Economies cannot grow when they are choked by the weeds of regulations and confiscatory taxes. They cannot grow within an environment where private property rights are not respected and protected by the rule of law. So, too, they cannot effectively function when printing press money is sowed into wasteful activities by the heavy hand of central planners.

The fact is, any prosperity you have enjoyed is not because of government. It’s in spite of it.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner,” noted Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, “but from their regard to their own interest.”

The central planners refuse to accept this. They may consume coffee that’s grown, supplied, roasted, grinded, and brewed, by private enterprise at a profit as they make their way to the Capitol Building. Yet once they arrive, they get to work with their programs to intervene in the economy and direct the flow of capital to their preferred programs.

After two years of the most extreme government intervention in U.S. history, the economy is contracting. First quarter 2022 gross domestic product (GDP) showed an annualized growth rate of negative 1.6 percent. Second quarter GDP results will be released next week. They’ll likely be negative too.