Monday, March 18, AD 2024 11:00pm

Keynesian Twilight Zone

There are few things sadder than a one trick pony whose trick fails to work.  Obama, with a faith whose fervency cannot be doubted, believes with all his soul that vast government spending is the mechanism to lift the country out of this never ending bad slump.  That his policies have failed to do anything other than to increase our massive public debt, sways him not at all.  For a true ideologue, and that is what Obama clearly is, a collision between reality and  beliefs merely means that reality is wrong since the beliefs are beyond question.  Thus in economic policy this administration is one endless Groundhog Day where the nation is stuck in a loop of high unemployment, minimal economic growth and ever expanding public debt.

Someone should force Obama to watch the video below ten times.  Perhaps that would give him a clue, but I would not be sanguine.

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 6:16am

He makes Carter look good.

Thomas B. Reed, “Every time he opens his mouth he subtracts from the sum of human knowledge.”

“The Emperor Has No Clothes.”

I know! I’m a racist.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 8:03am

That his policies have failed to do anything other than to increase our massive public debt,

The last assessment I saw calculated the multiplier of the stimulus spending at 0.6, not at 0.0. (IIRC, there were economists who offered just that estimate going in). Arguably it was not worth the candle but not nothing.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 9:13am

In fairness to the President, he seems to be channeling the Democratic Party’s cognoscenti in matters economic. The new line (propagated by Joseph Stiglitz) is that the stimulus was not large enough, we have a plentiful supply of useful public works, and that we are fools not to borrow at minimal interest rates (as if those rates were set in stone). Thomas Sowell posed the question some time back as to whether Dr. Stiglitz et al could state their propositions regarding stimulus in a manner that was potentially falsifiable. Morning’s Minion, take it away.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 9:16am

Arg, Matey!

It likely isn’t Master Keynes’ fault.

Nick Gillespie, “Whalen isn’t simply dumping on Keynesianism, he’s bent on pointing out that even its latter-day adherents are straying far from their master’s theory. And in this, he’s surely correct. As Allen Meltzer has argued, Keynes was against the very sort of large structural deficits that characterize contemporary federal budgets and policy, believing instead that deficits should be ‘temporary and self-liquidating.’ And Keynes believed that any sort of counter-cyclical spending by government should be directed toward increasing private investment, not simply spending current and future tax dollars on public works projects. Or, to put it another way: If the federal government had a strong track record of responsible spending, it would mean one thing if it went into hock for a short period of time to goose the economy (again, whether this would work is open to question). It means something totally different when a government that spent all of the 21st century piling on debt and new, long-term entitlement programs responds to an economic downturn first by creating yet another gargantuan entitlement (Obamacare) and taking on even more debt in the here-and-now.”

Shiver me timbers! I doubt Master Keynes would call class war/demagoguery fiscal policy.

Jay Anderson
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 9:45am

“There are few things sadder than a one trick pony whose trick fails to work. Obama, with a faith whose fervency cannot be doubted, believes with all his soul that vast government spending is the mechanism to lift the country out of this never ending bad slump.”

Why do you hate Catholic Social Teaching?
Love,
Morning’s Minion

Paul W Primavera
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 10:37am

Catholic social teaching doesn’t say we should abdicate to Caesar what is our own God-given duty as Christians to do. It is NOT Caesar’s responsibility to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the sick, etc. That’s our duty as the adopted children of the Great King, and every time we abdicate our responsibility and evade our accountability to keep the command that God gave us to love our neighbor as ourselves, then we sacrifice on the altar of political expediency our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven and the very power of God in our own lives for the temporal “graces” of a secular national socialist democracy and its Obamanation of Desolation. The lesson of Judas Iscariot is clear when he suggested that the proceeds from the oil with which Mary annointed Jesus’ feet could have been given to the poor. Judas said that not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. That’s exactly what Scripture says in John 12. Government is no different. And by the way, we shouldn’t be seeking the bread that perishes as that crowd did in John 6, but the eternal Bread of Life. Jesus didn’t feed that crowd a second time. He noted exactly what they wanted: another free handout. TANSTAAFL – There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch – not then and not now.

JF Jad
JF Jad
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 10:51am

The following is a Walter Williams column from 1998. Diverting money from the free productive private economy into the wasteful and destructive government command economy is disastrous.

New study shows economic growth is inversely proportional to government spending

20 MAY 98 – James Gwartney and Randall Holcombe, economics professors at Florida State University, and Robert Lawson, an economics professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, have just completed a report for Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. The title is The Size and Function of Government and Economic Growth.

The report points out, as just about every American knows, the expansion of the U.S. economy has now moved into its eighth year. It’s been 15 years since a major recession. That’s the good news.

Despite this performance, the real rate of economic growth during the 1990s is less than half that achieved in the 1960s. In fact, our average rate of growth has fallen during each of the last three decades.

Greater economic stability, but less rapid growth, has also been the pattern of other developed nations. Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson, using data from 60 nations, produce convincing evidence that there’s a strong negative relationship between the size of government, increases in government expenditures and economic growth.

In the case of our country, the authors conclude: If government expenditures, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), had remained at their 1960 level, the 1996 GDP would have been 9.16 trillion instead of 7.64 trillion. That translates into $23,440 for the average family of four.

