{"id":35206,"date":"2018-03-02T01:00:32","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T06:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35206"},"modified":"2018-02-10T09:45:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T14:45:10","slug":"qotd-cronyism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/03\/02\/qotd-cronyism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Cronyism"},"content":{"rendered":"

… I would argue that we don\u2019t have truly free trade or, increasingly, a free economy in the United States. The Progressives always look at the rising income inequality and maintain that it\u2019s the inevitable result of capitalism. That\u2019s hogwash, of course, and Proggies believe it because they\u2019re dolts. But the problem in this country isn\u2019t free trade \u2014 we have precious little of it \u2014 or unrestricted capitalism, since we have precious little of that as well. The issue behind rising income inequality isn\u2019t capitalism, it\u2019s cronyism<\/em>. Income isn\u2019t being redirected to the 1% because capitalism has failed, it\u2019s happening because we abandoned capitalism in favor of the regulatory crony state and its de facto<\/em> collusion between big business\/banking interests and a government that directs capital to favored political clients, who become \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d. It doesn\u2019t matter, for instance, whether the president is a Democrat or Republican, because we know the Treasury Secretary will be a former \u2014 and future \u2014 Goldman Sachs executive.<\/p>\n

Indeed, what we call \u201cfree trade\u201d nowadays isn\u2019t the Theory of Comparative Advantage in action. It\u2019s corporations being allowed to ship jobs to low wage countries overseas to offset the cost of regulatory burdens in the US that restrict competition from new entrants to the market. That works great for large corporations. Not only do they get to offset the regulatory costs by overseas production, but slower job growth in the US flattens domestic wages, too, and sends millions out of the labor force altogether. For working people, the biggest financial rewards from the current \u201cfree trade\u201d regime seem mainly reaped by large business and banking interests. Again, people know if their own lives are better or worse than they used to be, and if the promises of elites have been born out by their own experience.<\/p>\n

Dale Franks, “Vote Properly, You Virulent Racist!”, Questions and Observations<\/em><\/a>, 2016-06-28.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… I would argue that we don\u2019t have truly free trade or, increasingly, a free economy in the United States. The Progressives always look at the rising income inequality and maintain that it\u2019s the inevitable result of capitalism. That\u2019s hogwash, of course, and Proggies believe it because they\u2019re dolts. But the problem in this country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,84,41],"tags":[645,363,727,1020,1022],"class_list":["post-35206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-government","category-quotations","tag-corporatewelfare","tag-corruption","tag-cronycapitalism","tag-progressives","tag-regulatorycapture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-99Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35207,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35206\/revisions\/35207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}