Here's a hint, Ian. I've said it many, many times.
1) Make government smaller. Let me say it again... Make government smaller. There's no need to raise taxes if you have no need to spend.
2) Stop throwing "stimulus money" at "shovel ready" government programs. That just feeds the beast that is a parasite on private enterprise. It doesn't bring private enterprise back on its feet. All it does is make the recession longer. If you want to throw stimulus money at something, throw it at private enterprise - with strings attached. Recessions are the absolute best time to invest in R&D (much written about that). By the time the recession ends and people are buying again, you have new products to sell. And then the economy takes off.
If you don't have good ideas that we as a nation could be investing in, I certainly do...
3) Yes, Virginia, GM would have been fine without government intervention. No, Ian, the sky would not have fallen. You're quoting other liberal economists. Not all economists sing from the same hymnal. Try some other reading material.
There was only one thing that Uncle Sam saved that GM couldn't have if it did bankruptcy the old fashioned way - the UAW. The Government Motors intervention was political pay-back to the unions that helped get Obama into office. If GM had gone through Chapter 11 and had to get serious, obligations to the UAW would have been severed. It would have been brutal, but guess what? GM will N-E-V-E-R be competitive with Japan, Korea, "Detroit south", and soon to be India and China. The GM-UAW paradigm is a dead one.
Saving it only delayed the inevitable.
Saving it was grossly unfair to Ford which showed it was capable of surviving without help.
Saving it delayed the development of two brand new electric auto start-ups in the U.S. Now China is catching up. They're going to have an electric in the U.S. market in a year or two. Thanks a lot, Obama!
Remember when Washington saved Chrysler before? Didn't last long, did it? Dead paradigms die. (My Forrest Gump line of the day.)
4) Kill the one trillion dollar health care boondoggle and start over again. No, it did not stop health care inflation. It only made it worse, and you ain't seen nothing yet.
Why should I care? My job is made more secure by it all. I care because it's just wrong.
Good luck finding PCPs for those 30 million people thrown into the system, by the way... If the Virginia win in federal court is lost in the Supreme Court, the present paradigm for PCPs is on the way out. The AMA will not be able to ramp up fast enough. Good time to be an NP or a PA!
I could go on, Ian. But I'll first give you some time to misrepresent what I just said.
- Bill