PolicyGuy

Friday, January 28, 2005


Addicted to Private-Sector Bailouts.
The temptation for elected officials to "do something" about jobs is often so strong that it overrides economic sense. And in at least one case, it overrides the wounded national pride of a country that boasts of standing up to the Americans.

French politicians regularly complain about "American hegemony." Jacques Chirac has called American culture an "ecological disaster."

So what is the government in France doing to address an unemployment rate of 10 percent? Cutting taxes? Doing away with libraries of regulatory manuals?

No. Or rather, non.

A government-owned bank is investing $500 million in that demon missionary of America, Disney, to prop up the Euro Disney theme park.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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