Fail-Safe is Good
27 December 2008
Editor, The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
Re "The World According to Cheney" (December 23): You openly regard the Bush administration as an unalloyed catastrophe. And you're sure that the Obama administration will be much better. I agree about Bush; I disagree about Obama.
But even if I agreed that Mr. Obama will bestow upon America countless blessings, I would still forgo those blessings in exchange for a radical reduction in government's power and size. One reason is that I value individual freedom as an end it itself. A second reason - one more prudential - is that a system that so routinely dysfunctions by giving us the likes of Bush-Cheney (and Nixon-Agnew, and Tom DeLay, and you-name-your-favorite curs) is untrustworthy.
Just as, say, the stability and peace of mind that monogamy offers married couples are worth the sacrifice of the ecstasies anticipated from secret affairs with unusually attractive seducers, the stability and peace of mind that limited government offers society is worth the sacrifice of whatever ecstasies are anticipated from unusually attractive "leaders."
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Farming our Credulity
23 December 2008
Editor, Washington Times
Dear Editor:
Former Reagan administration official John Block begins his letter to the editor with this sentence: "As a former secretary of the Agriculture Department, I have seen the remarkable contributions that Congress and the executive branch have made when it comes to addressing global hunger and feeding millions of hungry people across the world" (Letters, December 23).
Puuulleeese.
The overriding goal of the Department of Agriculture - a goal instilled in it repeatedly by various Congresses and Presidents - is nothing more noble than to transfer wealth to American farmers. And one of the major tools it uses to achieve this goal is paying farmers to REDUCE agricultural outputs, thus resulting in higher food prices. Bureaucrats and politicians who implement policies that make many foods scarcer than they would otherwise be cannot legitimately be hailed as great benefactors of the world's hungry masses.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Absent
22 December 2008
Editor, WTOP Radio
Washington, DC
Dear Sir or Madam:
One of your morning anchors, arguing in favor of appointing someone to fill the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, worries that a special election "would take too much time."
Yes, a special election cannot be done as quickly as can an appointment. But so what? That Senate seat has already been practically empty for the past two years, as Mr. Obama was crisscrossing the country campaigning for an even higher office. (Ditto, by the way, for Mrs. Clinton's Senate seat.) Clearly, having any member of the comically called "world's greatest deliberative body" actually be present IN this august assembly is not so very important after all.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Keynes in Practice
21 December 2008
Editor, The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
You report that more companies are reducing their contributions to employees' 401(k) retirement accounts, saying that this "move will hurt savings" ("In Need of Cash, More Companies Cut 401(k) Match," December 21).
Perhaps. But, if so, why is your report filled with gloom and doom? According to your Nobel economist columnist, Paul Krugman, the great sage whose wisdom we must now rely upon to guide us out of recession is John Maynard Keynes. Keynes famously believed that economic downturns are caused by excessive saving. Surely if this late Cambridge Don were correct, companies that pump less money into their employees' savings in order to spend more money staying afloat are national benefactors.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Do NY Times Reporters Read the NY Times?
21 December 2008
Editor, The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
To the Editor:
Your front-page report on George W. Bush's role in the housing crisis is stunningly inaccurate ("White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire," December 21). Had your reporters read "Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending," a report appearing in your pages on September 30, 1999,* they would have found this fact that contradicts their allegation that government efforts to artificially and dangerously promote home-ownership began with the current administration: "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people."
And your reporters would have found also this prescient warning: "'From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 'If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'"
Your reporters are either lazy or partisan or both.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Seeing Matters Especially Clearly
19 December 2008
Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
Re "Blagojevich Allegations Are Expanded" (December 19): The continued surprise at the scandalous acts of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is, well, surprising. Anyone with open eyes sees that such behavior is to be expected from those who successfully seek power by winning the popularity contests we call "elections." H.L. Mencken certainly saw reality with eyes open and vision acute:
"For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth. It is to the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum, and to reduce his compensation to nothing; it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* H.L. Mencken, Prejudices (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1996 [1919]), p. 172.
