Government on Both Sides

As always, the President gave a good speech last night. He did what good leaders do in a time of crisis – acknowledge its severity, while assuring people that together, they will prevail.

The specifics, however, were a catalog of high-priced proposals that all contradict each other.

He said that the cause of the economic crisis is too much consumer debt made possible by lax regulation, and then announced the creation of "a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans, and small-business loans."

He praised the interstate highway system as an example of the great things that government can accomplish – and spoke of the need to "confront at last the price of our dependence on oil", the oil that fuels the vehicles driving on those highways.

He lamented "the cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year," and then took credit for "a law to provide and protect health insurance for 11 million American children", a measure that the Law of Demand tells us will raise the cost of health care.

He thanked Congress for its swift action in passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that generated $800 billion in new deficit spending, and promised to "do what it takes to bring this deficit down".

Milton Friedman once pointed out "there is hardly an issue on which government is not on both sides. For example, in one massive building in Washington some government employees are working full-time trying to devise and implement plans to spend our money to discourage us from smoking cigarettes. In another massive building, perhaps miles away from the first, other employees, equally dedicated, equally hard-working, are working full-time spending our money to subsidize farmers to grow tobacco…The situation would be ludicrous if it were not so serious. While many of these effects cancel out, their costs do not." (Free to Choose, chapter 10).

Thirty years after Professor Friedman wrote that, government is still on both sides of every issue. The effects of tightening banking regulations while funding consumer debt will cancel each other out; the costs will not. The effects of rebuilding roads and bridges while capping carbon emissions will cancel each other out, the costs will not. The effects of "reforming" health care while expanding access will cancel each other out, the costs will not. The effects of providing billions in Keynesian stimulus to the economy while bringing the deficit down will cancel each other out, the costs…fair enough, in this case the costs will cancel each other out too.

Contradictions cannot work. The President didn't even try to make arguments that they can; he just asserted it. The Logic Critic, therefore, gives President Obama…

1 Blade - Not even an argument.