Capitalism Talk
David Coates talk on Capitalism.
In a recent interview David was asked about what direction we are heading in with capitalism:
What we are seeing is a government intervention in the banking system that’s designed explicitly to strengthen the rest of the private sector. That intervention is already large. It may grow larger yet. But it will ultimately be temporary, and it has happened before. Something similar occurred in Sweden in the 1990s and here in the U.S. in the 1930s, on both occasions helping to trigger long-term private sector growth. It is a dramatic change from a previous policy of financial deregulation, but it is not unprecedented, and there is nothing especially liberal or progressive about it.
After all, we’d do well to remember that the federal government is already heavily involved in supporting large parts of the economy. Nobody labels it as socialism when Congress votes to send vast subsidies to the agricultural sector or to direct significant amounts of tax payer dollars to the engineering industry — to buy anything from guns and tanks to spaceships. And nor should they.
