So says a Washington Post liberal. Oh, how I wish it were true.
But it’s nice to get credit even when credit isn’t due. (It’s like the federal government.)
To a remarkable degree, our politics are haunted by the principles of Austrian economics and their sweeping hostility to any actions by government to keep downturns from becoming catastrophes or to promote greater economic fairness.
This is, indeed, an enormous change. When Nixon declared his allegiance to Keynesianism, he was reflecting an insight embraced across partisan lines. Government’s exertions, both during the New Deal and more completely during World War II, helped rescue the U.S. economy from depression. . . .
Yet today’s conservatives are in thrall to Austrian thinking, and this explains a lot of what is going on in Washington. Broadly popular measures such as raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment insurance — normal, bipartisan legislation during the Keynesian heyday — are blocked on the assumption that people are better off if the government simply keeps its mitts off the market.
It is now difficult for Congress to pass even the kind of spending that all sides once saw as necessary public investment in transportation, research and education. It’s that “road to serfdom” again: Anything government does beyond enforcing contracts and stopping violence is denounced as the first step of a fox trot toward dictatorship.
So let’s give Ron Paul credit for unmasking the true source of gridlock in Washington: Too many conservatives are operating on the basis of theories that history and practice have discredited. And liberals have been more reluctant than they should be to call the ideological right on this, partly because they never fully got over the shell shock of the Reagan years and also because they have a strange aversion to arguing about theory. When it comes to government policy, the Austrian economists paved the road to paralysis.
Click the link to read the rest of the article: to see one more Keynesian non-economist praise gigantic federal deficits forever and ever, Amen.
Why aren’t the conservatives and Fox news not addressing this “income equality” business head on? Call it for what it is. The very core of this philophy is Marxist. If every one was paid equal wages there would be no insentive to climb higher on the economic ladder. Climbing higher on the economic ladder is the American Dream. To become more and more self reliant, but, it only come through self responsability. Life with the pursuit of happiness is the American dream.
Actually, being a Fox News Channel devotee, I have seen several people on the network address it, most notably Sean Hannity. This AM on Fox & Friends, they were all over that idiot mayor, Bill DeBlasio & his 'income equality' manifesto!! Rush & other talk radio guys are hammering it daily.
Gridlock is one of the best things we can hope for. The more gridlock, the less damage politicians can do.
Although I am not familiar with Mises, I am a student of the economic science of Fredrich Von Hayek & our own greatest economist ever, Milton Friedman. As for John Maynard Keynes' theories……………..he had $hit for brains!!!!
Those two economists were right – that writer is an idiot – of course those policies work – and it is showing right now that progressive policies breed poverty.
Yeah, I remember when Nixon tried price control on gasoline. It was a disaster. I can remember when price and wage controls were in place, I think that was Johnson but I could be wrong, it was a while ago, and it was a disaster. You would think they would learn.Keynseianism has been tried over and over. It is a pipedream. It doesn't work. When are political so called leaders going to learn. It is bad economics. It sucks.
The real problem is that after some 5 or 6 Keynsian Theory Economic Advisers to Obama spent their combined wisdom on the Obama Economy, it has only gone south from day one.
These failures in practice went back to their ivory towers, and are teaching the same failed Keynesian theories to the next gaggle of future economists, that failed so miserably over the last 5 years
Compare this to Pres. Reagan's response to an even worse economy in 2008, with not only high unemployment, but also high inflation near 20%, where Keynesian Economics theory could not be used.
In fact Alfred Maynard Keynes only explained his theory to help where there was a lack of demand. High Inflation was never possible under the economic theories of his.
Compare that with Pres. Reagan's policies to battle high unemployment and Inflation.
He lowered tax rates by some 50%, and removes Federal Regulations that impeded the private sector from generating new jobs.
Despite a Democrat;s mandated delay in the full tax reduction implementation by 18 months, after the full implementation, business activity exploded in America.
He created some 20 Mio new jobs in the remaining 6 years of his presidency, and nearly doubled revenues to the treasury.
All this without a single $$ in Fed stimmulus
But then the Krugman's in America asking for an ever bigger stimmulus than the last abject failure will never agree with this.
Get familiar with Mises (see mises.org). The ones you mentioned are pansies compared to that guy.
Price and wage controls have been tried going all the way back to ancient Sumeria! That's 40 centuries ago for crying out loud! Yet these f'ing morons STILL want to try it…..AGAIN!
Here's a good book on price controls btw (it's free): http://mises.org/books/fortycenturies.pdf
Always vote for the absentee drunk.
So this whack-a-jack states that government 'exertions' of the New Deal helped America economically?? Those 'exertions' not only failed to help, they did harm; substantially lengthening recovery time to the point that US joining WWII became a necessary evil. FDR and his keynesian crew knew that in order to mobilize the economy and exert our industrial potential- for a while anyway- there had to be a 'cause' for regular folks to sacrifice.
When you think about it, there really was no other reason to join that war other than US aspirations to be at the top of the heap. A united Europe would've been an economic hurdle that we could not have overcome, forcing us to go big or go home.
And in the end, what would have been so different from today? Could we now be on the brink of another war of economic necessity?
grid lock is good. I always vote for gridlock. When people complain about gridlock it comes from Progressives who find their *agenda* stymied.