” sign attracted lots of attention.
Her mom, Lisa, said she’s concerned that Kaylee’s generation will be left on the hook for “today’s excessive government spending.”
“It’s going to overshadow her entire life. As a parent, I think this is unconscionable. Now is the time to do something,” said McChesney, of Mason.
There were a few isolated stimulus supporters in the crowd.
Hoisting a “Spend, baby, spend” sign in the air, she said she agreed with the stimulus plan, although she knew Sunday she was far outnumbered.
“This is the worst economic crisis of our lives. We’ve got to do something.”
This perfectly demonstrates the panic-stricken thinking behind the bailouts. “Things are really bad and we’ve got to do something”. Why do “we” have to do anything? Why does “doing something” have to involve trillions of dollars that our children and grandchildren will be paying off all their lives? Why is it that the government allegedly has the ability to allocate capital better than freely interacting individuals in times of crisis? You can’t reason with someone like this stimulus supporter.
What those of us who support capitalism need to promote is the notion that government can’t and shouldn’t even attempt to solve many problems that it currently tries to fix. In the muddled thinking of the stimulus supporter the government can fix anything it wants. It wouldn’t matter if you showed her statistics of how poorly stimulus plans have fared historically. It wouldn’t matter if you showed her how economies survived and improved without explosions of government spending.
We need to somehow uproot the notion that government is the answer for all of life’s woes. How to do that, I do not know.