A Government Bailout Is NOT Economic Activity

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – The economic pain that is being felt is not actual economic pain.  This is what drives me nuts about this.  It is the actions of the State that are going to be curtailed, which are different than the actions of the private sector, as it is known.  Why isn’t that being said?  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  It ought to be illustrative, or it ought to throw open the possibilities of discussion that if your government, your State were not in a war, outside of wartime, if it does not acquire the legislative or legal authority to borrow more money on the credit of its citizens, there’s going to be great economic pain.  The economic pain that is being felt is not actual economic pain.  This is what drives me nuts about this.  It is the actions of the State that are going to be curtailed, which are different than the actions of the private sector, as it is known.  Why isn’t that being said?  Basically you’re going to face a situation where you’re going to stop showering the people and the people’s businesses with money that has been manufactured or borrowed that comes in the form of legislative initiatives.  We’re not talking about any kind of economic activity that you would understand or you would recognize.

Read other transcripts from this show: The Country that Borrows Together Pigs out Together

Let’s say opening up a lemonade stand or watching your kids open up the proverbial lemonade stand on a hot summer day in your neighborhood, that’s a pure economic activity.

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You buy the lemons, you get the water, mix it together, the price mechanism helps to regulate it.  No middleman needs to step in.  Yes, even if there was a government, you could still barter for lemonade.  You might barter some labor away.  You might barter some chicken eggs or whatever the case may be.  That’s economic activity.  The guy down the street that works at city hall and manages the local government and says I’m going to pay a government worker today to sweep the sidewalk behind where the lemonade stand is, that’s not economic activity, certainly not in the same vein that the lemonade stand is.  Why are we even answering to the discussion and allowing the discussion to take place with the assumption being that the borrowing authority equals economic activity instead of government activity?

There’s one more thing that’s been bugging me about all this.  For the last three or four years, ever since the 2008 bailouts, we have looked with great interest and at the same time great trepidation at whether or not great European economies like Greece or Ireland or Spain or Portugal, as to whether or not they were going to fail, go caput.  Greece has almost gone caput, has almost flat-lined a couple times during this period, as has Spain, as has Portugal, among others.  What is it that has prevented them from going under?  Borrowing.  They’ve been getting a bailout.  What we’re basically saying is we’re in a position where we have to bail ourselves out.  They’re gonna get a bailout, aren’t they?  Yes, apparently we are going to get a bailout.

Why isn’t that term or the conditions under which this entire episode is being discussed?  We’re going to bail ourselves out, or we’re going to allow ourselves to be bailed out by our own activities.  The whole thing just defies reasoning.  Yet here we are.  This is exactly the station in life to where we have arrived as the greatest and freest and best country in the history of great, free, and best countries, right?

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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