Maybe Obama Doesn't Believe in Government, Either

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a storm that not only washed away New York and New Jersey neighborhoods but also dumped about three feet of snow where I live, cutting power lines and wreaking general havoc, I have come to a conclusion regarding the response of the U.S. Government and specifically the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): Barack Obama just does not have enough faith in government.

How would I draw that conclusion? Following the disaster in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina (which was a Category 3 storm), Krugman said that the federal government's response was bad because the Bush administration was filled with people who don't believe in government:

... the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

 So, Krugman had an explanation as to why FEMA was incompetent in New Orleans. However, now that the Obama administration's response to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (a Category 1 that quickly weakened into a tropical storm) has been exposed as utterly inept, so far there is silence from the Great Man at Princeton. After all, there is no ideological barrier keeping FEMA from being the Super Agency Krugman has claimed it should be (and allegedly was under Bill Clinton), so why the failure?

While it should be logical to an economist (except Krugman, who is not an economist, but rather a political operative who can do math), centralized government planning in which agents from Washington dictate policy to people who actually have more information is a loser from the beginning. Furthermore, the so-called price-gouging laws are responsible not only for horrific shortages but also discourage entrepreneurs from bringing supplies into the stricken areas, which means the recovery takes longer.

(Krugman is a Keynesian, and Keynesians really don't worry about price controls since everyone knows that prices really don't matter, except when they can be put into indices so that Keynesians can put them on the vertical axis of the Aggregate Demand--Aggregate Supply graphs.)

So, we can say that governments at all levels are involved in the aftermath of the storm, with FEMA taking the lead. And we can see how this is working. Not very well. I guess Obama just doesn't believe enough in the power of the State to work miracles. He needs to make a call to Princeton -- if the lines are not still down.