Tis the Season

|Peter Boettke|

Christopher Warren published a book entitled Congress as Santa Claus in 1932.  He put the following question to his readers:  

"If a law to donate aid to any farmer or cattleman who has had poor crops or lost his cattle comes within the meaning of the phrase `to provide for the General Welfare of the United States,'  why should not similar gifts be made to grocers, shopkeepers, miners, and other businessmen who have made losses through financial depression, or to wage earners out of employment? Why is not their prosperity equally within the purview of the General Welfare?"

Since that time, the answer to that question by Republican and Democratic politicians has been "Why not?!"  And the result has been a complete perversion of the Constitution and the meaning of the concept of the General Welfare.

Comments

[steve]

Steve

Could their be any two words more roughly treated in the Constitution.

[liberty]

I think it has been written about before - but another Christmas topic is Scrooge: he starts out saying "Aren't there poorhouses?" - letting government handle the task of helping those in need. His revelation was that he could personally care, personally help, that he would be a better and happier person to get personally involved in his community rather than having government act as Santa Claus in its miserable way.

Yet so many people take the opposite message somehow.

[fester]

Steve asks, "Could their be any two words more roughly treated in the Constitution.", I think "Interstate commerce" might qualify.

[Greg Ransom]

A 1932 Capra movie called "Mad Money" has a speech in it containing most of vulgar Keynesian economics of the Krugman variety -- the solution to all of our economic iproblems is people confident enough to increase their lending, borrowing and spending, enough needed to keep business humming and workers working. 1932. A Hollywood movie. And every bit of "Keynes" you find in Krugman or DeLong.

Crank "Keynesian" economics pre-dates Keynes -- and it simple minded enough to be written and presented in a Hollywood melodrama.

[Greg Ransom]

Correction. The 1932 Capra film is titled "American Madness".

[Bill Stepp]

Ho ho ho,

Good book recommendation by Pete and movie recommendation by Greg.
Speaking of Congress as Santa Claus, until recently I was one of about 1,500 people who had never read Joseph Heller's great comic WW II novel Catch-22. It's not explicitly libertarian, but does have a wickedly funny passage about Federal subsidies of agriculture (as well as some other libertarian passages), which ought to be quoted in a libertarian study of them. It's in chap. 9, pp. 110-11:

"Major Major's father....was a long-limbed farmer , a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding, rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work.... His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good living out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spend every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. [I thought that was what unemployment "insurance" was for.] He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. 'As ye sow, so shall ye real,' he counseled one and all, and everyone said, 'Amen.'
"Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, wimper, wheedle, and extort for as much as he could from whomever he could. He was a devout man whose pulpit was everywhere.
" 'The Lord gave us good farmers two strong handsso that we could take as much as we could grab with both of them,' he preached with ardor...."

[Peter Boettke]

Mario Rizzo reminds us of Ludwig von Mises's criticism of the "Santa Claus" principle of public policy ---http://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2009/12/25/to-the-adults-on-christmas-day-no-santa-claus/