Capitol Ideas/Sound Minds

...No longer was he anyone's pet house conservative...

...At this central panel, where there are levers and dials (as in an airplane cockpit or power-station control-room), sit some very people called economists who work for the government...

...The economists at CezControl may ease, forward or bacl k,., the levers of power...

...Surely it has crossed the mind of that eminent student of Soviet affairs, George F. Kennan...

...in'roduction as "the nation's best columnist on economics and society...

...He continues: "Americans do well to remember, however, that this nation's greatest economic growth took place from 1880-1930, when we took in 37 million immigrants who, with their offspring, accounted for fully 60% ofour huge population growth 'in that period...

...it is "in mind," not in pocket...

...That reminds me of the time I met Barry Bosworth, then billed as- the "house conservative" at the Brookings Institution...

...Such laws discriminate against blacks because they work to the disadvantage of latecomers and outsiders who are trying to work their way onto the ladder of economic achievement...

...The dials are mostly phoney, allowing economists to play around with statistics and enjoy the pretense that they are scientists...

...Where was I? I wanted to say that although he suggests we should ignore some of the official statistical dials-such as GNP-Brookes is paradoxically extremely good with statistics of his own...

...When it comes to politics, Westerners are stupendously optimistic given the paucity of good news that they have had to go on in this century...

...Don't be misled by those "strange new respect" stories about the delightful lanky homespun senator from Wyoming in the East Coast Establishment press...

...Incidentally, we should all heave a great sigh of relief that the dreadful new immigration bill supported by Senator Alan Simpson, Representative Romano Mazzoli, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Mother Jones finally failed in the House of Representatives...

...His proposal to reduce the USSR's European arsenal of over 600 me Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...

...otherwise it would not have been necessary to seize it...

...In the old-fashioned view, let me explain, "the economy" is thought of as an interconnecting -system of pipes with "liquidity" flowing through them...

...raise t.etc...

...Let him grumble about the treatment he has been getting...

...Today, -by contrast, "less than 30% of our annual population growth" comes from immigration...

...steered" this way or that by government economists, who of course have an ear cocked to the advice of good old Bart and good old Leonard...

...Recently the Wall Street Journal's Suzanne Garment alleged that Soviet jailers under Andropov's direct control had been particularly cruel: raising Shcharansky's expectations for amelioration of his penal regimen and then plunging him into the most ghastly form of solitary confinement, 5 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983...

...Finally, a word of congratulations to Melvyn B. Krauss for his immensely readable Development Without Aid, which sets forth the recent evidence for the case, originally made by P.T...

...They believe, with Ben Wattenberg, that Latin America and the Far East have blanketed us with a horde of uncompromising anti-Communists...

...There is no nation on earth, at least no socialist nation, that they are not willing to see in a new light if only some pretty music can be played...

...his complaints as the delusions of a sick man or a spoilsport...

...To them, Rowen, Silk, et al...

...11 E D I T O R I A L FREE SHCHARANSKY Did it ever occur to you that this whole Cold War ppther extending from the 1940s to the present could have been avoided if Stalin or one of his successors had been astute enough to hire a sharp New York public relations agent...

...Shame on you, Senator Simpson...

...He has lots of charts and tables, and sometimes you get the feeling that he painstakingly compiles them himself...

...Now why not raise Shcharansky from his cell...

...This colonial legacythe legacy of Lords Kaldor and Keynes-the Left is not eager to part with...

...Andropov's promise to reduce his nuclear force was a lovely lilt, a trio by Schubert on a cold Bavarian night...

...Well, witness the change that came over Barry Bosworth after he stepped into this Central Control by Tom Bethell Panel job and his youthful countenance had been spotted on evening TV a few times...

...I congratulate him, but there is something else he can do to present the Soviet Union in the halo that he doubtless seeks...

...Releasing Shcharansky now would be a very savvy act...

...This would have constituted the most burdensome increment to regulation since the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency...

...Walter Williams, a black economist (by which I mean he is not one of your certified "Safe," anointed octoroons), has written a book called The State Against Blacks, in which he points out that, despite our loudly professed "concern" about race, many federal, state, and local laws discriminate against blacks...

...and made U.S...

...This in turn "stimulates," or "applies the brakes to," or sometimes "overheats" the unitary, interconnected machine called "the economy...

...The whole system is designed in such a way as to be controlled from a central point...

...Unexpected conclusion: "The nation as a whole may 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1983 well be suffering more from restricted immigration than benefiting from it...

...Hence the title of Brookes's book...

...In the more modern view, epitomized by Warren Brookes, there really is no such Central Control panel...

...But both have the digit "one" written on them, so both are said to contribute equally to the chimera called "gross national product...

...Those who wish to see the Israeli economy improve should urge the reduction of its aid...

...employers responsible for enforcing the immigration laws by applying criminal penalties to those who hired "illegal aliens...

...made millions of people in this country eventually eligible for welfare and union organizing, and thus reluctant to perform the many jobs that it is illegal for American citizens to perform (those that are below minimum wage...

...The first one I perused was The Economy in Mind by Warren T. Brookes, whom George Gilder describes in an...

...He also has a way of unexpectedly juxtaposing one set of figures against another, and, from the comparison, drawing some original conclusion which lay right under our noses all the time but which no one had quite noticed...

...But economists are human, too, so they don't like to do this...

...Surely the Soviet government can depreciate by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...I counsel releasing him posthaste...

...To those who have wondered if economic columnizing would ever rise above the oldfashioned approach established by Hobart Rowen, Leonard Silk, and several other old buffers of the Keynesian persuasion, Warren Brookes will come as treasure...

