The Summer of Our Discontent
In the Wall Street Journal today, Stanford economist Michael Boskin examines the Obama recovery--and finds it nearly nonexistent. Then he examines what the left intends to do about it--and finds they want to make matters even worse.
[T]he left is frantically calling for a second "stimulus" and demanding tax hikes for the "rich"—a.k.a. our most productive citizens and small businesses. The rehashed ideas include such nonsense as massive infrastructure spending financed by a national infrastructure bank, an old Carter idea; yet more aid to the states; and even that worst of ideas, "general revenue sharing," which would force citizens to pay future federal taxes to fund the debt used just to send revenue back to their states.
These ideas would do a lot more harm than good. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we have the best economic system among the advanced economies, "if we can keep it." That will require fundamental policy changes, not doubling down on the failed big government experiment of recent years.
In fewer than a thousand words, pretty much everything you need to know about our parlous economy.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: The Summer of Our Discontent
Peter Robinson:
I like the idea of paying "future" taxes today. That's forward thinking!
Jun '10
Re: The Summer of Our Discontent
Great article Peter! Thanks.
And, it is painful to read, not for its content, but because of how easily it will be ignored by Obama supporters.
I heard it best on a news program a couple days ago. "The recovery stopped as soon as we stopped the stimulus."
To argue against this logic requires understanding of a good dozen uncommon economic concepts and how they fit together - scarcity, supply/demand, regulatory capture, opportunity costs (broken window), incentives, etc.
Most people don't think it is possible or worth their while to understand economics personally, so it reverts to which pundit/soundbytes you prefer. In other words, damn the logic, full partisan hacks ahead.
In other words, it is like a bad game of "name/deny that tune" I can write off that article as bullcrap in 5 words...