The authors also compared developed countries with the smallest increases in the size of government between 1960 and 1996 to those with the largest increases and looked at their growth rates. In 1960, government spending as a percentage of GDP in the United States, Iceland, Ireland, United Kingdom and New Zealand averaged 28.9 percent. The growth rate for those countries in 1960 averaged 4.3 percent. In 1996, government spending in those countries rose, averaging 39.1 percent, and their growth rates fell, averaging 2.7 percent.

Developed nations with the largest increases in government size between 1960 and 1996 were Portugal, Spain, Greece, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. In 1960, those governments spent an average of 28.1 percent of their GDP, and their growth rates averaged 6.4 percent. In 1996, government spending averaged 54.5 percent of GDP, and their growth rates fell to an average of 1.2 percent. From these statistical estimates, Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson show that for each 10 percent increase in government spending, there’s a 1 percent decrease in the rate of growth.

The authors are not anarchists; they acknowledge an important critical role for government, namely that of providing the legal and physical infrastructure for the operation of the market and a limited set of public goods to provide a framework conducive to economic growth.

As governments move beyond these core functions, however, they adversely affect economic growth through the disincentive effects of taxation, diminishing returns as government takes on activities for which it is ill-suited and government interference with the wealth-creation process. Governments aren’t as effective as markets in adjusting to changing circumstances and discovering innovative production methods.

The Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson study understates government size because it doesn’t take into account its regulatory burden. But even with this minor shortcoming, will the study’s persuasive argument and evidence lead Congress to reduce government size? I doubt it.

The reason is that it is impossible for any of us to know or appreciate how much wealthier we would have been had government expenditures remained where they were when John Kennedy was president. In other words, how can a family of four know that it is $23,440 poorer because of Washington and its state and local governments?

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 11:18am

“Why do you hate Catholic Social Teaching?”

Do you equate CST with the progressive, Demorat class war? If so, I love more prosperity but love less economic destitution and financial repression.

It’s not yer mother’s CST, minion matey.

Mark Noonan
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 3:11pm

It is time we all just understood the stark fact that Obama doesn’t know any better. No, he’s not very bright, doesn’t spend time thinking things over and wouldn’t know an idea if one fell on him. We elected the “Un-named Democrat” who always does so well in polling. We put upon Obama whatever wonderful things we wished to find and we then voted for our dream…but the dream was carried by a man who’s only claim to being worthy is to have two wonderful daughters…which is no small thing, but hardly something that fits a man for the Presidency.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 5:24pm

Keynes was against the very sort of large structural deficits that characterize contemporary federal budgets and policy, believing instead that deficits should be ‘temporary and self-liquidating.’ And Keynes believed that any sort of counter-cyclical spending by government should be directed toward increasing private investment, not simply spending current and future tax dollars on public works projects.

The Roosevelt Administration’s largest deficit prior to the War amounted to about 4% of gross domestic product. The president and Congress turned in two balanced budgets during the period running from 1933 to 1941.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, September 19, AD 2011 8:29pm

Friends, Americans and undocumented immigrants, I come to bury Obama not to libel him. The failures men fall into . . .

Paul DuBois
Paul DuBois
Wednesday, September 21, AD 2011 10:30am

So ten years ago we passed tax cuts lowering the federal tax take to the lowest it has been since before WWII, the result was the worst 10 years of employment growth in the same time frame. The response to the fact that the current President’s policies have not quickly enough repaired the damage of the last President’s policies is to ask for deeper tax cuts. And the Democrats are the one trick ponies.

To hold true to Keynes’ teachings, President Clinton raised taxes and produced a surplus while during the good times. The president who followed him cut taxes and turned that into a deficit. Tracking from the end of WWII our total debt as a percentage of GDP continually dropped until1981 when we cut taxes on the promise that it would increase revenue. Revenue did not increase until the massive tax increases of the mid 1980’s took effect. Nowhere in historical economic data is there evidence to support tax cutting to produce long term jobs. There is plenty evidence that the government can spend money (even deficit spending) and create infastructure that leads to long term job creation. Two prime examples are the interstate highway system and the internet. This isthe type of spending originally proposed, unfortunately, it was changed to allow it to get through congress.

Paul D.
Paul D.
Friday, September 23, AD 2011 10:54pm

“So ten years ago we passed tax cuts lowering the federal tax take to the lowest it has been since before WWII, the result was the worst 10 years of employment growth in the same time frame. ”

Get behind me, Satan.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, September 24, AD 2011 6:28am

Ziggy zoggy!
Ziggy zoggy!
Oy! Oy! Oy!

Look it up. Terrorist attacks 9/11/2001. Recession. Global war on terror. Average unemployment rate during Bush presidency 5.2% (Eurozone average 8.2%). Also, tax reductions were passed to Buffett”s secretary: 50% pay no federal income tax. Stop me!

Bush’s tax cuts were passed based on the same conservative, private sector growth concepts as another great American President: JFK.

Employers are not hiring because taxes aren’t high enough . . . Actually, it’s Obamacare.

You cannot reason with a person that will not agree that 2 + 2 = 4.

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