There are a three elements to economic recovery: people must need to buy things, they must have the money to buy them, and they must be believe that that the future is worth investing in. Every economic downturn leads to people postponing purchases of new cars, new homes, and new consumer goods. After a while, we expect people to be compelled to catch up with purchases; the old car cannot be fixed and must be replaced, and so forth. What’s remarkable about the current poor economy is how little of the automatic bounce back we’ve seen. We look to the factors of money and confidence to explain the lack of recovery.

It’s a straightforward observation: when government is presented with a problem, there is a strong tendency to use some form of rationing as a major part of the solution. We see this in health care, water supplies, electricity, and many other aspects of government regulated or government-run operations. It’s is a reasonable to unexpected emergencies, like World War II shortages or hurricane interruptions, But it is an unreasonable response to chronic problems. So why is it the preferred tool? I think it is because it does not require long term planning, it enhances government authority, and it perpetuates an illusion of fairness.