As the US Presidential election becomes front-and-center news, I respectfully submit this thought.

Why do we give so much power to so few people who don’t really know what they're talking about? We now have a central government so vast that bureaucrats are making decisions markets should make.

One or 2 people can't know what millions do - no way no how. We let Barney Frank make mistakes for us just because he has so much power.

If you really listen to the candidates, they have no idea how an economy like ours actually works. Neither do their advisors.

But then, what business is it of theirs to know? Why is it the President’s job to get everyone a job? Last I remember, that's what the Soviet Premier was supposed to do.

A market economy works from the bottom up, where entrepreneurs find a need and fill it. They become experts at production, which creates income and wealth.

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A government responds only by taking money away from one group of people, who tend to know what to do with that money. They then give it to other people, who tend not to know what to do with that money. A government creates no wealth.

The more power you give to a central government, the less wealth (growth), and the more imbalances.

The biggest mistake we're making is to give so much power to Washington. Take away the power, eliminate all the special interests and you eliminate the government-created imbalances along with them.

Reagan began to hatch a plan to decentralize the government, to give more power back to local politics, where people could touch their own reality and have an effect. Much the way a market system is supposed to work.

Someone with a lot of power killed that plan (yes, people with more power than even the President). But again, without a base to funnel that power, those people are left powerless too.

I told Minyans a while ago that the cause of many of our problems was a government grown too big and too powerful. Shysters would never have been able to lend money to people that couldn’t afford to borrow it if our government hadn't advocated it.

Now the government's using the problem to get more power. I'm not advocating no regulation - but I do advocate good regulation, with only proper authority granted to enforce it.

But we are making a huge mistake long-term, which is getting more and more short-term. We're allowing the government to grossly distort our market economy.