1970s Economics.

Here’s Jerry Bowyer. I guess the second time is farce.

Ronald Reagan summed up the economic philosophy of the 1970s in one brilliant sentence: “If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Doesn’t that sum up to a T the economic era which we have just entered?

We’ve taxed American business to the limits of its tolerance, and by so doing driven a vast number of jobs and amount of capital overseas. Downsized corporations have become easy political targets onto which we load highly expensive labor and environmental regulations.

Eventually, large sectors like banking and auto manufacturing will grind to a halt, and then the political class will advise giving them massive grants of taxpayer money. Of course, that money has to come from someone, so new taxes are proposed, and the cycle begins again.

We saw that pattern largely disappear in the 1980s, banished by the Reagan Revolution. Unwilling to learn from our mistakes, Japan adopted the tax-regulate-subsidize model in the 1990s. It still hasn’t escaped.