Subjects: Is it really Capitalism? Is Patriotism truly to blame? Are there any larger factors and issues abroad?
Kel Kelly, a writer for the Ludwig Von Mises institute of Austria economics stated in an article labelled 'Patriotism is a Threat to Capitalism' that because of the indeterminate nature of defining patriotism there is difficulty in creating the means and measure to properly restructure and strengthen the economy. As such, there is a waste - not in the idea of corruption of the government (thought Kelly cuts no corners and pulls no punches in also bashing the evils of a godzilla government) - but rather in the conception of 'what government' to support and what America to support.
He then states that democracy's difficulty in fixing this economic mess is that there are too many people in so many different categories and that governments attempts to cater to them all and it becomes an issue. As such, being an Austrian economist, he suggests that the market should be left to determine the most effective and efficient group for reparation.
That's fine, in an odd and morbid sense because in theory it focuses on the idea of minimal government intervention in the marketplace, and given that the Austrians are known for their extremely (to the point of fanatical) libertarian economic policies it's to be expected. While I am not qualified to challenge Mr. Kelly on the issue of experience, I can sufficiently say that he is either too deluded in the consideration of capitalism or that he's outright pandering to the libertarian crowd.
I give this statement because of two things. Firstly, to try and leave this up to a broken and shattered market in the middle of an economic downturn is just asking for disaster since there are far too many top bracket incomes that are simply speculating (not spending) their investments and money, so we're at a period of stoppage.
We need to create jobs predominantly for the middle class for a variety of reasons. To begin, they're the largest voting economic constituency by far and large, so political parties should have an incentive to assist them. Furthermore, the fact that they represent the most mean they have the strongest purchasing power as a group. That's really important because they're the quickest we're going to get out of this economy, and at the rate of current job creation we're not going to be out of this economy in years.
Now, I'm fine with a libertarian market - I love Adam Smith's self-regulating invisible hand theory and (if God would allow it) I have a man-crush on Friedrich Hayek and his super-sexy Business Cycle Theory as much as anyone - but to expect to leave things up to the market when the market is crippled at the moment is the equivalent of cutting doctor's attention for a crippled mother telling that her disability will 'fix itself'.
The second issue that persists in Kelly's argument is his insistence on the definition of Capitalism. Capitalism has not been practiced in its entirety ever since the age of monopolies in America during the 1915-1920s, and even then during the roaring twenties the tax bracket for the top five percent income in America was still at a rate of 20-25%, so we were never perfect in Capitalist theory.
Our economy is a mixed economy, and has been a mixed economy for a long time - whether it's the recent Keynesian regulatory policies or stretching back to the mercantilist policies to the crude and rudimentary feudal exchange policies of the New World, we lived in a non-purely capitalist society, but we throw that misnomer around.
Pretentious comes in the form of people who defend communist ideologies by saying 'communist states never practiced it perfectly', so I flip it to the other side and say capitalism was never practiced perfectly either. Part of the reason is that we haven't the capacity to do so when there's still a strong deprivation of fundamental goods to cover all prerequisites, meaning that radical left-wingers can suck it: the only capitalism is the imaginary evil god that you're thus far bashing.
Though, both points added - how does that relate to the issue at hand? Well, to begin, it's presumptuous to provide the alternative to large and weighty government spending on the market to be 'get rid of the government's intervention!' because the market is currently crippled. I know Mr. Kelly's a smart man, so I feel like he's completing ignoring this for some maniacal reason.
Secondly, it's not even capitalism. Hark all you want, but we're in a mixed economy, and government spending - as long as there's unequal cost to entry, public goods and free-riding in existence - will prevail to be a contestable theme.
Ultimately, the situation stands more on the side of policies that should be taken to repair the market, and when I say 'repair', I mean provide the middle class - the largest consumerist group with the strongest purchasing power - with the means to spend it by sifting some money from the top bracket to force them to create more jobs. I know it sounds scarily socialist, but if some shift of wealth is required, then I'm sure the future investment will be more than worth it.
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