I’ve heard the question asked, “Do you approve of the way the President is handling the economy?”
The very question gives the impression that (a) the President can control the economy, and (b) the President has been granted the authority to do so. By the US Constitution, we the people have granted Congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Even that is a far cry from controlling, or even handling, the economy. But we the people have never granted the President of the United States any authority whatsoever to control or handle the economy. Yet the question is placed before us all the time.
Are the people who ask the question telling us that it would be wise to give the President such power? After all, in an engineering sense, the economy is simply a giant control system. Maybe someone can control the economy to make it more efficient in creating more wealth for everyone.
Well, I’m a PhD electrical engineer, so I know some things about engineering control systems. And the very first thing an engineer needs is a mathematical model of the system he is trying to control.
So show me the mathematical model of the economy that says how much stimulus is needed, how much taxes should be collected, and who should be taxed. As far as I know, there is no such model. I just heard Dennis Kucinich say that we needed a $3 Trillion stimulus, that the first stimulus of only $800 Billion was just too small. How does he know? Maybe the problem was that the stimulus was too big! Without a model, we just don’t know!
That tells me that politicians are making things up when it comes to controlling the economy, probably to improve their own chances of staying in power and to reward their own friends who put them in office. That’s kind of scary, isn’t it? Politicians are playing with our livelihoods just so they can keep their jobs?!
Republican and Democrats agree that politicians already do that. They even have a word for it: “Cronyism.” Of course the Democrats say it is the Republicans that practice cronyism and the Republicans say it’s the Democrats that do. Either way the agreement that cronyism takes place confirms to me that politics is ruling the control of the economy, not mathematics.
So even if we had the perfect mathematical model of the economy, the next thing we would need is a law that says the President (or Congress, whomever we give the authority to) must do what the mathematical model says must be done. Without such a law, the President could ignore what the model says, and instead just reward his cronies with more government bailouts and stimulus money.
But how would we enforce such a law? After all, there is a law that says Congress must produce a budget every year, but the Senate has not ratified a budget in three years. Maybe this fact is damaging the economy. Who knows? So what consequences should government officials be subject to if they don’t do what the laws and the mathematical models say is the right thing to do?
It’s kind of complicated, isn’t it?
Maybe the economy would be better off if no one tried to “handle” it, and if we were never even asked the question, “Do you approve of the way the ________ is handling the economy?”