In Uncle Sam’s 2020 fiscal year that began on October 1, 2019, it is estimated that the federal government will spend around $4.4 trillion, of which about $1 trillion will be with borrowed money to cover the budget deficit of that amount.
In 1951, German free-market economist Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966), delivered a series of lectures in Cairo, Egypt, titled “The Problems of Economic Order.” Looking over the terrain of modern politics and policy thinking in the world at that time, he told his audience,
If I were asked to say what appeared to me as one of the gravest features of our time I would answer: One of the worst things is that people do not seem to stop and think and ask themselves quietly what exactly they are doing…. More and more people no longer know what it means to put first things first and to think in terms of the principles involved. Consequently, only a few still have a real philosophy which separates the essential from the accidental and which puts everything in its place….
Confusion, loss of orientation and lack of philosophical insight are worse than ever, and so we are drifting on an uncharted sea. We are running after current events, instead of stopping to reach the solid grounds of principles and to ask ourselves seriously what have been the reasons why so much goodwill, energy, intelligence, time, and money have been wasted or not given the result we had the right to expect.
Röpke’s words need to be heeded today as much as when he spoke them nearly 70 years ago. And this is never truer than in the midst of an election cycle such as the one we are currently in. A good deal of the focus in the news and social media is on the seemingly unending promises of those offering themselves as candidates for the presidency of the United States.
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