“The larger the state is, the more capable it is of picking winners and losers, and the more aggressively it will be lobbied to do so in a particular way. And while it is easily misunderstood in this age of the modern regulatory state, the tariff is perhaps the earliest example of big government — the state intervenes in otherwise free markets to bring about a result it finds socially or economically desirable. “
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What DT is risking is not just some political points in the rust belt and trade promises. When this trade war ends like all the rest do, and the economy takes a hit- it will not be his stupid trade polices that are blamed, it will be his ‘stupid’ tax cuts.
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from National Review and Jay Cost, Congress Wasn’t Designed to Handle Tax Policy To put it bluntly, Congress is not well suited for national economic planning, which is basically what pro-growth tax policies boil down to. As a matter of fact,
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Why Medicare for All Would Damage our Republic by Jay Cost at National Review This is a very diverse array of policies, but they all exhibit a similar flaw. When the government wishes to accomplish some public purpose that it does
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From the progressive standpoint, the Framers had not so much erred in their efforts as subsequent events had rendered their formulations moot. Madison had been particularly worried about a fractious majority violating the public good or minority rights for selfish
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All of this helps us understand how the spoils system became rampant in the nineteenth century. The resources required to win a nationwide presidential election were too massive for parties to raise on their own, and so they turned to
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For Madison, the ultimate goal of the new government was to balance different factions and produce public policy that was only in the public interest; for Hamilton, the goal was a vigorous government to spur the country on to national
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To be clear, the problem is not with expansive governmental powers per se. Rather, it has to do with the institutions of government that exercise those powers. Specifically, we use eighteenth century institutions, originally meant to do much less, to
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The country has increasingly demanded nationalistic authority for the government, but has refused to abandon the parochialism inherent to the original design. Indeed, Americans are wont to celebrate the contradiction: we unabashedly demand that our government exercise sweeping powers to
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Jay Cost writes The Real Price of Politics in The Weekly Standard. Excerpts: Too often, debate over what government should do takes place in the abstract. But the particulars of the American system are relevant. Our government was never meant
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***** Jay Cost writes in The Weekly Standard The Real Price of Politics. Excerpts: If the government were asked to do only what a fair reading of the Constitution authorizes it to do, this design would not be a problem.
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From The Weekly Standard, Killing Obamacare by Jay Cost: Why should we believe that the federal government is remotely capable of managing something as complicated as American health care? The complexities of the task make a mockery of the very notion of
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From The Weekly Standard, Killing Obamacare by Jay Cost: It was the success of the progressives in World War I that inspired Franklin Roosevelt—Wilson’s assistant secretary of the Navy—to treat the Great Depression as a national emergency akin to the
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Comments on the disastrous health care roll out. Delaying from Behind by James Taranto at the WSJ Our younger readers–those who were born yesterday–may not remember when delaying ObamaCare was considered a wild idea, its exponents limited to crazy right-wing terrorists. Times have
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The factions that came to depend on the largesse of the Democratic-run governments became clients of the national party, much as the Irish in New York were clients of their patrons in Tammany Hall. They would vote for the party
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