Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Pete Buttigieg's Vow to Cut the Deficit Is Fiscally Irresponsible — Eric Levitz

“Fiscally responsible” is one of the more Orwellian phrases in American politics. Lawmakers earn that coveted title by affirming the three tenets of the Beltway’s official budgetary orthodoxy: (1) Deficits are inherently undesirable, (2) all new spending (on things that cannot be used to kill foreigners) should be fully offset by new taxes, and (3) reducing America’s existing national debt should be a top-tier policy priority.
But these premises are rooted less in economic science than popular superstition. And, over the past decade, our political class’s indulgence of the public’s mythical intuitions about the national debt has imposed gargantuan costs on our collective prosperity. In the present context, validating the electorate’s economically illiterate fears of public debt is roughly as “responsible” as affirming the anti-vaccine movement’s conspiracy theories about the CDC.
Cites MMT.

Pass along to Pete's supporters.

Intelligencer
Pete Buttigieg's Vow to Cut the Deficit Is Fiscally Irresponsible
Eric Levitz

9 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“ But these premises are rooted less in economic science than popular superstition. ”

Here we go with the “superstition!” now ... doesn’t work....

“ When you believe in things
That you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way”

https://youtu.be/0CFuCYNx-1g

Funky!!!

Peter Pan said...

Pass along to Bernie's supporters too.

Matt Franko said...

"validating the electorate’s economically illiterate fears of public debt "

They are not economically illiterate they are economically literate... this is what is taught in 99.9% of Liberal Art Economics.. they said the same thing in Economics class and got A+ grades....

Where does this guy think they get the ideas in the first place?

Evolved from the apes by random chance mutation????

How is this guy just saying "its a superstition myth!" think that is going to help the situation????

Peter Pan said...

Fears about the public debt is a narrative disseminated to the public. This fear is much too important to be left to higher education.

Mike Norman said...

Buttigieg? What about freakin' Powell?

Matt Franko said...

"Fears about the public debt is a narrative disseminated to the public. "

here we go with you guys and your conspiracy theory again...

"Secret Agent Neo the neo-liberal is going all around secretly planning to disseminate secret false information to the public so the economy will crash!!!!"

Yeah right lol!!!

Matt Franko said...

Or like this guy now "its a superstition!" lol!!!!

So we got from you guys:

1. Myth
2 secret neo-liberal conspiracy theory
3. evolved from the apes by random chance mutation
4. Superstition (new!)

What else besides addressing the technical competence of the people working in this area do you guys have??? Have I missed any thing??

Anything to avoid the issue of these people's basic technical competence and understanding...

Peter Pan said...

You never heard of Pete Peterson?
The debt clock?
The perennial question: How are you going to pay for that?

The debt narrative is everywhere, except when it comes to tax cuts and military spending. Random chance happy coincidence, by golly!

S400 said...

“ here we go with you guys and your conspiracy theory again.”

Here we go again with Matt and his biased baseless conspiracy theory accusations all fed through his art degree envy.