Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post

Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post ;.. Romney's "Five Point Plan to Grow the Economy" that he touts on his website, is primitive economics almost beyond belief. It returns us to 19th-century government of the few, by the few, with few regulations or insurance against the kinds of events that brought on the Great Depression and Great Recession, for starters.

Conservatives in general and Mitt Romney don't seem to understand the most basic concept of modern economics -- insuring against major disruptions -- that is indispensable to run a modern economy. Insurance isn't only about insuring the many to protect the most vulnerable -- whether against physical disasters such as the Midwest drought, or financial disasters such as the Great Depression, or catastrophic illness. It is really about all of our citizens being for one, and one for all. It is why we tax ourselves to pay for a government, because government is really the protector of last resort against the most basic risks in a world grown increasingly complex and uncertain.

Modern economies can't do without it, yet Romney says he opposes most modern forms of protection in his five-point plan by continuing to reduce taxes that would starve government of revenues, as well as cap spending on regulation enforcement. He would also repeal the Affordable Care Act that insures 30 million more Americans. Instead he proposes more of GW Bush's 'Ownership Society' which seeks to return us to the era of laissez faire -- free, unregulated markets that existed 100 years ago. And we know what institutions which evaded or ignored modern financial regulation did to financial markets.