Crain's Brain Cramp

Crain's beats up on the Chicago School, prompting this response in the comments:

Chris Lawrence wrote:

"There is likely to be a lag between the need for action and government recognition of the need; a further lag between recognition of the need for action and the taking of action; and a still further lag between the action and its effects."

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1967


If the government, and the self-interested parties that elected this government, starts picking winners and losers, the effect of the accumulated entitlement liabilities will leave this nation in much the same way that Britain was prior to PM Thatcher finally taking a hatchet to the bloated budget of the British government. I don't think that the government’s manipulation of the credit market over the past two decades is exactly what the intellectual foundation of the Chicago School is all about - they consistently argued for a more laissez-faire government policy as it is more desirable than government intervention in the economy. When the government starts choosing US Auto maker employees over those of Lehman Brothers or DHL, we should begin to wake up and acknowledge that attempting to manipulate the economy isn't the responsibility of the federal government.

We are facing over $53 trillion in entitlement obligations, and that isn't included the under-funded liabilities of those fortunate enough to have a state or local job and the overly generous pension benefits that the current crop of politicians have caved into, adding hundreds of billions on to the debt future generations of Americans will have to pay, despite representing people who don't average earnings to justify such beneficial wages and benefits.

We don't have to look very far to see that government run programs are far less efficient that non-governmental economic institutions - Cook County hospital services, the bloated Street and Sans Department of the City of Chicago - you name it. With a nation with a per-capita federal debt of over $400,000 per household, I am waiting to see what the lag in effects of this governments latest failure to control its own excess will be, much less it's inability to "regulate" the private markets - if Detroit is any example of what is to come, God help us - and lets hope the "Chicago School" comes back into vogue fairly quickly.