...Only necessity can beget painful reforms...

...dium-range nuclear missiles to the 160 presently maintained by Britain and France was a splendid public relations gesture...

...To the extent that there really is central control, i.e., to the extent that government can cudgel us all over the heads with prison-threatening laws, 'is operation is harmful to the country as a whole...

...He cites occupational and business licensing, minimum-wage laws, and so on...

...Nevertheless, the laws are stamped with the seal of liberal approval because they are derived from union influence and pressure...

...Even though the many Cubans who have arrived in Florida recently were penniless, they "brought their wealth with them...

...In short, this "economy" contraption can be Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...This, rather than racism or exploitation, has been the true colonial legacy...

...One of the best things about immigrants is that they are mostly pro-American...

...Unions, of course, are legal conspiracies against non-union employees, among whom most blacks are numbered...

...He points out, for example, that the GNP statistics are a con game because they include (as we are never told) government spending as a component of national product...

...Since this spending is achieved by coercively diverting dollars away from the private sector, it' follows that money in the public, sector has less value than it had before it was seized by the law...

...It is not without precedent to release a prisoner to the West at his wife's behest...

...Somehow I seem to have strayed rather far from Warren Brookes...

...The catalyst of all this has been Shcharansky's wife, a very sympathetic lady who so far as I can tell is no political threat whatsoever to Andropov and the colleagues...

...The column also appears from time to time in Human Events, and in the Washington Times, the welcome and much-needed addition to the Capital's press...

...Of course, this money had nowhere to go except into prices...

...Well, I hereby offer my services to Soviet party leader Andropov on a pro bono basis...

...send him to Zurich on the first plane...

...Wealth is metaphysical, not material...

...Now he was thereto tell us that prices could be cajoled and talked to sternly...

...As an occasional columnist on economics and society, I must concur, although reluctantly...

...In other words, they must be willing to do things that undermine their own sense of power and importance...

...He and many like him see much of the friction between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as the painful consequence of two nations' failure to communicate...

...A dollar spent by the Department of Health and Human Services thus does not have the same value as a dollar invested in a new company...

...Since then a growing international chorus composed of practically every element of political -expression from Ronald Reagan to Francois Mitterrand has sought Shcharansky's release...

...I don't think Walter Williams can be too popular among the anointed ones or the liberal choir for urging an end to this de facto discrimination against blacks, and for that reason his book is worth reading...

...In short, market economists talk themselves out of jobs and are bad for the profession...

...I wish Krauss had mentioned one country which might dramatically illustrate the point of his the-.-s dealing with foreign aid to Israel...

...Right...

...Back in the 1930s, Mrs...

...For example, Brookes points out that almost everyone today is complaining about the soaring rate of immigration-Cubans and Mexicans flooding into the country, and so on...

...Admonition was_ the correct solution to the inflation problem...

...Warren Brookes is very good, as anyone who has read his column in the Boston Herald-American must know...

...Shcharansky, once something of a whiz kid on the Helsinki Watch Committee, was arrested by Soviet authorities five years ago and sentenced to 13 years in prison...

...address their advice...

...They receive a lot of it, and their economy is chaotic...

...Only by relaxing this central control, that is, by decentralizing the operations of the "power station" can the government economists do any good...

...The GNP dial in Central Control is a sham...

...The idea is not all that silly...

...brand-new money every day from Federal Reserve computers...

...The Solzhenitsyn lament has already, it seems, been played out in the West...

...It would have restricted immigration...

...This advice always turns out to be in the direction, of making Central Control more important (eliminate auton omous economic units...

...Although the evidence is now decisively on the side of Krauss and Bauer, we characteristically hear nothing but silence from the opposition...

...Shcharansky has been on a hunger strike and is in dreadful physical condition...

...Franco's Spain freed Koestler after Dorothy Koestler aroused fellow writers in London...

...He could free a sick and anguished man now wasting away in one of his modern prisons, Anatoly Shcharansky...

...C A P I T O L D E A S t r* SOUND MINDS To cheer me up for Christmas, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research sent me a small parcel of books published under its auspices...

...Western intellectuals of a distinctly anti-Soviet passion are getting a lot of mileage out of Shcharansky's imprisonment...

...Now a brief word about the two other books from the Manhattan Institute, both dealing with economic problems and both offering unconventional theses...

...So, the more of them the better...

...He then left the government, and I have noticed that he still occasionally pops up as a great champion of wage and price controls as the solution to rising prices-a solution which I am afraid is more normally advocated (although I am sure not in Barry Bosworth's case) by people who have not read Chapter One of their Introductory Economics Texts, dealing with the important role of prices in economics...

...A few years later, Bosworth went to work for the Carter Administration as Chief Price Controller, the head of something called the Council on Wage and Price Stability, the function of which was to try to u-r-g-e prices not to rise too much at a time when G. William Miller was churning out...

...In case you are still a bit uncertain about immigration, perhaps I can win you over by quoting Mother Jones, the left-wing monthly (January 1983): "Some progressive Americans are worried, and with very good reason, that the political beliefs of many of the new immigrants are dangerously reactionary...

...They are badly needed to offset our home-grown blue-bloods with their tired old faded blue genes...

...Andre Malraux's dramatics got Malraux freed from captivity in Cambodia...

...Bauer, that foreign aid harms the countries that receive it, and that the big-government, high-tax policies bequeathed to the decolonized nations by the postWorld War II socialists have done nothing but harm...

...Bosworth made the simple point that there were understandably not many free-market economists, because if the theories of the free marketeers were correct, there was no real need for economists...