If you want to know what really works, look at what people turn to when they are under enough duress that they need to abandon ideology for real solutions. I don’t hear anyone on the financial networks talking about the invisible hand of the markets and creative destruction when it’s their companies and investments that are about to be destroyed. No, now Republicans and Democrats of all ideological stripes are demanding big government intervention and $$$ Trillions in government spending. I thought the free market would supply the solution? Aren’t private enterprise and market forces the best solution for everything? Screw that, we need to be saved.
Now Republicans, bankers and investors are demanding big government takeover of corporate and private debt and even the government buying stocks to prevent a collapse. Direct government handouts to citizens and companies. Nationalization of everything!!! Now!!!! No snide remarks from Pelosi or Biden on how are we going to pay for this. Overnight, everyone has jumped to the left of Bernie.
What happened to how are we going to pay for all the free stuff? Companies amassed mountains of debt buying back stocks at inflated values. Investors made leveraged bets on that debt. Now they pay the price. Right? Moral hazard, personal responsibility and the curative role of the free market that weeds out the weak and the foolish. No? Now, we need to save them from their irresponsible behavior for the good of the larger community. What kind of Commie crap is this? What about moral hazard, rugged individualism and I built this, not the damn government? I guess that only applies to the little people, not Wall Street or Multinational corporations.
Of course in the current fight over government intervention in the free markets, Republicans want only the rich and big corporations to enjoy the benefits of Socialism. Democrats would like to see those benefits extended to everyone. A shame when we were already facing the crisis of a planet that soon would not be able to support human civilization, Americans dying and going bankrupt from lack of healthcare and more then half the country living paycheck to paycheck in a fragile and unsustainable economy that we did not apply the same urgency, big thinking and Socialist solutions.
Welcome to reality Comrades.