Government Begets More Government

Serenity Wang

6/12/2009

Since the Panic of 2008 reached its climax in September of that year, the U.S. government has done many things to further devastate the economy — the partial nationalization of financial institutions, which prompted Hugo Chavez to declare that “Bush is to the left of me now,” the bailout of AIG, the $787 billion stimulus package, the public-private investment program, and the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler. More troubling than the endless bailouts and stimulus packages (which are already terrible in that they create even more misallocation of resources and worsen the fundamentals of the economy) is the expansion of government control over businesses that accepted bailout funds. Using the fact that these businesses received taxpayer dollars as an excuse, the U.S. government stepped up its interventionist economic policy to the detriment of property rights and the rule of law.

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