American history is often a target of substantial revision by progressive professors.

University of Tennessee student Adam Prosise, a senior in economics, takes a look at the Presidential administration of a perennial liberal favorite and draws an intriguing analogy:

The captain of the Titanic, Edward Smith, decided to cut through icy northern waters in order to reduce the time of the voyage. He responded to the pressures the White Star Line placed on him so the Titanic would live up to its hype. In essence, Smith placed more value on the timeliness of the voyage than on the safety of his ship and the people aboard.

This matters to students at UT because in the Titanic disaster, we find a microcosm for the incentives that drive the decisions made by elected officials. A better understanding of this process highlights the inherent tension between political and economic incentives, and thereby leads us down the road where solutions become a reality.

Whether it’s intervention in the market to address externalities, or “experimentation” to see if there exists a better means of addressing economic shortcomings, the economic decisions that affect us all are subject to the whimsy of elected officials.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is perhaps the most successful politician in American History. He was elected to the presidency an unprecedented four times and is still regarded by many as one of our greatest leaders.

Our friend Thomas Sowell – the Hoover institute economist – elaborates:

“During (FDR’s) career and for decades thereafter, many saw his policies responsible for getting the country out of the Great Depression. However, with the passing years and additional research and analysis, more and more economists and historians have seen his policies as needlessly prolonging the depression by generating a pervasive uncertainty as to what the government was going to do next, leaving both investors and consumers hesitating to part with their money.”

….Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw intones about the main question all too often on the minds of our elected officials: What should they be doing now to keep the economy on track? The right answer: absolutely nothing.

As I have enumerated in the past, I believe that some market intervention is necessary. Markets failures do exist, but the degree of government intervention is frequently too severe.We need more Calvin Coolidges at the helm of the economy, rather than leaders like Capt. Smith of the Titanic. Until then, we will not have solutions that fix these failures; instead we will continue to be saddled with policies that deepen recessions and prolong the pain.