Topic: Central Planning, Matches 3 quotes.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.

Source: Thomas Sowell
Is Reality Optional?, 1993

Topics: Central Planning; Government, Domestic Policy; Government, Downfall

Only by statistics, can the federal government make even a fitful attempt to plan, regulate, control, or reform various industries—or impose central planning and socialization on the entire economic system. If the government received no railroad statistics, for example, how in the world could it even start to regulate railroad rates, finances, and other affairs? How could the government impose price controls if it didn’t even know what goods have been sold on the market, and what prices were prevailing? Statistics . . . are the eyes and ears of the interventionists: of the intellectual reformer, the politicians, and the governemnt bureaucrat. Cut off those eyes and ears, destroy those crucial guidelines to knowledge, and the whole threat of government intervention is almost completely eliminated.

Source: Murray N. Rothbard

Topics: Central Planning

In his memoirs, Arthur Crock, the former Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times, said, “The United States merits the distinction of having discarded its past and its meaning in one of the briefest spans in modern history.” Why don’t we look at those other nations that chose the path of government intervention before us? The British parliament has been debating what to do about the steel industry. It’s nationalized, it’s theirs, it’s losing $20 million a week. In all the debate, no one on either side has suggested the most common sense, logical answer. Put it back out where it was in the private sector in private ownership where it wasn’t losing $20 million a week. Sweden has long been held up to view as proof that socialism will work. In 1976 the Swedes went to the polls and voted against Karl Marx. They voted out the Swedish Prime Minister. Probably the straw that broke the camel’s back was a change in the income tax rates. At $33,000 of earnings in Sweden, the tax rate is 102%. We’ve had enough of sideline kibitzers telling us this system, which they themselves have thrown out of sync with their social tinkering, can only be saved by more of the same until we have a total government planning and management of our lives. What I’ve really been trying to say, I suppose, is that government has legitimate functions, which it should perform, and it performs well. Our problem is when government goes outside its proper province and attempts to do those things which belong in private hands — that’s when we get in trouble.

Source: Ronald Reagan
1978 Automotive Age Western Dealers Conference

Topics: Central Planning; Income Tax

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