Socialistic policies only worsen economy

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for April 8, 2020)

I appreciate those who are making a heroic effort to keep the economy running; putting their health and lives on the line for our benefit. They are trying to make sure food and supplies are available when needed. This is important when everything is going well; it is absolutely essential in a crisis.

They are life-savers and deserve our thanks, respect, and support.

They provide a stark contrast to those who are working around the clock to shut down the economy and punish any who dare try to keep life and business running as normally as possible. Those who impose and enforce economy-crushing policies and orders, using the pandemic as an excuse, are making things worse. They may pretend it's about saving lives, but their actions could cost lives in the long run.

When political officials-- and government health officials are more political than medical-- talk about the risk of deaths from COVID-19, they sometimes say some of those deaths will be balanced by the lives saved due to fewer traffic accidents and work-related deaths with more people staying home. This is all they consider when they discuss the net death toll of this pandemic. It's an incomplete picture and hides a big cost.

They ignore the additional deaths an economic depression will cause. They sweep those deaths, which they will be completely responsible for causing, under the rug. These deaths could outnumber the deaths caused by the virus, itself. This is because the economic deaths will occur over several years rather than a few months. Perhaps over the course of a decade or more.

How many people died from the Great Depression? How many more died as a result of Franklin Roosevelt's misguided socialistic policies which stretched that depression years beyond its natural span? How many had their health ruined by the years of hardship? How many died of stress-related conditions due to economic disruption, business failures, and losing their life savings or home?

History doesn't repeat, but similar conditions often have similar effects. If government policies manage to destroy or damage the economy, and then keep it from recovering naturally as quickly as it otherwise would-- the way FDR's programs did-- people who would otherwise have prospered as the economy recovered are going to be dying from effects of a Coronavirus Depression.

Worse, if the foolish "stimulus" being presented by politicians as a solution finally triggers hyperinflation, the result will be beyond anything you can imagine. Buckle up. It may get bumpy.

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