Different Views

[ndrosen]

As a Commerce Department employee, I get emails from the top brass about what the Biden Administration is doing for American commerce and industry, such as providing $50 billion to America’s computer chip industry. As a classical liberal, I am highly skeptical about the benefits of such measures, and believe that it would be better to leave it to the market to decide which firms in which industries will receive how much in investments. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and resources directed by government to one industry have to come at the expense of someone else.

I am reminded that when Louis XIV’s minister Colbert asked what he could do for industry, one businessman replied, “Laissez nous faire, le mond va de lui-meme.” “Let us do, the world goes of itself.”

Comments

[thewayne]

The one thing that is supposedly in the bill that is good is that the chip makers can't use the money to do stock buy-backs or C-level bonuses, so that's something. How they would enforce it, I do not know. Every off-shore tax holiday goes into those things like clockwork. Other industries are re-ramping up domestic production, I personally join you in being not sure how much it is needed.