Mainly this will happen because ordinary conservatives and libertarians are not radicals. Radicals would instantly take to the streets in protest. We conservatives, on the other hand, are … well … ‘conservative’. We are the ones who generally avoid and belittle that kind of behavior; and the power-drunk liberals know it. Oh sure, we’ll cuss and spit and bewail the monumental stupidity, but as long as we still have jobs and a roof over our heads we won’t show up on the Capital steps carrying placards, guns, hemp, and/or hurling rocks through windows. Most of the really bad stuff will happen to those who look to government to bail them out, though a few of those will make out. So, we in the middle will tighten our belts, find or create opportunities in chaos, and weather the artificial storm same as we weather real storms. Most of us belong to the older crowd for whom the days of juvenile tantrums are long in the past. So we’ll agree among ourselves what this country needs is a good enema (revolution, purge, shakeup, petition, recall, whatever) to put it right. Then, we will sit back and wait for the next election cycle convinced the Democrats will make such a mess of things people will be desperate for a change of idiots-in-charge; especially with us reminding them every other day.

They will also get away with it because the whole thing has an eerie self-reinforcing quality to it. A recession gets started and the Chicken Little Democrats whip up voter fear of catastrophe only they can contain (not fix, mind you – just contain; fixing it is going to take at least a decade of careful tinkering only Democrats are qualified to perform). In a panic, the voters vote into power whoever promises most convincingly they can stop the unstoppable; then keep them there because of the false assurance nanny-states provide in hard times even as the boat continues to sink. For a time, they will even appear to be succeeding from the endless money streaming out of Washington. Unnoticed will be this money purchases less and less the more it is pumped. Thus, government spending will pile ever higher until inflation and debt wipes out benefits and the whole thing crashes. But, even that will not be the end. Sometime in year three, Lord Obama will have an election to win and narrative to spin. Come round-two, the problem will not be a failed policy, but a failure to have sufficiently taken over the reins of production. Regulations, councils, cartels, monopolies, and new bureaucracies will sprout like weeds across the land mercilessly dedicated to making enterprise efficient (run by a pack of failed intellectuals who never ran anything but mouths). When this fails to work and shortages abound, rationing will be imposed to frustrate gouging (every price-increase is just gouging, right?) and black-marketeering. This, in turn, dictates government set prices and fix demand; creating further disincentives to produce and a vicious cycle of fixing / gouging / rationing / black-markets. But, that’s okay because the narrative will be intact, the people will still need saving, and the messiah, glorious messiah, will have a new plan (suspiciously like the old plan but with new labels attached) with which to sell us on giving him yet another chance. And just to cinch the deal, well-timed, freshly printed government money will flow to the right pockets. Then, sometime in year 8 or 12, the voters finally realize there’s no magic rabbit in that Democrat hat, that they are being bought and sold with our own money, deals are struck letting liberals off the hook and out the door, and people are put in charge who actually studied Econ-101 rather than Eco-Econ-000 and FDR-con, who know how to whittle government down to size, cut taxes, re-deregulate, and have the guts and patience it takes to let the economy work its own magic. Finally, around year 10-14 (depending on the learning curve) things get back on track with GDP rising to where we start paying down debt, put a bit in savings, and breath a collective sigh … while preserving the myth and forgetting the lesson.

They will get away with it because people don’t bother to learn their history or from it, and our government prefers we don’t.

I mention this because it isn’t just 2010 and 2012 that are at stake. If Obama gets a certain degree of momentum, you can be sure the Democrats will conspire to keep him around beyond 2016.

This was pointed out by Frederic Bastiat, a French politician of the early 19th century, when he described what happens when a vandal breaks a shopkeeper’s window. The seen effect is that repairing the glass creates economic value in the payment to the glazier, who then has money to buy a new suit or hire a part-time employee. What is unseen is that the shopkeeper has to pay the glazier with money that he would otherwise have used to buy a suit or add an employee.

The futility of the “stimulus” package lies in the nature of the transaction. A transaction in the private sector will not take place unless both parties benefit, thus increasing the total wealth. The coercive nature of taxation, on the other hand, reduces wealth. The magnitude of this effect has been estimated to be $1 of private spending to be the equivalent of $7 in government spending.

One answer to have ready at hand when the Democrats claim to have ended the recession is a forecast of the (greater) growth that would have occurred during the same period, had the entire economy “remained” private. This might not, in say 2011, win us the battle over 2009-2010; but it might convince the public that ours is the better economic ideology for 2012-2016.