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John Tamny of Freedom Works and RealClearMarkets joins Steve Hayward this week to discuss his provocative new book, They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers, just out this week from our friends at the American Institute for Economic Research. Tamny is one of the great imaginative and original contrarian thinkers of our time on matters of economics and policy, as readers of his previous books can attest. (Previous delightful reads from John include Who Needs the Fed? What Taylor Swift, Uber, and Robots Tell Us About Money, Credit, and Why We Should Abolish America’s Central Bank, and Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You about Economics. Both highly recommended.)
In They’re Both Wrong, Tamny takes liberals to task for their economic and policy illiteracy on everything from taxes, corporate governance, climate change and other favorite obsessions of the left, but also has several chapters criticizing confusions that he thinks both liberals and conservatives share on health care, the minimum wage, education, and a guaranteed annual income. And he thinks conservatives are on the wrong track on immigration and China, among other issues. Agree or disagree, John is an ebullient and optimistic thinker, and a delight to hear.
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I find the ‘deficits don’t matter’ argument to be shaky. What if we entered a real live war, and needed to spend another 2 trillion annually for several years on the military. Who could lend the money. We are already at 100% of gdp in deficit spending (I think), so we probably can’t just borrow it from citizens. This means we are dependent on foreign governments for financing. I do agree that reducing the size of government is probably more important than reducing the deficit though.
Deficits don’t matter, until suddenly they do. Ask Greece. Ask Puerto Rico.
China has been a net seller of US Treasury notes for several years already. Right now, there are massive money printing campaigns going on around the western world – what each of these central banks are doing is buying each other’s debt. So they wont be accused of monetizing their own debt – they’re monetizing debt for each other. There is a very small part of the debt stay with private holders. Its the central banks of the world that hold most of this debt.
Sounds like an interesting book, good interview.
deficits and debt don’t matter.
government spending matters.
keep or cut government spending and the deficit and debt problem goes away
I found the guest’s arguments old, tired, and unpersuasive. Sounds more like some kind of motivational speaker. Of course it’s no surprise he got his start with Goldman Sachs. Seemed like Steve was pretty skeptical as well.
Can’t tell if I like this guys arguments or not. I hope that most people do want to work but – see first sentence. And I’m supposed to vote for E Warren so she destroys the economy so there will be less immigration. Yeah, I don’t know how that will turn out but it can’t be good.