Why Do Democrats Wreck the Economy?

August 6, 2024 by Christopher Chantrill

Remember the Sixties? Our Democratic friends gave us guns and butter: a war in Vietnam to stop a domino falling in the Cold War and LBJ’s Great Society eye-watering spending on welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid. In 1968 Americans had had enough and elected Richard Nixon as president. Nixon and Kissinger created an opening to China and ended the Vietnam war.

Remember the Seventies? After deep-sixing Richard Nixon, our Democratic friends gave us stagflation in the late 1970s: in other words, a stagnant economy plus eye-watering inflation.  In 1980 Americans had had enough and elected Ronald Reagan as president. Reagan killed inflation with eye-watering interest rates, lowered marginal tax rates, and ignited a decade of eye-watering economic growth.

How about those 2020s? Our Democratic friends under the leadership of sharp-as-a-tack President Biden declared war on COVID and on climate with eye-watering spending, and now the economy is mired in stagflation again. In 2024 Americans have had enough and elected….

Stay tuned for the exciting election results on the evening of November 5, 2024.

But how do we understand all this? Why do our Democratic friends keep wrecking the economy?

It all comes down to the binary of gifting your supporters and going to war against the enemy. So every Democratic administration decides to throw more money at free health care and maybe start a war.

It’s odd how often our Democratic friends start a war right after a presidential election: Woodrow Wilson in 1917, FDR in 1941, Harry Truman in 1950. And LBJ waited until 1965 to really crank up the Vietnam war.

You and I think about the economy: our jobs, careers, getting inflation down and growth up. But politicians don’t. They think about heroic deeds, like bashing the Kaiser, taking out Hitler and Tojo, sorting the Commies, and “tackling” climate change. Why do they do it? Because wars are what rulers do. They can tax and spend and inflate to their hearts’ content, and if all the taxing and spending and inflating impoverishes the people, well, it’s all in a good cause: saving the world.

And when there’s no war, then politics is all about taxing the rich and helping the poor.

In recent years, across the West, the war on the rich has abated, except in the cheekbones of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and I suspect the reason is that the rich finally learned how to play the political world, with contributions, stock tips, Zuckerbucks, and money for activism. But the politicians still need an enemy, and so the rulers are now making war on white oppressors, that experts agree have been oppressing the oppressed peoples since 1619.

For you and I, this explains why our rulers turn a blind eye to the BLMs and Antifas of the world but go apoplectic about J6 rioters. The same thing is happening in Europe with the British government being curiously silent about immigrant crime and street action but going ape over riots protesting mass murder of little girls, because “far right.” Polymath Enoch Powell, who knew German, French, Italian, Modern Greek, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Welsh, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic, had something to say about this.

Let’s look at things another way. Suppose there was no climate change to fight. Suppose there were no oppressed peoples. Do you see the problem? There would be nothing for national governments to do. There would be nothing for headline politicians to do. There would be nothing for devoted activists to do. There would be nothing for government bureaucrats to do.

So, really, the politicians and the activists and the bureaucrats should just go work in the garden, like Voltaire’s Candide. But they don’t. Instead, they make the political leader into a demi-god. Venezuela’s Cesar Chávez was the latest guy to do that.

[T]hey reimagined Simón Bolívar, the oil-rich country’s independence hero, as a Chavista God and made Chávez his son…

Maduro and his allies still talk about Chávez in quasi-religious tones, calling him an “intergalactic” figure and the “eternal commander.”

That helps me understand why Chávez and Maduro have flushed the Venezuelan economy down the toilet. If your leader is a demi-god, an intergalactic figure, then you don’t need to bother about trivial things like a national economy. The spirit of Chávez rules over all, and everything will turn out for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Maybe what the world needs is a new semi-religious cult, with a Trinity of Mises, Hayek, and Friedman and a sacred monument to the three demi-gods in Canossa. And every time a ruler pitches his nation into a recession he is forced by public opinion to take the Road to Canossa, “forced to supplicate on his knees, waiting for three days and nights before the castle gate while a blizzard raged,” kowtowing all the while before the three statues of the economic Trinity.

Only the fear of God will teach politicians to fix the economy.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.