Paul Krugman explains to us w
hat Ronald Reagan-style "voodoo" economics (I believe the term was first used seriously by, ironically, George H. W. Bush) inflicted on all aspects of the U.S. economy in its heyday... and what it will impose on all of us if (or should I say when) it comes back in the next Congress.
The short of it is this: cutting taxes to promote economic growth never worked and cannot work. But that doesn't stop conservative ideologues; they just concoct more lies in an attempt to make the bad look good and the truly terrible look even better. As one of my favorite Sixties pop musicians
put it, "Lie la lie; lie la lie lie, lie la lie, lie la lie..."
AFTERTHOUGHT: As Krugman hinted and
TPM's Daniel Strauss spelled out, GOPers are preparing to wreck the CBO so as to use something they call "dynamic scoring," which basically means assuming/predicting economic growth as a direct consequence of lower taxes. No evidence in practice has ever been presented demonstrating this assertion/assumption, but hey, it fits with their ideology...
They will destroy the economy and blame Obama. Then run off with all loot from the treasury to the Bahamas.
ReplyDeleteellroon, Obama is actually to blame only to the extent that he approaches economics in an anti-Keynesian fashion, i.e., in economics he is a de facto Republican, as he is not in regard to (e.g.) women's rights. The best thing Obama ever did was pour federal money into an economy that GeeDubya had bankrupted, but O didn't pour enough money in, and he stopped far too soon in his enthusiasm for austerity and (here comes a word I hate) "bipartisanship." Until we have a president that understands Keynes in a world whose leaders also understand him, the austerians (I believe Krugman may have coined the term) will repeatedly make the "rich get rich and the poor get poorer." Austerity breeds drastic income inequality and wealth inequality. Austerity destroys the middle class. But you knew that...
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