Today there are 29 people in Spokane county, where I live, who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Of course there are more infections in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and other large cities. Infections are spreading in the largest cities and people are becoming more afraid. This is a moment when people want mercy. Can they get it?
Congress has apparently decided to keep doing what it has been doing, only more so. The bill to help people displaced by shutting down restaurants, travel, bars, schools has been stuffed with pork for pet projects to help fund a bunch of projects that have nothing to do with this epidemic. The bill has been created to overspend by a couple of trillion dollars which will hurt our dollar’s monetary value and cause an increase in inflation. That will hurt Americans everywhere. The same people that Congress claimed that it was trying to help. When so many people’s survival is at stake, why can’t Congress do something new instead of the same old thing?
Since our republic was founded after the American Revolution, we have had three ideologies in our country that influenced and created an environment for policy formation. Classical liberalism came first from the nation’s founding to the Civil War. Modern liberalism came second, from the Civil War until WWII. And neoliberalism, our current political ideology came after the Second World War. The power of the federal government has grown as our nation has gotten older. Many seem to believe that a government with unlimited power can do more for them. But more power clearly means less wisdom. Look at Congess’s actions today.
Classical liberalism embraced rationalism and humanism. That gave way during modern liberalism to faith without rationalism. And under neoliberalism there has been an increasing faith in limitlessness tending towards fantasy and magical thinking. We live now in the era when many people refuse to believe that there are reasonable limits in government spending. History shows otherwise. Our economy isn’t healthy because of overspending. Congress is using the novel coronavirus as an excuse to destroy the value of the dollar. Drunk on too much power, Congess has refused to behave with a sober realization that overspending will unleash destruction in new and unpredictable ways.
If you want to learn about how we got to where we are facing these many problems that seem to have such dire consequences, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.