Sunday, March 2, 2014

right, so why austerity, then?

because the people making decisions think that if you cut social welfare off and keep interest rates low then people on welfare will borrow money and start successful businesses. they understand the economy can't create more jobs. their solution is to convert the unemployed into the self-employed through entrepreneurship.

well, you need to take a step back: they expected this to happen in the first place by liberalizing markets. but, it hasn't. because most people don't know how to run a business and wouldn't want to if they did. i keep coming back to this. it's the reason markets will never work. people just don't want to live like that.

but, rather than accept that people have made that decision, they've blamed it on welfare, gone back on the voluntary aspect and tried to force people into it through incentivizing it.

but they never explain this anywhere. do people on welfare know when they get a food stamp cut that they're supposed to go to the bank, get a loan and start a business? no. i mean, this isn't going to work. it's just going to create more failed businesses and more debt. but to get it to fail and get the political class to move on, the idea has to be explained much better than it is.