Monday, October 25, 2010

Michael Barone Channels John Maynard Keynes

In the Washington Examiner, Barone writes that voters fed up with Obama's big, bossy government:
Out on the campaign trail Barack Obama has given us his analysis of why his party is headed for significant losses in the election nine days hence. 'Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now,' said the president for whom politics did not seem so tough in 2008, 'and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country's scared.'

In other words, the voters can't see straight.

But maybe it's the Obama Democrats who are so scared they can't see straight.

John Maynard Keynes famously said that practical men of business are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. In this case it seems that practical men of politics may be the slaves of some defunct political scientists and historians.
I think it would be more accurate to modernize that quote like this: "It seems that practical men of politics are usually the slaves of John Maynard Keynes." This is the point I was making last night when I wrote:
Keynesian economics hasn't been working so well largely because governments spend like drunken sailors regardless of whether there's a surplus or not. As a result, the part of Keynesian policy where you're suppose to pay the debt down never actually materializes, thus, it has become our road to perdition.
I've heard repeatedly this political season that both Democrat and Republican economists agreed on the bailouts and supported the stimulus. Of course they did—they're all Keynesian economists!

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