COTD Plural: Of Cargo Cults, P.J. O'Rourke And Reynolds Law

Ouch:

America at Crossroads: It’s all about $94 | The Daily Caller: "Tim Noah's entire list is a masterpiece of "cargo cult" magical thinking. Build the control towers and the landing strips, and the American planes full of riches will come back! If raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour is such a great idea, why doesn't he propose that we end poverty altogether by the simple expedient of raising it to $50? Instead of imposing government price controls on college tuition, why not have scholarships for high-achieving students in fields that lead to better goods and services -- medicine and engineering and scientific research, rather than sociology and fuzzy studies? And before we "re-regulate Wall Street," how about keeping in mind P.J. O'Rourke's observation: “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”"

Heh. And look over at the quote that's been sitting near the top of my right sidebar for a very long time. And Reynold's law you say?

"The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them." -- Reynolds' Law

Oh, and at the post that crystalized Reynold's Law you will find this:

Not coincidentally, progressives accumulate power for themselves, not only by seizing it as a necessary means to their goals but by aggravating the very social problems they promise to address, thus creating an ever more powerful argument that something has to be done.

And of course, Ayn Rand explained all of this long ago in her various works which is of course why she is so despised by the left...