Thursday, February 11, 2010

Representative Paul Ryan, Republican...

...from Wisconsin, is the latest flavor-of-the-month. He has:

...a radical plan to balance the federal budget by slashing the sacred cows of American entitlement spending: Social Security and Medicare.

Most developed countries have a generous safety net. Germany, for example, has had universal health care for over a hundred years. Why can't the United States do that?

"I'm a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP... represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral."

But isn't TARP prima facie evidence that government must step in from time to time to correct the failings of the free-market system? Wasn't TARP essentially a refutation of the laissez-faire approach that Ryan and so many other Republicans have? If TARP was truly necessary, as Ryan contends, than can't other government measures be justified to correct imperfections with the free-market system?

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