Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Bush Legacy?

When doing my usual scanning through the news sites, I came across a fantastic article about "Bush's Legacy." Look, the man hasn't been the best president ever, but he hasn't been a disaster either and that's what this article, by BBC's Matt Frei, talks about. It's a great, neutral article and I think it sets things into perspective. It's way too easy and naive to "blame everything on Bush." People want to see him as an evil genius capable of fooling the whole world about Iraq, yet they also want to see him as a complete idiot who can't even tie his own shoes. This way of thinking coincides with the another flawed view; that the government should solve all your problems. It's sad that the first thing some people look to when something goes wrong is the government instead of themselves, family or friends.

Case in point: People are getting fat in NYC, so instead of people making themselves lose weight, they're going to have the government do that for them by possibly having the city legally require calories be placed on menus and outlawing trans fats! What's next? Legally limit red meat? Limit extreme sports? Anyway, off my tangent now...
I guess the point is, if you want something done, don't expect the government to do it for you. Except for a few (albeit vital) aspects (defense, emergency services, roads, etc.), government should be limited so we have more room to do what we really want to do, even if it does make us fat.


Oh yeah, in other news, the media on MLK Jr. Day was going stark raving mad about the 'inevitable' crash of the U.S. Stock Market on Tuesday after the European and Asian markets took a big tumble. Stock markets are inherently emotional and psychological mechanisms and all the media did was perpetuate gathering cloud. However....that cloud didn't materialize. The Dow was actually up over 300 points today! The media over-hypes and thus denies us real information. Ah well, and so it goes.


Compliments of Economicsbriefing.com


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