Whenever the so called free market fails us, as it so often does, Jeff Jacoby feels strangely compelled to rise to it’s defense no matter how big an ass he makes of himself.
Today for example, he thunders on self righteously about current round of extortionate gas prices. He blames the whole mishaugas on meddling politicians and hurricane Katrina conveniently forgetting that regular gasoline had already gone up a dollar a gallon over the course of the summer.
He then sternly lectures the price gouged to suck it up and buy less gas if they wanna bring down the price.
Which is hard news for America’s farmers and other citizens who depend on private vehicles for their livelihood.
Regardless of the harshness of his argument, Jacoby then goes on to make an entirely bizarre comparison between gas prices the price of land.
Clearly, young Jeff managed to avoid taking macroeconomics 101 as an undergraduate. Gasoline is a perishable item, once purchased by the end user it cannot appreciate in value, it can be consumed. Land however does appreciate in value, either slowly or quickly and depending on a host of factors. This is why five acres of prime building real estate in Henniker N.H. is considered safe collateral by a bank, and five hundred gallons of gasoline is not.
Well, what does this tell us?
Times like this remind me of how badly Jeff wants to be a Praetorian, but his nerves fails him and then sometimes his very logic goes south.
Jacoby just can’t make the mark, today’s thesis is the sort of tangled piffle that would be laughed out of the office of any Kampus Konservative Bundist Newspaper in the land.
I give him an A for effort,,,he wants to worship the free market like a good post conservative pagan, but he keeps tripping on his unkempt shoelaces and plunging into the baptismal font like he’s Jerry Lewis or something.
Dopey-assed reasoning like this, does the wretched wasteland that is the Globe’s op-ed page no credit.
Besides, isn’t it ironic that Jeff, that prophet of the jet propelled libertarian future of plenty and privatized elementary schools should be snarling at the peasants to “eat their peas and be quiet”?
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