John Stossel’s column on Donald Trump’s address to the Libertarian National Convention provides some good examples of the shortcomings I discussed in the Libertarian Party. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I like John Stossel. I think he is smart and entertaining and I have watched him since he was the consumer affairs correspondent at 20/20. The problem with John Stossel is that he has become a doctrinaire libertarian. Mr. Stossel’s libertarianism put him several steps above the asinine leftism of most of his journalistic colleagues. Still, it does cause him to have a certain narrowness of vision common to libertarians. Having realized that the free market is a good thing, Stossel has decided that the free market is the only thing.
In any case, Mr. Stossel begins:
Donald Trump recently spoke at the Libertarian National Convention.
Good for him. It’s encouraging that he reached out to those of us who often disagree with him.
We libertarians put individual liberty first. We think government that governs least governs best.
That’s a reason we fear today’s Democrats. In their eagerness to tax and regulate, while throwing newly printed money at a thousand special interests, we fear they will destroy our future.
So, Trump won applause saying, “I have been indicted by the government on 91 different things. If I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now!”
Trump promised to “put a libertarian in my cabinet.”
He said he’d commute the jail sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the entrepreneur who created Silk Road, an underground website that lets consenting adults buy things that most government officials don’t like.
Trump told the libertarians, “Our goal will be nothing less than the rebirth of fair equal and impartial justice under the Constitutional rule of law.”
Libertarians should like that. But when Trump spoke, he was mostly booed. Why?
Trump did do some pro-freedom things as president. He cut a few regulations (though not as many as he promised,) withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord and appointed Supreme Court judges who might keep government in check.
Trump demonstrates ignorance of the benefits of economic freedom. He bragged about helping politically connected businesses by imposing fat tariffs. Now he wants more, promising “stiff penalties on China and all other nations as they abuse us.”
“Screw us, and we screw you,” he smugly said.
But China selling us cheap stuff doesn’t screw us. It helps us.
Yes, Chinese subsidies destroy some American jobs when companies can’t compete with subsidized imports.
But the imports lower prices so much they create more jobs, thousands more. Trump’s tariffs hurt Americans, not just the other side.
Sadly, Biden has now increased Trump’s tariffs. And Trump wants to raise them still more?’
Free trade between nations is a wonderful thing in theory. In the real world, however, there are some problems. Free trade only really works between free nations. Free trade does not work so well when a free nation is trading with a totalitarian nation that sees trade as simply another means to achieve domination over other nations. A free company in a free nation trades to maximize profit. A state-owned or controlled company in an unfree nation trades to make its government more powerful. Subsidizing a belligerent, totalitarian dictatorship in East Asia is not necessarily to America’s advantage, no matter how many individual Americans benefit from cheaper goods.
Then too, it does America little good if our trade with China hollows out our manufacturing capabilities and impoverishes whole communities in America, even if many Americans can buy more cheap goods from China. It is not much comfort to tell a man who has lost his job that more jobs are being created elsewhere. It is not advantageous if a woman moves from a high-paying factory job to a barely above minimum wage job at Walmart stocking the shelves with Chinese goods. It certainly does America no good if we lack the ability to replace military equipment lost in a potential conflict with China because we have offshored our manufacturing to China.
I agree to some extent with John Stossel’s next point.
America’s biggest problem may be the future of our retirement funds.
The Libertarian Party platform, wisely, points out that both Medicare and Social Security are unsustainable. They propose: “transition to a private voluntary system.”
That would be better. Retirees should decide for themselves how their pension money is invested. And your retirement funds would belong to you — not the government.
But tough-guy Trump, like most politicians, is a coward when it comes to admitting that Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt.
Trump is not being a coward. He is being realistic. Trying to privatize Social Security is political suicide. George W. Bush actually proposed a reform that allowed social security recipients to invest a small portion of their accounts as they saw fit. The Democrats immediately eviscerated Bush for endangering senior citizens’ benefits. They accused Bush of wanting to risk retirees’ saved earnings on the uncertain stock market just to benefit the wealthy. Any time a Republican notes that Social Security is close to bankruptcy and needs to be reformed, he is accused of wanting to cut Grandma’s benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.
At present, there is simply no political will to reform Social Security or Medicare. Trump, like most politicians, wants to win the election. Suggesting the privatization of retirement funds will cause him to lose the election. I wish matters were otherwise, but unless the Democrats stop demagoguing on this issue, Social Security will have to go broke until any changes are made.
The same thing could be said for federal spending in general.
As president, he made the problem worse. He nearly doubled American spending, added almost 2 million jobs to the federal workforce.
Again, the problem is that there is no political will to cut spending. John Stossel and I could go over the entire federal budget and find many ineffective, obsolete, or wasteful programs. Entire government departments could easily be abolished without ill effect on the country. The problem is that each one of these programs benefits someone and that someone will squeal when the slop in his trough is cut off. Unless things change, cutting spending to any great degree is impossible.
At least John Stossel realizes that Joe Biden is worse.
Not that Joe Biden would do better.
Most likely, he would do worse.
He didn’t dare even show up at the convention.
As I said, John Stossel is a smart guy. I hope he understands that a vote for the Libertarians is a wasted vote. Donald Trump may not be his idea of a perfect candidate. Donald Trump is not my idea of a perfect candidate. He is the better of the two viable candidates available.
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