Terry Savage was on WGN yesterday blasting government involvement in economies holding up Cuba as an example. Her illustration was so over-simplified and rank with faulty reasoning that it had the stench of political rhetoric at its worst. To say that there is no place for government to get involved in economic issues because a third world country–which has been besieged economically by its most powerful neighbor for the last fifty years–is akin to Milton Friedman’s use of Hong Kong as an example of how de-regulation works, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqh0zXSd4vc. In Friedman’s example, he points at the wealth of Hong Kong as the proof of the triumph of unregulated markets… what he fails to mention is the disparity in wealth, lack of rights and exploitation rife in this micro society and the fact that it was the only free market city/port granting access to the productive might and markets of the whole of China. If it were nothing more than a port it would be fabulously rich because of its situation. With Cuba, Terry pulls a very similar kind of obfuscation. Ignoring the history of the country… threatened by control by such criminal luminaries as Meyer Lansky, the likes of whom offered access to opportunity to a very few Cubans–but outpacing domestic endeavors–as prostitutes, thugs and drug runners. All while undermining and adding to the corruption of the countries government. Until, that is, a bunch of child revolutionaries were compelled to rally and overthrow the government too weak to keep itself from becoming an even more degenerate Island Vegas. These young revolutionaries found themselves immediately in over their heads playing off the two super-powers of the day just trying to keep their feet beneath them and their heads atop their shoulders. Whatever awful mistakes these kid revolutionaries made, it was better than the alternative. And this lone country stood its ground against the Goliath of its day. Not just the US, and the Soviet Union, but the criminal syndicate made powerful by its presence feeding off the greatest economy in the world. What Savage and her ilk willfully ignore is that the rise of great holdings of capital become more and more unwieldy with its own agents–accountants, businessmen, lawyers, etc.–acting out of the desire merely to add bullets to their resumes and salary to their accounts and doing so by serving that money over the interests of the rest of the community. These economic actors pool greater and greater resources of capital into an already bloated horde choking the rest of the economy through lack of wages and salaries. When a wage or salary earner gets that dollar, it goes right back out into the economy as payment to mechanics, carpenters, doctors, to restaurants, vacation spots, electronic stores, etc.,… where it is most often paid out again and spent almost immediately on the same things… when a billionaire gets that dollar, it is vested in already existing companies and properties which may already be overvalued but become even more overvalued as more capital dollars seek to vest in them. When the GOP talks about starting small businesses, what it doesn’t mention is the dearth of spending seeking the services of such businesses. No single economic entity can buck this trend towards the over-capitalization of the system… and no group will waste its time consolidating effort to do so–and if they were to try, they couldn’t be trusted to do so without oversight. The only entity that is tasked with such responsibilities is the government. The problem is that the mass of wealth and production speak with a single voice when it tries to do so–and it is the voice of self-serving idiocy. In this case, out of the mouth of Terry Savage.