Michael Novak On Hillarynomics

WE’VE ALREADY cast a jaundiced eye on Hillary Clinton’s “on your own” speech at a technical college in New Hampshire in which she castigates the “on your own” policies of the Bush administration and proposes her “we’re all in it together” economic plan of taxes, spending, and regulation.

Now Michael Novak takes a look at the economic policy of the future Clinton administration revealed in her speech. First he takes a look at the vision of the Bush administration.

Bush has set forth a realizable dream of universal ownership for all Americans — the dream of owning their own personal Social Security accounts, their own medical accounts, their homes or apartments, and their own investment plans. He proposes this as real, life-changing help for the poor, by way of independence and self-determination, in local communities of caring. Senator Clinton transforms this vision into the spinning, hellish “on your own” society.

Democrats are always suggesting that Republicans just don’t care about people. So Clinton reminds the students:

“We have sent a message to our young people that if you don’t go to college and you don’t have a high-paying job — something like a basketball player or an entertainer, or maybe someone in a corporation — that you’re thought less of in America.”

Only someone “who doesn’t know any craftsmen, manual workers, or independent electricians and plumbers (who nowadays can bring in more than a hundred grand a year)” could say something like that, according to Novak.

What the Irish saloonkeeper Mr Dooley should have said: “The fella what said that Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels unnerestimated th’ possibilities of Compassion.”

In short, the dream of economic reds is not a vision of an America driven forward by new entrepreneurs, new inventors, and those untamed “animal spirits” that are released by a good system of incentives. Rather, it is a vision of rule-making, curbs, limitations, bureaucratic selection among alternatives, new burdens on the private sector — and larger powers unwisely given to the federal government.

The question is whether the $100,000 plumbers will vote for the economic redness, the dependency and victimhood of Hillary Clinton, or whether they will vote for independence and ownership.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.