Forget Gov't, Biz, Labor: The Last Big Unit to Perform Worth a Damn Was Randy Johnson
Perhaps channeling Steve Martin (another '70s innovator), Michael Barone wants to get small:
The Big Government of 1970 looked a lot like the Big Government of the 1940s. The same Big Businesses that dominated the Fortune 500 list in 1940 did so in 1970. The list of Big Labor unions remained pretty much the same.
About 1970, these Big Units lost their edge. Big Government got mired in wars on poverty and in Vietnam. Big Business got hidebound and bureaucratic. Big Labor started to shrink….
What we see is Big Government colluding with Big Business and trying to breathe life into Big Labor.
Their financial policy has been to freeze the big banks into place. Their industrial policy was to preserve as much as they could of General Motors and Chrysler for the benefit of the United Auto Workers. Their health care policy was designed to benefit Big Pharma and other big players. Their housing policy has been to try to maintain existing prices. Their macroeconomic economic policy was to increase the size and scope of existing government agencies to what looks to be the bursting point.
The Obama Democrats, faced with a grave economic crisis, responded with policies appropriate to the Big Unit America that was disappearing during the president's childhood….
But Big Unit policies are not a good fit for a country that has grown out of the wreckage the Big Units made of things in the 1970s.
And while we're at it, down with Steve Martin, too, who was a refreshing counterpart to post-war comedians and then became as unfunny and semi-serious as Jerry Lewis ever was.
Hat tip: Tim Carney's Twitter feed.
MLB Pitcher Randy Johnson engages in really creative destruction:
