Instead, to say that nobody knows how to create economic activity is to self-marginalize. Politicians do not want to hear that at all. They want to hear that there is an Output Gap, and their spending can help to fill it.
Somewhere along the way, during the last 50 years, the critique of capitalism changed from condemning its failure to spread the wealth to condemning the very opposite. Suddenly the great sin of capitalism was that it was producing too much, making us all too materialistic, fueling economic growth at the expense of other values, spreading middle-class decadence, and generally causing society to be too caught up in productivity and too focused on the standard of living.
Don Boudreaux on fair trade: "The only fair policy — and the only one that ensures long-run prosperity for all — is a policy in which no one’s consumer sovereignty is ever sacrificed"
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