We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time. - Vince Lombardi

The Depression Plague

by West Virginia Rebel

Noam Scheiber defends the stimulus as being better than doing nothing:

...we know the output gap will be about $2 trillion over the next two years. When you have an output gap that big, you’ve got to fill it or you risk a deflationary spiral. There really isn’t much debate about this among economists, who are the engineers in this example. And yet you have people treating it as though it were a political question--Republicans objecting on principle to the idea of a stimulus, centrists scaling it back because they think it’s irresponsible to spend so much.

By way of analogy, suppose there were some deadly disease spreading through the population, and that public health experts agreed we had to spend around $10 billion on vaccinations to avoid an epidemic. Since no one wants to see millions of people die, this doesn’t really pose a political question. It poses a technical question, and the experts have told us what it’s going to take (in their best judgment). In that context, does it make sense for one side to oppose the response because it requires too much big government? Does it make sense for a group of centrists to get together and say, “Well, $10 billion seems like a lot, but we’d sign on to $7.5 billion?” Of course not. That’s lunacy. And yet the Republicans and Senate moderates have basically imposed this outcome on us in the stimulus back and forth.

I’m actually more with the centrists on this one, but I can see his point-if we are on the verge of Great Depression II, does it make sense to quibble about the cost just to score debating points?

We often complain about how out of touch Washington is with the rest of the country. This applies to both parties. The Obama administration’s solution to our economic woes may be horrendous in principle. But principles alone won’t solve problems. Sometimes you really do have to do something.

Comments

Posted by on 02/13/09 at 05:41 PM from

Scheiber’s analogy is flawed, since it presumes an either/or scenario.  This has been the lamest defense of the bill’s supporters--that “doing something” is better than “doing nothing”.  And of course, “Doing something” equates to passing a bloated, unscrutinized version of a bill that will likely do as much harm as it will good.

“Doing something” did not have to equate to spending nearly a trillion dollars (and before this is all over, I guarantee it will end up costing more in the long run), no matter what Schieber or any other disingneuous asshole might think.  the Republicans fucked up by not offering a counter-proposal, but Walt Minnick of Idaho, who voted against the bill, came up with a stimulus package that was $174 billion.  Why not examine that, instead of fear-mongering, acting as enablers for complete wastes of life like Julio the Functionally Illiterate McDonald’s Lettuce Washer, and come up with something that doesn’t, you know, “repeat the policies of the past eight years”?

Oh, I know why--it’s because to the left, massive spending and borrowing money that doesn’t exist is bad when a Republican is in office, but it is correct and necessary when they have power instead.

This is not a stimulus, no matter what any left-wing douchebag thief does to try and spin it.  It’s an orgasm of government spending with nothing to back it up.

Posted by josparke on 02/13/09 at 05:50 PM from

I question how in touch with reality you are. Get out of your Mom’s basement sometime!

Posted by Hal_10000 on 02/13/09 at 06:27 PM from

I disagree with Schreiber in that this “lost productivity” was a mirage of the real estate bubble to begin with.  You can make a “soft landing” argument, but it’s hard to make the argument that we shoudl worry abotu replacing fictitiuos GDP.

<< Back to main