THE MINISTRY OF SILLY ECONOMICS

1/11/10

This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a rising star in the state and national Democratic parties, has decided to attack LA’s lethargic economy, and LA County’s resultant 12.6% unemployment rate, by hiring the city’s first “economy chief.” This newest bureaucrat, Austin Beutner, formerly of Blackstone, now of Evercore, will be charged with making the nation’s second largest city more “business friendly.”

So the Mayor proposes to attack the nation’s second largest city’s unemployment problem by expanding the city’s public bureaucracy, the support of which is the primary reason that Los Angeles, and California, has become such a difficult place to do business, or to live, for that matter. Your government, and your tax dollars, at work.

Such an approach to economic problems is not unique to Mayor Villaraigosa, California, or the Democratic Party. It is the very nature of the modern politician, even those GOPers who spend their lives extolling the virtues of the private sector while doing everything possible to avoid the ignominy of actually having to participate in that sector, to look to the government, and the expansion thereof, as the solution to all our problems. And yet there remain many citizens, even those of a supposed libertarian bent, who insist that the answer to bloated government lies in electing the latest politician piously pontificating about the perfidiousness of government as long as he is not in charge of it