The Question
From the other side of the Atlantic, prescience. Janet Daily, writing in our own James Delingpole's newspaper, the London Telegraph:
[T]his campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.
What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time.
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Jan '11
Re: The Question
I think we're already done. When cuts to the rate of growth of federal spending are demonized as radical, and they're not even actual real cuts in spending, we do seem to be smoked.
Re: The Question
On it.
Oct '10
Re: The Question
LowcountryJoe
I think we're already done. When cuts to the rate of growth of federal spending are demonized as radical, and they're not even actual real cuts in spending, we do seem to be smoked. · 3 hours ago
Direct spending cuts are a distraction. Actually cutting spending = GDP slowdown/recession = voters punish politicians. Holding spending below nominal rate of GDP growth = private economy gets bigger = government falls as percentage of GDP = smaller government.
Even #2 is not going to be fun--America must export more, and given the gaping Asian and German holes in global consumption it's going to be hard to increase exports fast enough to keep up with austerity. Though given the degree to which Asia and Germany rely on the U.S. economy, a credible commitment to austerity here might force them to deregulate their economies and stop artificially restraining consumption.
Jul '10
Re: The Question
The King Prawn
I believe Paul Ryan will whether Mitt likes it or not. Once you yell "fire" to the firing squad you cannot recall the bullets. · 10 hours ago
That takes me back to the live fire exercises between Reagan and the Parties of Washington. Just because they have an R next to the name...
Dec '10
Re: The Question
Au Contrair, my friend.
Whether they will admit to it or not, the supply of govt cheese most definitely has an end.
Edited on September 3, 2012 at 9:59amOct '10
Re: The Question
The principled thing to do would be to wean ourselves off the meaningless metric of GDP (and GNP etc.). Of course a reduction in government spending leads to a drop in GDP - government expenditure is a component of (one of the ways of defining) GDP. The real question is whether such a reduction enhances (the capacity for) human flourishing. Admittedly this is harder to measure, but then we've spent the post-WW2 years looking for the policy car-keys under the econometric street-light and look where that has got us.
As for declaring an absolute increase in the economic resources directly confiscated by the state a decrease in the size of government, I think there might be other ways of looking at this question...
Mar '12
Re: The Question
I thought all of the questions, and there are several, are actually moral questions.
Can we bury our citizens under rules and regulations that stifle American creativity and entrepreneurship?
Can we bury our citizens under mountains of debt?
Can we prepare our military to suffer another Pearl Harbor?
Can we dispose our citizens to reliance on the benevolence of government, while that government is going broke and won't by any stretch of the imagination be able to care for them?
Can we doom our citizens to the failures of the Great Society and what follows from that kind of legislation in regard to families and children without fathers?
Can we continue to hold that life in utero is subject to death by maternal fiat?
Do we want to surrender our rights to such a government?
Mar '11
Re: The Question
As though one could have unfree markets and a "democratic" socialist welfare state at the same time?
I don't actually think, historically, it is terribly surprising that it is the United States that is out in front on this issue.....or exceptional, even :).
Americans, culturally, tend to be "see a problem, fix the problem" types, not the bury head in the sand types.
But regardless, it seems to me that there is no insurmountable reason (though many difficult problems) why the United States cannot be the first nation to truly embrace all of the lessons of the 20th century and abandon the despotism by bureaucracy model of governance in favor of a return to a freer, more open society with a safety net (largely run at the state level, and hand in hand with private charity) decoupled from retirement and other savings and investment-encouraging programs.
Federalism and decentralized experimentation and comparison is an idea at home in the 21st century.
Oct '10
Re: The Question
genferei
The principled thing to do would be to wean ourselves off the meaningless metric of GDP (and GNP etc.). Ofcoursea reduction in government spending leads to a drop in GDP - government expenditure is a component of (one of the ways of defining) GDP. The real question is whether such a reduction enhances (the capacity for) human flourishing. Admittedly this is harder to measure, but then we've spent the post-WW2 years looking for the policy car-keys under the econometric street-light and look where that has got us.
As for declaring an absolute increase in the economic resources directly confiscated by the state a decrease in the size of government, I think there might be other ways of looking at this question... · 19 hours ago
And if you know how to convince voters to view spending that way, the rest of us would really like to know. Voters aren't known for rewarding politicians who reduce spending in absolute terms.
Paul Ryan's plan of having taxes at 18-19% of GDP and spending at 21-22% of GDP is the best we're going to get.
Edited on September 4, 2012 at 5:45amApr '11
Re: The Question
There's hope, and there's magical thinking.
Have we forgotten RomneyCare? Forgotten Romney's campaign manager who said Romney isn't serious about repealing Obamacare?
We sent the Republican poster child for the welfare state to run against the welfare state! Well, OK. Some one is running against it, sort of.
Hope, yes. But be realistic, too.