August 10, 2012 by David K. Sutton
The Free Market Recipe: Deride Government. See That It Fails. Collect Tax Payer Bailout
What we have in the United States is crony capitalism with side orders of privatized profit, and socialized risk.
The “free market” advocates have no problem making the market just a little less free by lobbying congress for favorable perks for their respective businesses and industries. While they are in town they also push for favorable tax laws and less regulation. In turn, government allows corporations to merge and gobble up other corporations, reducing entire industries to a small collection of behemoths that are “too big to fail.”
While all of this is going on, legislators (mostly, but not all Republican) exercise a “starve the beast” mentality that leads to further erosion of government’s ability to effectively regulate. A combination of relaxed regulations and budget constraints means the activities of these “too big to fail” corporations lack proper oversight. When the greed gets the best of them and the leveraged bets fail, these corporations get bailed out by the tax payers (socialized risk) while the CEOs walk away with tens of millions, and executives still receive their bonus checks (privatized profit).
The Free Market Recipe:
- Deride government and recite “government is the problem” until it sinks in.
- Get your guys elected to office to make sure government fails.
- Once you suck the market dry, collect your tax payer bailout.
Oh, and I forgot to add the most important ingredient for the 2012 election: Get Mitt Romney elected president (see #2).
I think that about sums it up, don’t you? / photo by Matej Pangerc
