The collectivist narratives we live by

Because few of us can actually wade through and comprehend a federal budget (or even 2,000 pages of health care "reform," as written), most political decisions are based on "narratives" -- histories of how we got here, reduced to a few sentences.

The problem is, if we get the "narrative" wrong, bad outcomes grow far more likely, because we'll be working to solve the wrong problem, or applying larger doses of the medicine that got us here in the first place.

Let's review a few of the "narratives" now in circulation:

1. "It took George W. Bush eight years to create this economic mess. Obviously it's going to take the Obama administration more than two years to get things fixed."

The problem with this narrative isn't that George W. Bush did no economic harm. He did, if only by refusing on principle to go along with much of the unconstitutional guff Congress legislates, as has every president at least since Taft. The problem is that the narrative wrongly implies we're somehow now embarked on a policy opposite to that pursued by both parties from 2001 to 2008.

In fact, Barack Obama draws his economic advisers from the same ranks -- largely Goldman-Sachs and the Federal Reserve Board of New York -- as did Mr. Bush. The current bailout era began under Mr. Bush. Mr. Obama has merely ramped up the same brand of Keynesian interventions to prop up failed enterprises and prevent the purge of mal-investments. How should we expect a dramatic turnaround when essentially the same gang now recommend the same policies, only on a much grander scale?

Central state interventions in the economy were minimal, by today's standards, through the early 1900s -- the period of America's most spectacular growth in wealth -- with the result that most recessions were short-lived and self-correcting.

Our problems started when the power to print money and set its value in terms of gold and silver (today: zero) was transferred from Congress to a group of private bankers operating as the Federal Reserve Board. That happened in 1913 -- the same year our forebears launched the income tax -- followed (as the night follows day) by the divorce of the paper dollar from gold in 1933 and from silver in 1964.

When government is bound to redeem every "dollar note" in gold or silver on demand, they're limited in the amount of paper they can print by the amount of bullion in the vaults. Remove that limit, and they'll eventually print money till it's worthless.

Although all the steps mentioned above came under Democratic presidents, plenty of Republicans went along. Tossing out Republicrats and installing Demopublicans seems to have little impact.

2. It's widely asserted we need more collectivism, more redistribution, because of "the increased gap in wealth between America's rich and poor."

How does this hurt the non-rich? The CEO of the corporation that employs you may enjoy a salary which is a greater multiple of yours than was the case for your great-grandfather and his boss. Grand-grandpa walked to work, while his boss had a horse-drawn carriage or early flivver.

Today, "the poor" drive modest automobiles. Even if your outfit's CEO flies around in a corporate jet, does this "increased gap" mean you're worse off than great-granddad?

No. He was stuck paying the prices of the only store within walking distance, while your car -- and your Internet connection -- allow you to comparison shop around the globe.

With central heating, indoor toilets, hot running water, microwave ovens and home computers, our lifestyles are fabulously more affluent than those of great-grandpa. How does it hurt us that this same system allows the CEO to make millions? It's not as though we're divvying up a fixed pile of wealth.

A great source on this topic is the $15 paperback "It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years," by Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, full of reassuring graphs and charts on wealth, nutrition, environmental protection, even the state of poor Americans.

Nor does it make much sense to whine that 20 percent of America's children "live in poverty" when they enjoy all the amenities described above, and more, while the government simply resets the poverty line each year -- and avoids counting the value of their government "benefits" in its calculations.

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Though they weren't the main topic of my column, I mentioned in passing last week that as a youth, Barack Obama attended a Muslim school in Indonesia, and that his recent trip there and to India had been estimated to cost $200 million per day.

A few readers complained these were "Republican lies."

The source of the $200 million per day estimate for "security, stay and other aspects of the presidential visit" was "a top official of the Maharashtra government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit" as cited Nov. 3 in the Times of India, the paper of record thereabouts (http://miniurl.com/68024.)

The estimate does seem high. Many commentators have backed away from it, though much of the cost will have been for deployment of military assets for security, which makes the true figure elusive -- you rarely want to take the "under" on a Pentagon expenditure. The main point, surely, is that traveling with an entourage of 3,000 courtiers and retainers is hardly a signal of frugality on the part of a government running huge deficits.

As for a reader's assertion that young Obama did not attend "a Muslim school" in Indonesia because he attended "a public school," the writer may be under the impression some version of our First Amendment provides a "separation of church and state" in Indonesia, which is not the case.

Aaron Klein dealt with the issue for WorldNetDaily in 2008 (www.wnd.com/?pageId=60559): "The Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama's childhood Islamic studies," Klein wrote, "some describing him as a religious Muslim. Indeed ... in Obama's autobiography, 'Dreams From My Father,' he acknowledges studying the Quran and describes the public school as 'a Muslim school.'

"'In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Quranic studies,' wrote Obama."

So our source for the "Republican lie" that Barack Obama attended a Muslim school in Indonesia turns out to be ... Barack Obama.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of "The Black Arrow."