Ben Stein – Nobody’s Business

Ben Stein wrote a piece on Sunday called, “When a Cure Fights Itself”. Mr. Stein is always worth reading. The link to his article is at the end of this page.

There is nothing in Mr. Stein’s article that I agreed with.

Mr. Stein starts by making light of a new social phenomenon in the US called ‘Tea Parties’. Tea Parties are public gatherings where folks get together and bitch about things like taxes and the economy.

Mr. Stein is confused by this development. He says, “These Tea Parties strike me as off base.”

Read the papers Mr. Stein. Tea Parties are not some spontaneous event in America. This is a well-orchestrated effort by an outfit called Freedomworks. Conservative Dick Armey runs this shop. I hope this info clears up your confusion.

Mr. Stein says, “I don’t get the taxation uproar. As far as I know no new taxes have been enacted.”

What? You must be kidding right? You live in California. State taxes are going up $13 Billion. You must have heard about that. State income taxes, property taxes, school taxes and all manner of fees are going up in every community in America. You probably have an accountant and do not really look at the minutia. If you looked, you would see that you are paying increased taxes on everything you do.

Mr. Stein connects the dots between the Tea Parties and an economic theory and concludes that consumers aren’t spending because they are afraid of the future. They should save less and spend more.

Mr. Stein, it is not just fear of the future that is restraining spending. You are missing the picture. People are out of work. We have been losing 600,000+ jobs a month. Malls, car dealerships, restaurants, retailers of all sorts are closing. There are new layoffs by our biggest companies every week. There are foreclosure sales everywhere. We lost $11 Trillion last year! The theory of “Rational Expectations” is of questionable relevance today. We have never been 'here’ before. It is hard to act rational in uncharted waters.

In a push to get people spending Mr. Stein wrote, “The stimulus program is like borrowing from our grandchildren, without their permission, so we can buy now”. That is a heinous suggestion.


Mr. Stein presents all of this in the context of “When the recession is over”. Here again I think Mr. Stein is not in touch with what is going on. We are not going to go back in time to 2006 where he thought everything was peachy. That is not going to happen for another generation. Hopefully two generations.



For some reason Mr. Stein chose to mix his thoughts on Tea Parties with a cheap shot at Larry Summers and Hank Paulson. His gripe is that they both lead successful private sector lives. He suggested their judgment might be influenced by that fact. Mr. Stein, what are you talking about?

That Mr. Summers is a success is a plus on his resume, not a minus. We need people like him who will work for peanuts and address the problems we face. As for Paulson, Mr. Stein is dead wrong. If Paulson had not acted as he did in the fall of 2008 the economic lights would be out today. He took one for the 'team' and we owe him.

The link to Mr. Steins article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/economy/12every.html?ref=business