Practicing What We Preach

Robert Wenzel on how anti-gold proponent Paul Samuelson got rich

Their academic nonsense says one thing, but their real world activities are quite different. In academia, Samuelson wrote about the efficiencies of the market and was anti-gold. In the real world, he sought out traders that could find the inefficiencies in the markets, and he owned gold.

Incoherence seems to be a familiar quality that can be observed with interventionists, or simply, not practising what they preach.

I’d further add the following:

Interventionists want higher taxes, yet they refuse to pay taxes or volunteer to pay taxes (or donate their earnings) outside of government edict. They want the others, specifically “soaking the rich”, to suffer the burden of higher taxes...but never on them.

Interventionists want “self sufficiency” or local production. Yet they ride in foreign made cars, buy foreign food, use foreign appliances, clothes, and many other foreign products or services. They even travel abroad or conduct business with foreign partners.

Interventionists spite free trade: Yet they engage in voluntary exchange...everyday! They even sell their advocacies via the markets (books, journals, speaking engagements etc…)!

Interventionists declare that war is a good way to buoy the economy. Yet they are afraid to go to the front lines to engage in combat!

Interventionists want someone’s activity regulated. It’s definitely not theirs!

Interventionists preach depression economics. Yet as experts ensconced in the ivory towers, they are compensated by institutions (school, Wall Street or media), sell books (!), or receive grants from government sponsored entities and can hardly take on market positions that supports their biases, something like how Paul Samuelson made his fortune.

In one of the episodes of the comedy series, Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld advised his friend George Costanza who seem to get everything wrong, “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right”.

This must be the unstated rallying slogan of the interventionists. Paul Samuelson looked like one.