Other than my ongoing adulation for Ronald Reagan, occasional praise for Calvin Coolidge, and one post about John F. Kennedy, I don’t have many nice things to say about previous Presidents.
But I feel the need to rise to the defense of Rutherford B. Hayes, who was mocked recently by the current President. This Mark Steyn column is a deliciously vicious commentary on Obama’s speech, so no need for me to delve into the details.
Instead, I want to jump on the bandwagon and produce some posters comparing the 19th President and the 44th President (if you’re not aware, posters of Pres. Hayes with self-created captions have been all over the Internet).
You won’t be surprised to learn that I’m focused on the policy differences between Hayes and Obama.
Most important, Hayes largely was true to the Founding Fathers’ vision of a limited central government. Government spending averaged only about 6 percent of economic output during his tenure (probably less, the data are not very robust, so I took the worst-case numbers) and America was blessedly free of the income tax.
Obama, on the other hand, is repeating all of Bush’s mistakes and making government an even bigger burden, and then compounding his error by pursuing class warfare tax policy.
So which President would you prefer, Hayes or Obama?
Reagan was the greatest post WWII president, but Coolidge is unquestionably (at least for us freedom/free market lovers) the best modern day president (20th century on). There is no question about this. He not only preached small government and free markets, but was able to make them a reality while somehow preserving civility in politics.
Obama’s simplistic rhetoric is grossly wrong in quantitative terms. His populist and snarky equation of anything new with innovation may appeal to a majority of his clueless voters but does not hold up to even elementary thought.
Just because nearly all useful ideas have opponents initially, does not mean that every new idea with opponents is useful and will turn into something. Quite the opposite. More than 99% of new ideas turn out to be failures, just like nine out of ten start ups end up in failure, typically outcompeted by better ideas.
We typically remember only the successes, the failures fade away, and we forget that for every new valuable idea there were ninety nine failures and fads.
We do not have radios, telephones and the like today because we decided to collectively support these technologies at their early stage through subsidies and mandates. These technologies proved unstoppable because they simply outcompeted their alternatives.
Innovation that can stand on its own without subsidies and mandates. That is innovation I can believe in.
By insisting on subsidizing what appears to be inefficient technologies, Obama and the American people continue to decrement their economic efficiency against a rising world average. Convergence and the vicious cycle of decline thus become cemented.
[…] A Simple Choice: Barack Obama or Rutherford Hayes? […]
[…] A Simple Choice: Barack Obama or Rutherford Hayes? […]
Hayes for sure. Times were tough back then and they did it on a budget. It seems now we can’t even look at budget just spend, spend, spend as quick as possible. Bankruptcy should not even be a choice. Neither should debt be. bankruptcy
[…] A Simple Choice: Barack Obama or Rutherford Hayes? […]