• The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and clamouring for safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. - H.L. Mencken

Government CAUSES poverty. It can't cure it.

Posted by Eric Smith on 19th August 2010 6:37pm

For how long now have governments been trying to end poverty? And yet we still continue this nonsense:

Anglicare Australia and the Salvation Army have teamed up with other charitable religious organisations to call for the next federal government to develop a 10 year national plan aimed at tackling poverty and disadvantage in the community.

Henry Hazlitt so eloquently explains why this is a pipedream. Government redistribution is the cause of poverty, not the cure. And the idea of a "10-year National Plan" is reminiscent of the failed Soviet 5-year plans.

I'm sure we all remember this from 1987:

 

 

Of course, Mr Hawke now says "It was a silly shorthand thing, I should have just said what was in the distributed speech."

Yes you should have Mr Hawke. Yes you should have.

Fri, 20/08/2010 - 3:40pm — Michael Conaghan

End poverty?

"Other traditional radical goals - such as the "abolition of poverty" - are, in contrast to this one, truly utopian, for man, simply by exerting his will, cannot abolish poverty. Poverty can only be abolished through the operation of certain economic factors - notably the investment of savings in capital - which can only operate by transforming nature over a long period of time." - Murray N. Rothbard, Why Be Libertarian?