Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Impeccable timing

April Fools Day, and "Republican Budget II" is out. It's a low budget horror movie.

I wonder if they'll be able to get the numbers to add up when they try again in a couple of weeks.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

...vs. spending your way out of debt.. the Democrats alternative. I tried that with my credit cards once... weird it didn't work. Obama says it should.

lovable liberal said...

Your Republican heroes rely on the sort of proud ignorance you just expressed. One semester of macroeconomics would suffice to shed some light so long as it is taught by someone who understands Keynes.

If you don't think that debt can stimulate the economy, you should oppose businesses that finance new activity and additional growth that wouldn't happen without their taking on debt. But that assumes you give a rat about trying to be consistent, and the typical conservative has rigid beliefs that don't require it.

Jared said...

Except that a lot of people (economists) do not agree with Keynes' theories. His ideas are popular (again) at the moment but for the most part, modern economists don't follow or subscribes to his theories. I'm not saying that Keynes is completely wrong, I just think that that approach is not the best plan of action. We should reduce spending, regulation, and taxes. We need a little more Smith (although Smith was wrong about some things too) and a little less Keynes.

lovable liberal said...

Well, that's convincing, Jared. Some economists disagree... You just disagree...

Yeah, the craaazy libertarians who say bring on the next depression don't think a Keynesian stimulus is right. And the Republicans in Congress have ideologically committed to nonsensical bullshit. But your assessment of majority views is ... odd. Are you calling John Boehner an economist? Even Alan Greenspan realizes now that he was wrong.

As Keynes said, in the long run, we're all dead. I'm not willing to wait that long for the economy to right itself just so I can avoid confronting the bankruptcy of my economic views.

Yeah, I'm sure you think Adam Smith was wrong about progressive taxation.