Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Bill Black — The Dangerous Lure of Austerity to Progressives Seeking to Reduce Pentagon Spending

I spent today in Washington, DC presenting and attending a conference put together by Ralph Nader on left-right convergence. The theme was that there were many issues on which large elements of the left and right agreed and could change existing policies if they worked together. I spoke about the desirability of effective financial regulation to break the Gresham’s dynamic and prevent or at least minimize the damage of future financial crises and the desirability of prosecuting the elites that run financial “control frauds.”

The disturbing aspect of the conference was on the left. The irony is that the disturbing nature was hi-lighted by Grover Norquist’s talk. Norquist’s theme was that the standard for such collaboration should not be compromise and quid prop quo agreements to create a winning coalition, but strong agreement by both sides on a common policy. Both of the speakers from the “left” on cutting Pentagon spending emphasized the need to do so due to “the budget” and “the debt” crisis. Several members of the audience who identified with the “left” expanded on that theme. The representatives of the “right” eagerly pushed the same meme....

In their zeal to cut Pentagon spending, they championed austerity policies that cost millions of jobs and are designed to severely cut blue-collar wages.

It is, of course, perfectly possible to cut the Pentagon budget and increase net spending by making larger spending increases for higher priority government programs. Jamie Galbraith has long run an organization of economists, which I support, that takes this position. The “left” should never support austerity or adopt its myths of a “budget” or “debt” “crisis” and should be particularly vigorous in rejecting the right’s effort to turn children against their parents and grandparents on the basis of the lies about “burdening our kids.” The thing that devastates children is austerity.
New Economic Perspectives
The Dangerous Lure of Austerity to Progressives Seeking to Reduce Pentagon Spending
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

3 comments:

Matt Franko said...

"a conference put together by Ralph Nader on left-right convergence."

Should be: "a conference put together by Ralph Nader on left libertarian - right libertarian convergence."

rsp,

David said...

Well, Matt, they do all seem to share the curious libertarian belief that "money" is something that is appropriated from members of the private sector by the government, rather than being a legal, institutional construct that exists prior their having obtained it through wages, interest or inheritances. "It's your money," they all bleat. They differ only on the question of the legitimacy and distribution of said appropriations.

Matt Franko said...

right David I was going back and forth with y in another thread related to this type of thing...

For me, it gets back to whether an individual has a clear view of the concept of 'authority' where we do not want to confuse a person with this clear view with the modern term 'authoritarian' which apparently is synonymous with despotism/tyranny, etc ...

Libertarians are always antagonistic to authority in some degree or form... So what Bill Black ran into here at this event should not be surprising to us...

Libs on either side can't see/understand authority... put them in charge and chaos and carnage naturally follow, rinse and repeat.... been going on for almost 2,000 years now...

rsp,