Questions from Robert Reich that we can answer

Why is the US about to give away $52bn to corporations like Intel?

Robert Reich

The answer being that politicians are all too free with other peoples’ money.

Reich wants to impose conditions upon the handing out of industrial subsidies and tax breaks. But this isn’t a cure for the base problem. Politics will, as with seagulls and their young, feed the one that shrieks loudest. That means that the feeding at the taxpayer trough is not determined by any sort of logic other than that of who gains the ear of those doling out the money. Or, more cynically - we prefer realistically of course - whoever appears best for the re-election prospects of the person making the decision.

That is, we end up with economic decisions being made on electoral grounds - a recipe for bad decisions for inevitably the considerations taken into account aren’t even along the right axis of logic.

There is an answer to this of course. Do not allow the politicians the ability to dole out $50 billion and change to their favourites. Do not, in fact, allow politics to try to run the economy.

That’s not an answer that will find favour with Reich of course, he wants different groups to be favoured at that public expense. But it is still true that the answer to these sorts of economic nonsense is to pull government out of the economy.

Minarchy, it’s the only sensible answer.