Sunday, September 05, 2004

More Marshall Plan

The thing about the Marshall Plan was that it wasn't just about throwing money into reconstruction. Though it was that, too (little known fact: Britain was the recipient of the most Marshall Plan dollars). But, its success involved serious people thinking hard about how to take the existing European societies, taking into account the various stakeholders and the conflicts between them, and figuring out how to fashion a transition to the modern mixed economies they still possess today. It didn't involve a bunch of Heritage/AEI flunkies cruising in and trying to declare by fiat some sort of flat tax privatized parody of a libertarian paradise.