A fifteen minute conversation with any free-market economist would uncover plans to reduce the cost of everything. Below, the attentive reader will find the essence of such a discussion.
Everywhere in the United States, the law of supply and
demand continues to hold sway, although we find here and there performance
politicians who pretend never to have heard of it. The Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani,
is one of the more persuasive pretenders.
The law of supply and demand holds that the cost of goods
and services is directly related to the supply of goods and services. Energy,
to choose one product, becomes more expensive as its supply diminishes. The
same is true of housing. If the demand for housing is constant and the supply
diminishes, housing becomes more expensive, further diminishing supply.
Here in Connecticut, new housing is becoming too expensive
to produce. The expense may be mitigated in one of two ways. State government
must produce policies that increase the number of potential householders, or it
must produce policies that decrease the cost of housebuilding. It can do this
fairly and equitably by refusing to choose winners and losers in a housing market.
Building monopolies more readily occur in a socialist non-free-market,
non-competitive, state arranged system heavily fortified by numerous
regulations.
For instance, we might call a truce on the ongoing war
between builders and performance politicians -- again, Mamdani comes to mind --
who assert that housing would be much less expensive if politicians were to add
to the cost of housing by producing very expensive bills that increase the cost
of housing. Former President John Kennedy tangentially touched on that point
during a speech he gave to the Economic Club of New York about a year before he was
assassinated.
What did Kennedy say?
He said, “There are a number of ways by which the federal
government can meet its responsibilities to aid economic growth… the most
direct and significant kind of federal action aiding economic growth is to make
possible an increase in private consumption and investment demand -- to cut the
fetters which hold back private spending. In the past, this could be done in
part by the increased use of credit and monetary tools, but our balance of
payments today places limits on our use of those tools for expansion. It could
also be done by increasing federal expenditures more rapidly than necessary,
but such a course would soon demoralize both the government and our economy. If
government is to retain the confidence of the people, it must not spend more
than can be justified on grounds of national need or spent with maximum
efficiency.”
Federal and state business taxes and regulations increase
the cost of business and should be, whenever possible, reduced so as to drive
down prices. Mamdani and his accolades here in the Northeast counter that
budget constraints do not allow such reductions.
Anticipating the objection, Kennedy countered that such
measures as he was proposing would, and
in fact did, substantially increase federal revenues by increasing
business activity throughout the United States. His successor, Lyndon Johnson,
benefited by the Kennedy tax reductions because they had occasioned substantial
federal budget surpluses used by Johnson to finance his so called “Great
Society” programs. Those programs, we now know, were oversold and
underfinanced. Democrat presidents, using President Franklyn Roosevelt’s Great
Depression era programs as a political template, have continued to offer
programs that likewise are oversold and underpriced, such as Barack Obama’s Affordable
Care Act (ACA).
In a recent column, Chris Powell writes:
“Yes, electricity in
Connecticut is nearly the most expensive in the country, but this is less
because the electric utilities are shareholder-owned, strive to earn a profit,
and pay some executives excessively than because inflation has increased energy
costs generally, the state lacks adequate access to natural gas and won't use
coal, and because state government taxes electricity heavily with its lately
infamous "public benefits" charges… Connecticut's schools are failing
the poor, remain largely segregated racially, and still cost more every year without
improving their results. The state's transportation system is creaky. The state
has a desperate shortage of housing, and homelessness is rising. State
government's pension obligations remain grossly underfunded. Municipal property
taxes keep rising, also without an improvement in services to the public. The
state's cost of living is soaring and no one in authority even tries to reduce
the cost of government itself lest government's employees be offended... So
whether he [Josh Elliott, Connecticut’s answer to Mamdani] is elected governor
or is just re-elected to the General Assembly, Elliott should apply his
socialist inclinations to those problems for a few years before trying to take
the electricity business apart. Government in Connecticut has no competence to
spare.”
New York for years has prevented the construction of a natural
gas pipeline that would lower the price of energy in Connecticut by increasing energy
resources, and reducing inflation – defined as too many dollars chasing too few
good – is key to reducing prices everywhere. Prices are high because inflation reduces
the purchasing power of the dollar. Solving economic problems cannot occur by offering
the general public false socialist “solutions” that have caused market
shortages everywhere, accompanied by oppressive, top heavy administrative socialist
superstructures. Citizens in Venezuela and Cuba have not been oppressed for
decades by greedy billionaires operating in a free market.
Socialists cannot help tinkering with the fundamentals of
the market driven Republic established by the founders -- shrewd businessmen,
most of them – at the birth of our nation, in an age relatively free of
disabling socialist dogma. The nation in few days will collectively be
celebrating their handiwork, the 250 year celebration of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence. “Let there be bonfires and Illuminations from one
End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more,” John
Adams wrote to his wife. And don’t forget the parades and bagpipes.
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