Too Big to Succeed

New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur Carol Roth shows how big government caused the 2020 economic collapse.Coming off a year with historically low unemployment, the American economy suffered the biggest financial collapse in history. But, unlike previous recessions, it wasn't caused by a systemic industry issue or even the Covid pandemic; what overturned the American economy—and will make it more difficult for the average American to recover—was the bloated, incompetent government at all levels. While many people looked to point the finger solely at Donald Trump, the truth is that this collapse was the culminations of decades of government creep that allowed governors to act like tyrants and for too much emphasis to be placed on the federal government's role. While Main Street suffered like never before, the stock market continued to reach new highs. How could this be?Consider: this downturn happened after years of a runaway Federal Reserve System, a toxic relationship which brought China more capitalism and moved the US further towards central planning, and continued big government decisions which, done under the guise of helping the little guys, led to out of control spending and a large transfer of wealth from the average American to government cronies, leaving a generation saddled with debt in its wake. It's not just past decisions which hurt the economy. While the past built the path, many of the decisions that directly impacted small business and the backbone of the economy were made by state and local government officials, including incredibly damaging early decisions made in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which created a big-government blueprint that ended up not only being deadly, but skewing the economic decision making model for the rest of the states. Added on top of hypocritical actions that found politics instead of science and/or economics driving decisions, small business owners were thrown in jail for trying to make a living, while cities were experiencing extreme violence with few arrests. It's inevitable that a big government model that has gotten away from the concept of protecting individual rights and embraced being a one-stop solution for everything would struggle to be a help versus a hindrance in this critical time. In the end, we saw the outcome of a bloated US government that was too big to succeed.