Links for Saturday Morning
July 11th, 2009 5:32 am | by John Jansen |The Democrats in Congress will propose a tax on the wealthiest Americans to fund health care reform. As one Republican Congressman notes,it is a pretty wacky idea with unemployment at nearly double digits and the economy having just flirted with financial Armageddon.
It also, even more so than any other action of the last two years, marks the death,demise and destruction of the conservative ethic which has guided American politics since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968.
Robert Reich via Calculated Risk on when the recovery will begin.
Paul Krugman on stimulus politics.
9 Responses to “Links for Saturday Morning”
By BostonKain on Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
So why is it a wacky idea?
By BL on Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
I don’t know why Krugman blames Obama for the weak stimulus. Congress watered it down, especially emphasizing tax cuts, which are being saved. In the long run, those savings will repair some household balance sheets and allow spending to pick up, but that may take years.
BL
By naes on Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
it must suck to be a minority at the will of the masses….
By Tom O on Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
re…
“It also, even more so than any other action of the last two years, marks the death,demise and destruction of the conservative ethic which has guided American politics since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968.”
What conservative ethic is that? The one that brought us from huge surpluses under Clinton to huge deficits and widespread financial failure under Bush?
I’m not trying to pick on you, I just don’t understand how otherwise rational financial people have such huge blind spots about the reality of unchecked Republican rule. You can make legitimate arguments against what Obama is doing, but eulogizing a “conservative ethic” that has never existed in reality just seems absurd to me.
By SG Hammer on Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
Sorry TomO…the surplus of the Clinton years was on paper only thanks to smoke and mirrors (as they said at the time) by raiding the SS Trust Funds.
By Jay on Jul 11, 2009 | Reply
SG: Don’t forget the huge boon Clinton got out of the capital gains tax because of the tech bubble.
SS inflows and outflows should be kept off the income statement like GAAP would require them to be.
By Tom O on Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
I get all that, but of course Bush’s deficit numbers were based on the same accounting. You can certainly argue that Clinton’s numbers weren’t as good as they sounded, I can’t see the case for Bush’s not being far worse.
I’m not trying to defend Clinton or attack Bush here, I am making the point that otherwise intelligent, competent and highly rational people seem to lose their critical faculties when ideology comes into play. The conservative ethic in theory is a noble thing, the conservative ethic in practice has proven to be an unprecedented disaster by any rational accounting.
The original posts talks about how the last two years have been the undoing of conservatism. Yet two years ago the damage we are suffering from had already been done. I think you can make a better case that the last two years have been a progressive unveiling of the failure of conservative ideas as actually practiced. I do not believe you can judge conservative ideas in theory any more than you can judge communist ideas in theory. In both cases you have to look at what happens in the real world, and in the real world conservative ideology has led us to disaster.
Tom O
Tom O
By matt on Jul 12, 2009 | Reply
There has been nothing conservative in politics during my lifetime. The government has never stopped growing. And for what?
By Andrew on Jul 13, 2009 | Reply
LOL Tom, really hilarious stuff. What conservative ideas have led us to disaster?? I believe it was the Feds massive increase in money printing since the end of vocklers term in the early 80’s. The Fed: Monetarist in booms/keynesian in busts….