Anyone But Trump
25th January 2016
Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist and prominent libertarian academic, takes a stand.
I would much prefer a Pres. Sanders or a Pres. O’Malley than Trump. (I’m less certain about a Pres. H. Clinton, but I think that I’d even prefer a Pres. H. Clinton to a Pres. Trump.) My reasons are two:
(1) As one sensible commenter (I forget who) said, with any of the three Democrats we pretty much know what we’ll get; with Trump, there is no such knowledge. And while what we’ll get with any of the three Democrats will indeed be bad, I can imagine even worse coming from someone such as Trump.
(2) More importantly, whatever policies are implemented by a Pres. Sanders, a Pres. O’Malley, or a Pres. H. Clinton will be (correctly) understood by most people today, and by history, to be anti-free-market policies, yet whatever policies are implemented by a Pres. Trump will be (incorrectly) understood today, and by history, to be “free-market” policies.
He’s got a point. Trump has been all over the map on a number of significant issues, so far as I have been paying attention, which admittedly isn’t much.
January 25th, 2016 at 12:56
Reason 1) “We pretty much know what we’ll get”. No, you don’t. Will Sanders try to get us to all use the same deodorant? How high will he raise taxes? You don’t know, and can’t pretend to know. Also, Sanders has pretty much done nothing in his adult life except sit in gov’t, where he’s accomplished pretty much nothing. Trump has accomplished a lot, and is beholden to no one. I prefer a practical wild-card to an impractical one.
Reason 2) After admitting he doesn’t know “what we’ll get [with Trump]”, he then predicts whatever Trump does will be understood as ‘free market’ policies. No contradiction there!
Trump is a businessman, and as he writes in his book, he’s a pragmatist. Very rarely (4 times in 1,000’s of deals), he makes a mistake, and even in those, he’s the one who loses (i.e. Plaza hotel still going in strong in NY; Trump lost his ownership share in bankruptcy, but hotel did not fail.) Compare that to Obama, whose signature success.. well, he doesn’t have one, does he? “Obamacare” is an unmitigated disaster to millions of Americans who bought into his big lie “If you like your health care, you can keep your health care”.
This reminds me of the council’s pronouncements in “Atlas Shrugged”. “We don’t have any evidence to show Rearden Metal is unsafe, but we also don’t have any evidence to show it is safe”. Feh.
January 26th, 2016 at 10:01
Using Obama as a comparison to Trump (or pretty much anyone) is lame. He’s a man with no resume who was gifted the position of POTUS, a position that has been a platform for 7 years of failure. The guy who picks up my garbage is a far bigger success in life.