This message brought to you by the loyal opposition
Remember how economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accused those who oppose the economic stimulus of bad faith? Well, in today's print edition of the Times, the Cato Institute bought a full page ad in which hundreds of economists signed off on their opposition to President Obama's stimulus package.
posted by lonely libertarian at 3:40 PM
3 Comments:
LL, am I the only one that's really conflicted about this stimulus?
I think its awful in every way shape and form.
But on the other hand, the overwhleming republican dissent means the democrats are going to own this thing and its the first thing they've been willing to own in a long time. And if we're sitting here in 3 years w/ inflation at 6%, a gigantic federal deficit, still high unemployment, slow growth/stagflation etc...
this might be good enough to get a hard reversal back and win a bunch of congressional seats and allow a hard line fiscal conservative a chance in 2012.
I'm so conflicted because I feel like a decade of 1970's type stagflation is inevitable if we have Obama and dem majorities for 6 or 8 years. So why not get it done w/ now if its gotta happen?
I think your conflicted because you're hoping that when this fails we won't have to hear about such nonsense any more.
But here's the trouble- as even the mainstream media is reporting, this "stimulus" bill is so loaded with garbage (funding for the Arts, ect.), that future Democrats may attempt to disavow the pork and continue to argue unrepentantly for more Keynesianism.
Democrats will always be searching for more ways to get power and Keynesianism gives them a rationale to grab power and that'll never change. Whether they get elected anymore can though.
Deflation is the threat right now, but with all this TARP money in the system for the next five years, plus all of this spending that won't stimulate production there's either two outcomes: the economy doesn't recover, in which case they're fucked...or the economy does recover, money velocity picks up and we're going to see real inflation for the first time in almost 30 years.
The second scenario is the most likely.
And when you've got CHANGE coinciding with prices rising at a faster rate than they have since 1981, which everyone will feel at McDonalds, at the pump, at the grocery store...that is a game changer. That's enough to scare the crap out of some people and gives a republican the chance to step in and say Bush was big government, Obama was gigantic government, I'm gonna return us back to the old ways that led to the biggest 25 year stretch of growth in the history of the world.
At least that's what I'm hoping for.
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