I came across an article by Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man and an article by Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post. Both do a pretty good job deconstructing Reagan's tax strategy versus Obama's spend-then-tax philosophy.
Fattening the Beast: Obama's Twist on a GOP Budget Strategy: by Fred Hiatt
Reagan Recipe on Fed, Taxes Spells Path From Funk: Amity Shlaes
The author (Shlaes) can't resist mentioning Obama's planned economy without the Statist's economic demi-god; John Maynard Keynes. For half a century, presidents have, knowingly or not, leaned on one line from John Maynard Keynes justifying a larger role for government. “Moderate planning,” Keynes said, “will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly oriented in their own minds and hearts to the moral issue.”
It reminded me of another quote of Keynes that I found in, of all places...Hayek's The Road to Serfdom...
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas”
I wonder what Keynes would think of the idea of a THIRD stimulus package (I say third because Bush's tax rebates were considered the first, immediate stimulus followed by Obama's stimulus plan). Is the void of private capital efficiently being filled by government involvement?
- N.C. Wilcox
0 comments:
Post a Comment