Barack Obama is stuck in the 1960s. And it's not just because his style of liberalism -- spend, spend, spend! -- is reminiscent of that era. Liberals since the New Deal have enjoyed spending. It's because he likes to spend money as if we are in the middle of the greatest economic boom in the history of the nation, as if there's plenty of cash to go around. The country could afford, in the 1960s, to send a man to the moon and to create brand new entitlement programs. Real GDP increased, on average, by 4.4 percent every year for the whole decade. But those days are long gone. As much as getting a great return on an "investment" in infrastructure improvement is appealing, it's always a bad idea to invest one's spare cash when the creditors are about to bust down the door. Ever dime should go to deficit reduction -- not two for new spending, one for the deficit.(via Maggie's Farm)
Thursday, February 03, 2011
QOTD
Jay Cost on the Weekly Standard's blog:
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7 comments:
Obama need to go see one of those credit counselors. You know, the guys who make you cut your credit cards in half.
Mr. Market is going to do it anyway.
I think we will be in Casey Serin-like shock when Mr. Market finally sends the first foreclosure ruling.
Obama's SOTU speech was a shock to me. It's almost like he inhabits a different universe than the rest of us.
> Obama's SOTU speech was a shock to me. It's almost like he inhabits a different universe than the rest of us.
Yeah, one where Cloward-Piven was the idea...
Whether or not it's Cloward-Piven, it's one where "investment" somehow is different from "spending."
The difference between investment and spending is long-term returns.
How exactly is more expensive power, high speed rails that no one wants to pay for, electric cars that won't get you home in a snowstorm and that can be made more cheaply overseas, ethanol from corn, etc supposed to return gains over the long run?
And given the huge amount of capital that the private sector has devoted to stuff like biodiesel, exactly what does Obama think that dumping government money into it will do? Or doesn't he know that the investment has already been made? In his speech it sounded like he didn't. It doesn't inspire confidence.
Just wacky, really.
Yup, M_O_M--something that we don't want or need sure sounds like "spending", not "investment," to me.
BTW, see Coyote blog on the (disastrous) economics of light rail.
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