Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for November 27, 2014

Transcript:

Enjoy this Classic Tom the Dancing Bug Every Thursday Vintage 1999 Panels from the annals of the Tom the Dancing Bug archive Check back every Friday for a fresh, brand new Tom the Dancing Bug! Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling Everyone Agrees: The Free Market Works!! Michael Davies, C.E.O., Apex Steel The economy works perfectly when left alone! Except the government has to help U.S. industries against foreign competitors. That's needed to correct for outside forces. Stanley Buhl, owner, the Cincinnati Large Mammals Basketball Team Sure, the market sets the price for everything. That's fair AND efficient. Except obviously we need salary caps to correct for systemic flaws in our industry. Sheila Reiter, labor economist When the government gets involved in the economy, it only creates inefficiencies. Except that what I call the "Labor-Gap Internalities" creates the need for extensive worker protection laws. Tony Shore, manager, Sweet-Um Sourballs Absolutely. The government's got to stay out of private business. It's the American way. Except markets fail in the Sourball Industry, so we need the state to support economic development. Erik Walden, Practitioner of the Ancient Art of Puppet Mimery. The government's role in the economy's got to be limited to the essentials. Providing infrastructure, enforcing contracts and property rights and, of course, subsidizing dead and dying art forms. Peter Szpak, professor of Communist history Yes, as long as basic assumptions hold, the free market does yield optimal results. Except that those assumptions are never true, so the state should own everything. Man: Right! Wait a minute...