What Happened to Common Sense?

Posted by JaxGary 9 years, 8 months ago to Economics
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I am appalled by the lack of economic sense in current America. The “new economics” as posed by Keynes in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936, is the main reference for all of this nonsensical thinking. Keynes published both accepted wisdom and his original ideas. According to Henry Hazlitt, who analyzed this book line-by-line; everything true in Keynes book is not original and everything original is not true. So why is it that thousands of economists, most of whom either work for the government, either directly or indirectly, or are employed as college professors, continue to accept the Keynesian hogwash as gospel? It is because their pay checks depend on their ability to constantly deliver mistruths, lies, and distorted “facts” under the umbrella of the “new economics” that allow the government to continue to perpetuate a scam on the American people.

I am appalled by the outright absence of what used to be known as common sense. Apparently, that commodity is no so common in the modern world of the new economics! Almost everyone knows one cannot spend one’s way out of debt or permanently resolve existing debt with additional borrowing. We know this to be true because we cannot do it! It will not work. It defies basic economic truths. So why do so many of us continue to believe that government can do it? They cannot. No government has EVER borrowed its way out of debt. History has shown us ONLY the opposite.

The classical economics that dominated economic thought before the Keynesian Revolution had it right. A central bank will inflate the currency by printing more of it and thereby drive up the price of goods; a process we have seen since the inception of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. A government that increases taxation to fund any number of non-essential programs in the belief that any spending is good for the economy completely ignores the fact that if people were allowed to keep what they earn, they would also be spending some of it and investing the rest; without the waste of paying salaries of the many bureaucrats who collect, process, and redistribute those dollars. A government that intentionally holds the interest rates low, believing that doing so will stimulate a stagnant economy is wrong because artificially low interest rates, along with the expansion of the money supply are the ONLY two factors that drive the business cycle from a high to a low, which we call a recession.

Our government IS intentionally causing ALL of our current economic woes and we continue to give them a pass. If government stopped interfering in the economy, we’d all be better off!


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  • Posted by flanap 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Very well! Glad to hear from you Jax. Don't fear engaging here, just have to keep it "objective."

    Take care.
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That book is called Animal Farm, an allegorical and dystopian novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 9 years, 8 months ago
    If you frame it in the realization that the government is the farmer and we are the livestock it all makes perfect sense. I hope that makes sense...hehe...
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  • Posted by 9 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    How brave of you to stand on the principles of your faith. As a Christian, I stand with you!
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  • Posted by flanap 9 years, 8 months ago
    Common sense is simply what people cannot avoid as identifying the sense that God has granted every man who has ever existed; however, since the fall of man after sinning in the Garden of Eden, the creation has more and more departed from Godly thinking (a.k.a. common sense). A refusal to acknowledge the Creator and humble yourself before Him is what folks are so appalled by...they just call it something else.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 8 months ago
    A more comprehensive treatise consistent with your viewpoint is The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. If the Jax in JaxGary implies Jacksonville, FL, then you are only an hour from Jekyll Island. It is worth the trip.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
    Good essay. A lot of it comes from intentionally created ignorance by a school system dominated by progressives who don't want the people to be able to think for themselves. The rest is the seductiveness of collectivism. Let others take care of me, I don't need to do so myself. And the modern twist is the class envy. The rich don't deserve all that they have, so it's up to gov't to take it from them and give some to me.
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