"Don't hurt people and don't take their stuff" - Matt Kibbe

9/2/11

Why We Need to be Wonks Once in a While

People who read this blog on a regular basis know who Dan Mitchell is. For those of you who do not, here is quick bio.

Dan is an economist who works at the Cato Institute - a think tank which promotes civil society from a free market, liberty minded perspective. His work is frequently featured on this page because I hold his ideas and his wonderful ability to communicate them in high esteem. He is also kind enough to allow me to re-post some of his commentaries in order to dress up this otherwise piggish blog in mink from time to time.

He doesn't do that because he likes me, (aside from some email exchanges, we have never met in person) but because he is utterly committed to the ideas of freedom and rational choices. He wants the message to be spread widely and I'm happy to help in any small way I can.

If you read his blog at International Liberty regularly you know he is also a very funny and engaging fellow who can easily hide the fact that he is as wonkish as any of the those boring guys who we agree with, but who we somehow manage to avoid at cocktail parties. Most of those guys are more boring than I am.

But now that we are only a few days away from hearing our hopefully lame-duck President make a speech extolling the Keynesian approach to keeping our country in this mess for the foreseeable future and possibly introducing some more useless "stimulus" measures, I thought Dan's timely video on the subject should be presented here in case any of you missed it. (I suspect most or all of you did)

This video is a tad longer than the average American attention span (7 min) but I really suggest you spend the time it takes to watch it. It makes the case very well and even if it might make us all a little more wonkish at the next BBQ conversation, it probably won't make us more boring than we already are.

Just watch the eyes of the people you are boring and if they start to glaze over too much just reach into the cooler and fish a new Sam Adams out of the icy water for them and they will forget that you weren't talking about football.

Speaking of football, even with the President retreating from his plan to go head to head in a TV ratings battle with the Packers/Saints season opening game on the 8th, (He will speak a bit before the game) I would wager a few beers that the pregame show will outdraw the President's snooze fest speech to congress about his newest Keynesian scheme to interfere with market forces.

I'm sure the short video below will be more interesting than the speech and it has the added advantage that you don't have to watch it during the game. I know I'll be watching the pregame show. Maybe I'll ask Willie Wonka to drop by and watch it with me.


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