For Sale?
With the United States poised to slam into its debt limit Monday, conservative economists are eyeballing all that gold in Fort Knox. There’s about 147 million ounces of gold parked in the legendary vault. Gold is selling at nearly $1,500 an ounce. That’s many billions of dollars in bullion.Read the rest here.
“It’s just sort of sitting there,” said Ron Utt, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.”
But that’s cockamamie, declares the Obama administration. Mary J. Miller, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial markets, said the U.S. should sell assets in an orderly, “well-telegraphed” manner, not in a “fire sale” atmosphere with a debt limit deadline accelerating the process.
“It would be bad for the taxpayers. It would be bad for the markets,” Miller said.
Another senior administration official, not authorized to speak for attribution, described the situation more bluntly: “Selling off the gold is just one level of crazy away from selling Mount Rushmore.”
The United States may have run up a huge debt, but it is not a poor country by any stretch of the imagination. The federal government owns roughly 650 million acres of land, close to a third of the nation’s total land mass. Plus a million buildings. Plus electrical utilities like the Tennessee Valley Authority. And an interstate highway system.
Economists of a conservative or libertarian bent have long argued that the federal government needs to get out of certain businesses, unload unneeded assets, and privatize such functions as passenger rail service and air traffic control. No one advocates selling Yellowstone, but why, some economists ask, should the federal government be in the electricity business?
Economist Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute said the federal government should consider the sale of interstate highways. Motorists would have to pay tolls to the private owners, he said, but the roads would likely be in better shape. Federal, state and local governments could raise hundreds of billions of dollars through highway privatization, he said.
“Many of the world’s roads were originally built as toll roads, so it would hardly be revolutionary to return to that model,” Hassett said. “If it can work for the River Styx, why not the Beltway?”
7 comments:
Only thing more evil than banks: libertarians. But at least the banks have some intelligence.
I won't comment on the other assets mentioned. But no libertarian that I know of would seriously suggest trading our supply of real money for the colored pieces of paper with numbers on them being mass produced by governments today.
“Many of the world’s roads were originally built as toll roads, so it would hardly be revolutionary to return to that model,” Hassett said. “If it can work for the River Styx, why not the Beltway?”
G.K. Chesterton wisely observed that it is best to figure out why someone put up a fence before proceeding to tear it down. Mutatis mutandis, it seems to me that Chesterton's sane logic applies here. Ask yourself why folks were eager to have the government administer those once-private roads before you go and unwork a century's worth of progress.
[N]o libertarian that I know of would seriously suggest trading our supply of real money for the colored pieces of paper with numbers on them being mass produced by governments today.
Milton Friedman is no longer to be classified as a libertarian?
Only thing more evil than banks: libertarians.
Of course. Because the greatest sin one can commit is not needing the government to tell you how to live.
I too have decided I am officially sick of libertarians. So much anti-gubmint rhetoric, but I don't see them standing up against the US government's biggest cash cows like corporate welfare, bloated military spending and subsidies.
The new members of congress (especially Rand Paul) rode a Tea Party wave of libertarianism and then, like Reagan, have done nothing to reduce the most egregious parts of the federal budget. And at every chance, the libertarians I have read have ignored this and focused on red herrings like public sector union rights.
I refuse to take any of the so-called libertarians seriously until they stop acting like the stooges of the corporate-run GOP.
gdelassu,
If you're referring to the Interstate system, I believe it was put in by Eisenhower for reasons of national defense (Cold War and all that). It's already in place so that purpose has been served. And I'm not sure if people were ever clamoring for government control of roads; as with most other things, they just took over. I remember a while back reading about the government takeover of private roads in the early 19th century. There was a significant decrease in quality and customer satisfaction.
American Enterprise Institute and Heritage foundation are in NO WAY Libertarian orgs. They are "Neo-Con" at best, and you will find "ex" Trotskyites if you did into their membership. It is highly dishonest to paint Libertarians with the brush of whatever evil comes out of these NeoCons mouths. It is a stretch to even call them conservative. Libertarian is outright laughable.
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