Not only does de Blasio call for an end to private property and the total transformation of the economy via the “Green New Deal,” but he also has pushed “egalitarian” initiatives like ending charter schools in New York. (The fact that charter schools perform better than their regular public-school counterparts galls de Blasio and he believes they must be stopped.)
https://mises.org/wire/why-are-progressives-so-bad-governing-0
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Paul Krugman declared that the Bush administration failed in its response to the flooding of New Orleans because the administration consisted of people, according to Krugman, who didn’t “believe in government.” One cannot say that about progressives who truly believe in government, and believe in unlimited government at that. Yet, it also is clear that when in power — and especially when they face no real opposition — progressives generally govern very badly. Why this is so — in direct contradiction to Krugman’s stated belief — requires an examination of the progressive mindset, something Krugman probably is intellectually and emotionally incapable of doing.
Mayor Bill de Blasio: New York’s Progressive Disaster
The first thing to understand about progressives in government is that they have a much different view of “progress” than most other people. For example, even though whatever positive changes New York made in the 1990s and 2000s has been waning during the terms of Mayor Bill de Blasio, de Blasio believes that future “progress” now must come in the form of something other than the decline of crime rates and business growth. Instead, de Blasio, who wears his socialist cap proudly declares that the real threat to New York’s future is private property. He says:
Our legal system is structured to favor private property, (but) people would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. If I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see.
Any competent (or even incompetent, for that matter) economist can tell us how such a scenario plays out in the long run, and the economic chaos that was the former Soviet Union stands as Exhibit A, while the New York of the 1970s and the 1980s is Exhibit B. Yes, even in the face of hardcore evidence against his position, de Blasio stands firm. In fact, an entire new wave of politicians in this country calling themselves “progressives” are trying to fashion a “new” economy, one based upon a “Green New Deal,” and other massive interventions into private economic activity. That the experience of socialism never matches its utopian rhetoric seems not to have changed a mind among this new generation of progressives.
If de Blasio is an example of modern progressivism (he even took his honeymoon in Cuba, taking a cue from Bernie Sanders who honeymooned in the USSR shortly before it collapsed), then his words and actions shed light on what progressives consider to be “proper” governance. Not only does de Blasio call for an end to private property and the total transformation of the economy via the “Green New Deal,” but he also has pushed “egalitarian” initiatives like ending charter schools in New York. (The fact that charter schools perform better than their regular public-school counterparts galls de Blasio and he believes they must be stopped.)… Read the rest of this entry »
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