Our Christmas Gift from Congress

The Democratic Senators have been tirelessly wheeling and dealing over "health care reform", promising special gifts from the taxpayers to residents of states whose senator(s) are on the fence concerning how to vote. And both our senators and representatives have been asked to vote on several measures which they have not been given the opportunity to read.

Think back on your Christmas shopping this year. How long did it take you to decide on a suitable gift for everyone on your list? Think about gifts you have received from loved ones in past years that just didn't seem quite right. Then consider Virginia Postrel's piece on giving gifts. She takes it from the personal to the political in the last sentence:

The problem of buying good presents for other people, even people you supposedly know well, illustrates that old familiar Hayekian concept, the knowledge problem. If you can't even give your loved ones the right presents, how likely is it that a central authority could make the right decisions for everyone?

There are about 300 million people in the United States. Could YOU set up a centrally-run health care system which would serve all of them well at a reasonable cost? The Senate Leadership is so confident of their superior insight that they are trying to add language to make it very difficult for future Senates to change the rules concerning their Care Rationing Board. Follow the link. Time to read some Hayek. Thomas Sowell's Applied Economics wouldn't be a bad choice, either.

A very interesting observation in a short piece by Scott Stein, a blogger with whom I am not familiar:

I am re-reading Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and came across a passage that, though about the problems with monarchy, applies perfectly to today’s political class. . . Paine’s words describe the entire political class — career politicians and bureaucrats of both major parties with enough ego to want to govern

Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Think of members of Congress who have not worked in a business in decades, or ever, whose professional lives have for years consisted of self-aggrandizing committee meetings and speechifying — think of them confidently telling people how some new regulation will or will not affect businesses. Think of members of Congress who voted for a thousand-page bill that they have not read (and even if they have) confidently explaining how this will improve the lives of people subject to their whims, subject to the votes they cast in an act of party loyalty or as a political trade in order to receive funding for their home state or support for their own pet projects. . . (emphasis mine)

Read the whole thing.

Our ruling class has been developing for decades. But look at this graph of Presidential Advisors since Teddy Roosevelt. It shows the percentage of advisors with prior private-sector experience. Quite striking. Some presidents don't seem to value a private sector perspective much. No wonder the academic and bureaucratic mindset prevails in government. Theory and ideology are so much more attractive than messy reality.

Iowahawk: The True Christmas Spirit of the Beltway

Time to put Washington aside for a little time, preferring Frank Capra over Iowahawk, and to concentrate on having a Merry Christmas.