'You Didn't Build That'

[anvi]

I'm perplexed.  Maybe I'm always perplexed.  But, so far as the basic claim that government and markets are interdependent, I fail to see how that could strike anyone as controversial.  Governments need to guarantee property rights and enforce all kinds of laws pertaining to transactions in order for markets to remain viable, government tax funds make infrastructure available that helps businesses to start up and continue to function, governments often make available a veritable bonanza of tax deductions to businesses, governments support education that gives broad swaths of the populous various levels of skills enabling them to work, governments help to address problems of external costs, and on and on.  None of this negates the efforts of individuals who build businesses, risk for them, and sometimes succeed. It just points out that markets don't--and can't--arise in a political and legal vacuum.  Even considered on their own in the abstract, market production and transaction require massive amounts of cooperative effort.  To deny any of this is to subscribe to a myth of absolute individualism that flies in the face of everything we experience and everything we do.

Now, none of this constitutes an argument for the details of any particular tax policy.  One of the only things Eric Cantor (I completely despise this man) ever said that rang somewhat true of Obama is that the latter always tries to parlay a philosophical point--a point about values--into an argument justifying tax changes, when what he needs to offer are economic arguments.  Bill Clinton always made both value arguments and economic arguments, Obama almost always only makes the former and most of the time skips the latter.  Cantor charges that, when it comes to economics, Obama just doesn't "get it." Cantor may very well be right about that too.  Unfortunately, the only thing Cantor himself "gets" as far as I'm concerned is how to be an ass.

Anyway, back to the rest of my perplexities...I have lots of them, and they all keep me quite occupied.