Truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes the real world provides deft allegories. Case-in-point: Hillary Clinton flies her enormous jet which is packed with her many entourage members to make a speech in Haiti. Ironically, her great fleet allegedly obstructed rescue planes from landing on the runway. This is a great allegory for nearly every backfiring scheme Democrats have come up with in the past century or so.
Thomas Sowell writes that the number of blacks living below the poverty line stopped decreasing after the institution of the Great Society. The Great Society was supposed to benefit blacks, not create among them a culture of dependence on Big Brother, one which may have locked many blacks in an 'easy poverty.' Even if moral hazzard associated with handouts did not harm blacks economically, the Great Society still seems to have failed ceteris paribus because it has not decreased the number of blacks living in poverty.
Individual savings have decreased since the Social Security scheme of FDR. Why save money for yourself when the government can do it for you and in a more complicated way?
What about Fannie & Freddie? Two GSEs meant to keep housing prices low end up directing funds into a housing bubble, thus enslaving new home-buyers to now-unaffordable homes. Strangely enough, now policy makers are propping up housing prices.
But perhaps what is most disturbing about Clinton's exploits is that she is obviously on a PR mission. "Look how sypathetic I look toward the masses, (although I'm really just getting in their way)." Such is the destiny of the ambitious Left-wing politician trying to save the world.
This comment from Jake in the UK:
ReplyDelete"Hillary Clinton smiled almost continuously on meeting and greeting at the runway in in Haiti. I wonder what she was so pleased about - after all, we are told 10's of thousands are dead."