Tom Friedman Says Something Smart

It is a sacred principle of American Conservatism that "people" know better how to spend their money than the government does. Like most such principles, this one has a reductio ad absurdum - no government whatsoever.

Tom Friedman, appearing on ABC's "This Week," noted that the next President, if he has any sense, will need to put in place a large stimulus package to deal with what is likely to be a very large recession. He thinks we should pay attention to what we spend it on, and notes the following (my paraphrase). We had a railroad bubble in the nineteenth century, but we got this great rail system out of it, we had dot com boom in the 90's and got this great internet out of it, and we had a financial services bubble in the most recent decade, and all we got out of it were empty condos in Florida and a bunch of used Gulfstream jets.

The fact is, the government often can spend better. The historically central components of our national infrastructure were mostly built by the government or with its help. Our highway system, our railroads, our communication infrastructure, and our educational and scientific systems were all built by or heavily subsidized by the government.

This is not an isolated fact of American life, but a general principle in the lives of all nations. The libertarian ideal is perhaps not entirely untested, but there is nowhere it has proven successful.

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