Pure Common Sense

Needless to say, not everyone is as thrilled as I am to see Peter Schiff in the race for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat.  Michael Sean Winters of America:  The National Catholic Weekly, wrote an article shortly after Schiff entered the race which called his qualifications into question.  Winters demonstrated a clear philosophical ignorance in relation to Schiff in his article.  He compares Schiff’s economic philosophy to that of Ayn Rand and belittles his “libertarian” label.  While Schiff is strongly in favor of the market, his philosophy is more comparable to Friedman, Hayek and Rothbard than it is to Ayn Rand.  Ayn Rand was actually an Objectivist, not a libertarian, contrary to the popular belief.  Winters also made a common accusation to Schiff that since he believes the recession is the “solution, not the problem,” he is therefore indifferent to the suffering of others during the recession.  This is not the case at all – Schiff just thinks in the long term and sees the current recession (which he predicted years ahead of time while other mainstream economists scoffed in his face) as an unfortunate but necessary evil to get us back on the right track eventually.

“Senators are generalists, not specialists. Senators may develop areas of legislative expertise but it is far more important that a Senator be able to hire an expert and to make their expertise effective than to be an expert himself.”

Ummm…actually, I would much rather the Senator be an expert himself on key issues because he would be better informed, less reliant on special interests and not have to blow tax dollars to hire some overpaid consultant to do the job he was elected to do. Read the rest of this entry »