Obama signs the Health Care bill and then hands the invoice to a little child who will have to pay for it.
Greg Mankiw always offers a level headed analysis on economic issues. It’s probably a prerequisite for every non-liberal who wants to work at Harvard. It seems the supporters of ObamaCare have put aside all the negative aspects of the bill and have a adopted the lies from the White House and Congress.
The other group is kind of like The Economist. The UK-based news magazine has really lost touch with logic lately. Their argument in favor of ObamaCare is as weak as it is logical. The basic argument is that any bill is better than no bill at all. This is a news magazine that calls itself The Economist?
What’s odd is that when President Bush tried to tackle reforming Social Security no one adopted the “let’s pass something” approach. The Republicans abandoned reform because they feared political backlash. The Democrats are philosophically opposed to fixing any entitlement. It’s in the DNA of the Democratic party to expand and break as many entitlement programs as possible.
Notice that no Republican advocates a serious reform of Medicare. The Democrats are the welfare party, and the Republicans are simply the caretakers of the welfare state. While the left longingly gazes at their Obama posters the President has never said how he’s going to pay for all these goodies. That’s Greg Mankiw’s point.
The Obama administration’s political philosophy is more egalitarian and more communitarian than mine. Their spending programs require much higher taxes than we have now and, indeed, much higher taxes than they have had the temerity to propose. Here is the question I have been wondering about: How long can the President wait before he comes clean with the American people and explains how high taxes needs to rise to pay for his vision of government?
I’ll go one step further because the Republicans aren’t prepared for the serious challenges ahead. The taxes needed to pay for all these programs will have to be enormous. The GOP doesn’t have the guts to tackle the problem. Taxing the rich isn’t going to pay for it all. If people are concerned about the economy right now, just wait until the VAT tax starts.
I’m not sure Obama even cares. Perhaps he just wants to be the guy who gave the U.S. health care. Obama will let some other administration clean up the wreckage. Hey, Lyndon Johnson is still considered a great president and he only got us mired in Vietnam, started the welfare state, and gave us Medicare.
It seems liberals are determined to turn the U.S. into one big giant pyramid scheme. This might last five, fifteen, or twenty-five years, but eventually the whole house of card falls. Progressives love to tell sob stories about the disadvantaged. What about the working man whose paycheck is being siphoned away? Who is helping the forgotten man and how are we going to afford this when he’s out of job?
I deeply respect what Paul Krugman accomplished as an economist. His work in new trade theory earned a Nobel Prize in economics. However, he has become so partisan in his editorials that he is quickly diminishing his reputation. He was on This Week with George Snuffleupagus… I mean Stephanopoulos… and he claimed that in the climate change debate “there is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.” This ridiculous statement earned Krugman the Watts Up With That? quote of the week. I guess we can give Krugman a break since it appears climate change is not his area of expertise.
I wish that was the only problem with Krugman. Last week he wrote an article about the Tobin tax that was odd. It’s odd because for someone who is supposedly an intellectual giant in economics, he’s completely naïve when it comes to tax evasion. Greg Mankiw was left scratching his head after reading Krugman’s claim that financial transactions will not be moved if there’s a Tobin tax.
This is the danger of extreme partisanship, especially in regard to economics. Krugman is basically just endorsing whatever stupid new plan the Democrats come up with. From an economics perspective the Democrats don’t have many bright ideas right now. For Krugman I guess he’s decided to sheath the sword and just deal with the fallout. As long as the Democrats keep dreaming up new ways to tax productive people investors are going to quit investing. Until investors have confidence again the economy is going to stall. It seems like Krugman would understand this simple concept, but it appears he can’t see through his political blinders.
I caught this quote over at Greg Mankiw’s site. Generally I’ve always liked Dick Armey, but his comment about economist Larry Summers is just partisan hyperbole.
“I don’t consider Larry Summers a serious economist,” Armey said. “You can get a Ph.D. from Harvard without ever having seriously considered the subject.”
Now some of the things Larry Summers has said over the past year have been puzzling. It doesn’t appear like Obama has a strong economic head on his shoulders and Summers’ standing has taken a beating. That aside, it’s ridiculous to say that a Ph.D from Harvard is meaningless.
One of the myths about the United States government since Reagan was elected in 1980 is that government became smaller. Reagan was able to reduce the tax burden to encourage investment, but he didn’t reduce spending. As Greg Mankiw points out the federal outlays as a percentage of GDP have remained relatively the same the past fifty years.
Over the last century, the largest increase in the size of the government occurred during the Great Depression and World War II. Even after these crises were over, they left a legacy of higher spending and taxes. To this day, we have yet to come to grips with how to pay for all that the government created during that era — a problem that will become acute as more baby boomers retire and start collecting the benefits promised.
What Reagan accomplished during his first term was explaining to the American people that government was not the solution to combat a terrible economic crisis. The economy was in much worse shape in the early 80′s when Reagan became president than it is today. He certainly didn’t call call for the kind of spending Obama and Bush have been asking for the past six months.
Conservatives have never had enough votes to curtail federal spending. Once the government starts spending money it never gives up control. For the past fifty years most Americans have been apathetic. Since the New Deal the nation has been squandering the inheritance of future generations. The reality is the nation cannot afford the programs initiated during the Great Depression for more than seventy years. The Great Society tacked on a few more unsustainable programs. President Bush’s prescription drug plan was another government giveaway that is unfeasible in the long-run. After 9/11 instead waiting to find out what the recommendations of the 9/11 commission the Congress created the Homeland Security Department. If we learned anything during that attack it was that the CIA and FBI didn’t communicate. I can’t see how having three agencies is going to make that better.
It seems that liberals don’t care how much the nation spends and moderates aren’t concerned enough to take a stand. It doesn’t matter how much taxes are raised or how many speeches the president makes, the nation is headed towards bankruptcy unless their’s a significant change in our spending priorities. Higher taxes will only damage the economy. It’s time for the government to cut back.
Recent Comments