I don't trust the seers on the Potomac

One of the great contributions of Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek was to admonish us to recognize the insurmountable limits to human knowledge. Why? Not even the brightest minds, and surely not the U.S. Congress, can ever have the knowledge to shape an economic system entirely to our liking. To think we can represents the height of arrogance and a pretense of knowledge. The billions upon billions of interrelationships between an economic system's human and non-human elements defy human capacity to know.
Let's examine just a few pretenses of knowledge. Under Social Security law, Congress forces workers to set aside a portion of their earnings for retirement. Take a 25-year-old – let's call her "Mary" – who earns $40,000 a year. Her Social Security tax is about $2,500. Here's my question to you: Was having $2,500 forcibly taken out of Mary's pay for retirement her best possible use of that money? Mary might have saved and invested several years to open a small business. She might have put it toward private schooling or music lessons for her child, or any number of things that might have made her, and possibly our nation, wealthier in the future...........................

Another example of the seen/unseen problem is the Bush administration's 2002 steel tariffs. The tariffs' seen beneficiaries were steel industry executives, stockholders and the approximately 1,700 steelworker jobs saved. According to the Consuming Industries Trade Action Association, higher steel prices, resulting from the tariffs, caused thousands of job losses in the steel-using industries. Since companies that used steel had to pay higher prices, they became less competitive domestically and internationally.


Each of us is faced with the knowledge and the seen and unseen problems. I believe that most Americans would see themselves in a much better position of determining what's in our own best interests than politicians, who are mostly concerned with re-election. At least I hope that's the case.

But don't take this economists word for it, the government can predict what is going to happen. Doesn't history prove that theory? Of course it does! Don't be silly.