But the recent worldwide economic downturn will, predictably, generate a demand that Washington "do something," and Washington will respond with a whole series of programs, laws and expenditures allegedly designed to improve matters. Few, if any, of them will work, but they will have the collective effect of putting government's weight on the scales against the economy's own healthy tendency to right itself. In a few years, we will learn all over again why we acquired our previous deep distrust of government "solutions."
That is why the coming barrage of new government programs will predictably be such a desperately bad idea. We cannot legislate our way out of an economic slump, because an economic slump is simply the economy's way of exhaling, prior to taking a fresh breath. We can take palliative measures, to relieve individual cases of economic discomfort, but we cannot repeal the laws of economics.
William Rusher
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and author of How to Win Arguments .
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