Maggie's Farm

Be very, very afraid. That's the selling-point of the sh-t sandwich of a ten-year backlog of Lefty projects and political payoffs which constitute the "Stimulus." (See $300 million for golf carts).

It's a recession. We have them regularly. But, given the timing, it's been a golden opportunity to advance every Dem Congressman's pet notion. The tactic wouldn't work, though, unless you scare people into a state of brain paralysis. In Ace's words:

President Barack H. Obama: 'Do what I want, or the economy will melt, and you'll all die poor and alone.'

Irresponsible fear-mongering is not all that presidential. Now that I think about it, weren't we promised a calm, cool, post-partisan president?

We have often observed how Leftist plans are advanced by manufacturing a sense of crisis and urgency, with a government "solution" ready in their back pocket.

How hopey-changey became "We'll scare you into buying this": Dust My Broom, Dino.

In the end, though, the Dems hold a winning hand. The economy will improve: it always does. They will take credit for it. As Paul at Powerline says:

I would add, the Democrats probably have the better political hand because they are betting that the economy, one way or another, will recover. The American economy is usually a good bet, as much as the Democrats are doing (and will do) to impair it.

This from Jonah Goldberg:

Stephen posted the quote from Barro earlier, but I think Will Wilkinson deserves to be quoted at greater length:

The deeper problem, I think, is that the textbook theory doesn’t have any politics in it. In macroeconomics textbooks, government is a benevolent central planner beyond politics. It is assumed, for simplicity’s sake, that governments can act in perfect compliance with theory. It is also assumed that theory is settled before coming to a policy problem, that motivated disagreement over theory is not an essential element of democratic policymaking. But of course, there is politics, which trashes hope of either consensus on or compliance with theory. And that’s how we ended up with the legislative monstrosity actually under consideration in Congress. As Harvard’s Robert Barro puts it:

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don’t know what to say. I mean it’s wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don’t think will work, so I don’t think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don’t think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn’t really geared toward incentives. It’s not really geared to lowering tax rates; it’s more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it’s garbage. So in terms of balance between the two it doesn’t really matter that much.

 

The economists can duke it out over the possibility of successful fiscal stimulus. But is there any reason based in up-to-date economic theory to believe that this trillion dollar deficit-spending bill is not, as Barro says, garbage?

Krugman is plumping for it anyway. Hard. So what can one say about Krugman? That he is a creature of extraordinary double consciousness. Perhaps more than any economist of his caliber, Krugman understands that policy is largely determined by the outcome of the public opinion shoutfest. Yet this recognition seems to have no effect on Krugman’s ideas. Rather than bring inside his models disagreement over economic theory and the lack of political incentive to faithfully apply them, which would lead him to radically revise his prescriptions, Krugman leaves his textbook theory untouched and simply tries to win the shoutfest. Krugman’s often unbearable stridency seems to reflect an attempt to overcome the problems of democratic disagreement and incentive compatibility through sheer force of will–as if the deep reality of politics is no match for the rhetorical gifts and gold-plated reputation of Paul Freaking Krugman. It is as if his own imagined ability to singehandedly overwhelm the opposition is part of Krugman’s implicit model of how a politics-free macoeconomic theory can be made politically relevant in a time of perceived crisis, which is to say, a time of rank political opportunism.