> The very same advocates of the Keynesian approach to solving the bust are unanimously uninterested in following through with the other half of his prescription.
Who are these ghost economists? Brad DeLong? Paul Krugman? Christina Romer? Larry Summers? I can't think of a single non-right-wing economist who advocates anything close to this. If anything, the orthodox position since the 1970s has been an overwhelming preference for monetarism, originally by targeting growth in the money supply (see Friedman's "we are all Keynesians now") and then by inflation targeting once the former didn't work. Fiscal stimulus is advocated only at the lower bound, when it becomes impossible to lower interest rates further since they are already at zero. Fiscal restraint is preferred since government spending is perceived to be dangerous and people want ammunition for bad times.
And where is the hypocrisy? The last period of fiscal sanity in the US came during the Summers period under Clinton, which put the national budget in surplus and put the country well on track to eliminate the debt. The intellectual tradition which destroyed this came from supply-side Republicans economists like Mankiw who helped ram through a series of top-heavy tax cuts, expanded military spending and eventually pushed through a medicare giveaway to big pharma. So perhaps the intellectual traditional of "pandering for votes by promising favors to all" is not the one you think it is.
I'm not talking about economists, I'm talking about politicians who know nothing about economics, but use it as a convenient excuse (although I'd like to single out Krugman for becoming a complete political hack and eschewing so much of what he personally wrote as an economist).
The last period of fiscal sanity in the US came during the Summers period under Clinton
That's certainly true, and in retrospect I commend Clinton for it (though I have to confess to being a detractor at the time). But a President does not define a party or an ideology. Recall how much arm-twisting Clinton needed to do in order to get welfare reforms passed.
And I believe I said that both parties are guilty, so don't read my comments as a defense of Conservatism by any means. With very few exceptions, the legislators on both sides of the aisle have little interest in fiscal restraint, even (especially?) in boom times.
Yes, I oppose military increases, Medicare Part D. But I also oppose their Liberal counterparts. While given our current fiscal mess, taxes -- perhaps even tax hikes -- need to be part of the solution, in the long run the whole thing needs to be scaled back drastically (Ryan is barely a warm-up), and that should allow for lower taxes in the long run.
Who are these ghost economists? Brad DeLong? Paul Krugman? Christina Romer? Larry Summers? I can't think of a single non-right-wing economist who advocates anything close to this. If anything, the orthodox position since the 1970s has been an overwhelming preference for monetarism, originally by targeting growth in the money supply (see Friedman's "we are all Keynesians now") and then by inflation targeting once the former didn't work. Fiscal stimulus is advocated only at the lower bound, when it becomes impossible to lower interest rates further since they are already at zero. Fiscal restraint is preferred since government spending is perceived to be dangerous and people want ammunition for bad times.
And where is the hypocrisy? The last period of fiscal sanity in the US came during the Summers period under Clinton, which put the national budget in surplus and put the country well on track to eliminate the debt. The intellectual tradition which destroyed this came from supply-side Republicans economists like Mankiw who helped ram through a series of top-heavy tax cuts, expanded military spending and eventually pushed through a medicare giveaway to big pharma. So perhaps the intellectual traditional of "pandering for votes by promising favors to all" is not the one you think it is.