- What is being challenged [in this election] is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.
As she doesn't write English as we know it, a little translation is in order, just to be sure that we all understand what she means. By "universal entitlement programmes" she means social benefits for everyone, not just for the disabled or for the briefly deserving poor, benefits including extended end-of-life idleness, aka Social Security, and wastefully high-quality, truly end-of-life medical care. Let's also be sure we understand that "democratic socialism" means the continuous enhancement of that pair of golden parachutes by economically illiterate holders of public office who pander to an even more ineconomate electorate.
One sentence quoted above bears repeating: "It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect." It deserves a bit of critical examination.
The function of markets is to motivate and facilitate the production of goods and services. The economic function of governments ought to be limited to the protection of the rights of the producers from the ever-present tendency of some of the public to loot, not just as members of a mob snatch goods through a broken window, but also as members of a majority vote to delegate the plundering to tax enforcement agencies, and as office holders confer the benefits of power directly on their friends and indirectly on themselves. In all cases, every time, some producers close up shop and the looters get less the next time.
Ms. Daley not only spells out the problem, but she tells us there are only two possible solutions visible to our central planning elite: inflationary theft of all monetarily denominated assets, or rationing of resources.
Because the former only works for a little while and the latter requires tyranny, this is the most consequential election since 1861. There is only this one last chance to stop the great evil of progressivism.
We must stop ourselves from looting before there is no production left to steal.
