What happened with General Motors


Growth or protection, which would you choose?
Michael Barone writes a great piece at OpinionJournal.com. The whole thing is worth reading, but this is the bit that jumped out at me.

The success of the Big Three and the UAW seemed a fit symbol of America's postwar economic dynamism. In fact, this was an economy characterized not by dynamism but by stasis, to use Virginia Postrel's term in "The Future and Its Enemies." New Deal legislation had been designed not for economic growth but for protection from the downward spiral of deflation. Those laws, not least by encouraging unions, strove to prop up wages and prices and to provide security to workers and existing firms. Keynesian economics was employed to flatten out the business cycle as much as possible and to reduce unemployment.

Imagine that. "New Deal legislation had been designed not for economic growth but for protection from the downward spiral of deflation." That is the choice, you see. You can have growth or you can have protection, but in the long run you can't have both.

So which is more important?

It depends on if you are looking to the future or to the past.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - November 28, 2005 at 04:40 AM  Tag


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