Another Member of the Reality-Based Community

Recently we've heard a lot of self-indulgent blather from the left wing on how 'free market capitalism is dead.' I've posted about this before, mostly because it presented an overwhelming temptation to call Arianna Huffington nasty names. And in principle, when tempted, I fall.

Anyway, Megan McArdle tackles this issue much better than I did:

Especially odd is the notion that the only tenable position, unless we are to go Marxist, is social democracy. Would we not have had a financial crisis if we'd had really super single-payer health care?

It is true that the belief in both tighter bank regulation and a larger welfare state cluster on the left, but if social democracy is some sort of preventative cure-all, how come the US economy is outperforming places like Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, not to mention the OECD as a whole? Why, if the problem is "American style capitalism", are the biggest GDP declines found elsewhere? I understand that the left finds it politically convenient to link the uninsured and the banking crisis, but this seems only very slightly less silly than blaming it on gay marriage--indeed, looking at the countries worst effected, the latter's correlation seems stronger.

Go read the whole thing.