David McElroy

I’ve been reading your articles in the last two weeks and find myself agreeing with what you say. Have you ever thought about running for office? We need people like you!

Have I thought about it? Yes. Do I have any intention of doing it now? No.

There was a time in the past when I believed it was possible to bring about change through the electoral political system, so I was seriously interested in running for office. Or maybe I was simply still egotistical enough to believe that maybe I could make a difference. Either way, I don’t believe now it’s possible to solve the problems, both because of the size of the problems and because of the nature of the voting public.

Even if I thought it might be possible — in the pragmatic sense — to fix things, I’ve come to the conclusion that the entire system of choosing a person to “run the country” is pretty darned immoral. (I know we have Congress to technically make the laws, but you know what I mean.) I’m happy to have you join us. If you stick around (and maybe poke through older articles), I think my position on this will become more clear. Either way, you flatter me by suggesting the possibility. Thanks.

I am currently a sophomore enrolled at [Big Name] University. I am currently in a Political Science course, in which I have to write a paper explaining the purpose of radical thought in our political tradition. I read a few of your columns on radical ideas and I was curious to see what role you think radical thought plays in U.S politics. Thanks in advance.

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Never let it be said that Barack Obama hasn’t delivered on any promises. He promised more jobs, and he’s delivered. The only problem is that those jobs are the ones we want the least — government employees, the kind we have to pay for.

Economist Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University put together this chart showing the trend of federal employment over the last decade. You can see the sharp uptick in the last three years. She comments:

“On net, since January 2008, federal employment has increased by 85,000 – counter to the movements of employment in state and local governments and in the private sector.  In aggregate statistics such as the unemployment rate, this increase has obscured harsh private sector job losses.”

The good news — if you want to look at it that way — is that 85,000 additional people have jobs. The bad news is that taxpayers are having to pay for these unproductive jobs. The further bad news is that the productive part of the economy is doing even worse than the unemployment numbers suggest, because this unproductive hiring masks the number of true job losses.

When are the neo-Keynesians calling the shots in Washington going to accept that their economic voodoo doesn’t work?

There’s a war in this country between people in love with consumerism and those who seem dead set on stopping it. I’m a conscientious objector in that war, because I’m not on either side. I defend the right of people to be as shallow and materialistic as they want to be, but it doesn’t mean I like it.

Few things symbolize our consumer culture the way the Christmas buying season does, and the focal point of that season seems to be the traditional opening — the day after Thanksgiving that we’ve come to call Black Friday.

Three days ago, I wrote about the efforts of anti-consumer activists — who I’d say are downright socialist in their orientation — to stop people from buying from major companies on Black Friday this year. The people waiting in line for a Black Friday sale here Thursday night certainly didn’t believe that big companies were dictating anything to them. It’s when I look at these two groups — the materialist-oriented throngs of shoppers on one side and the anti-consumerist socialist activists on the other — that I realize just how ambivalent I really am about this. I don’t like or agree with either side.

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