Intervention and recovery

The Washington Post:

[Trey Cook, the genial chief operating officer of Savannah Tire] wants health-care reform, but he does not want government to play a big role in the final product. "The things we heard about health care as a business owner are scary," he said. "That puts the brakes on decision making. You certainly aren't going to make any decisions to expand."

Cook said the best way to get business people like him to hire more workers is to have government lower taxes while easing up on mandates and regulations. "I know people laugh at the term 'trickle-down economics,' " he said. "But it works. I hire more people, they get to spend money, and so on."

I've been making the argument for quite a while that government can best assist the economic recovery by simply scaling back taxes and regulation, or, failing that, simply staying out of the way. Its various lurches and threats to impose new regulations are creating vast amounts of uncertainty, which is simply kryptonite to a healthy business climate.