>From SLATE's news summary: >The Los Angeles Times digs into the history of Keynesian economics, which >popularized the idea of deficit spending to restore confidence in ailing >economies. Obama's proposed stimulus plan would be the largest Keynesian >experiment a developed nation has ever tried in peacetime. ...
> In a report released after yesterday's radio address, Obama's top economic > advisers gloomily predicted no change [??] in the unemployment rate by the > end of 2010, the [Washington POST] reports, and suggested the rate would rise > as high as 9 percent without passage of the stimulus. But some Democrats > don't like the plan's inclusion of a $3,000 tax credit for each job a > corporation creates or saves, and Republicans don't like the hulking size of > the whole thing. Republicans do like the tax credit part, however, which > means getting bipartisan support could be tougher than Obama hoped. > But caution might be warranted: The Obama plan is the biggest gamble on an > economic measure the country has taken since World War II, the LAT's lead > essay on the return of Keynesian economics observes. Even FDR's > Depression-era deficit spending wasn't nearly as "audacious" as the Obama > proposal. It's a "testament to the frightening dimensions of the global > economic plunge" that Obama's package has garnered so much favor with > economists, and the experiment seems to have more to do with today's drama > than analysis of the Keynesianism's past.< If we assume that we currently live during "peacetime" and that similar magnitudes of war count as "peace," then both Reagan and Dubya instituted large Keynesian expansion plans. It may not have been their intentions to do so (as they both pushed the "supply-side" line), but that's what their policies were in effect. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
