Scaring Us to Death

There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year's politics: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." The media, economic "experts" and both presidential candidates are making bad-talking our economy key features of their campaign messages. For politicians and their hangers-on, keeping the populace alarmed is a strategy to seize more control over our lives.

The Chicken Littles are in a flap about the economy and are intent on impressing us by implementing more regulations and spending more money to prop up the sky which is quite gloomy, but not falling.