Herbert: No Work, No Homes (* Fiscal Policy Worst in 200 Years - Akerlof)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/opinion/14HERB.html

Talk about preaching to the choir. President Bush and his clueless team of economic advisers held a summit at the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex., yesterday. This is the ferociously irresponsible crowd that has turned its back on simple arithmetic and thinks the answer to every economic question is a gigantic tax cut for the rich.

Their voodoo fantasies were safe in Crawford. There was no one at the ranch to chastise them for bequeathing backbreaking budget deficits to generations yet unborn. And no one was there to confront them with evidence of the intense suffering that so many poor, working-class and middle-class families are experiencing right now because of job losses on Mr. Bush's watch.

After the meeting, Mr. Bush said, "This administration is optimistic about job creation."

It's too bad George Akerlof wasn't at the meeting. Mr. Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that "the Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years." Speaking at a press conference arranged by the Economic Policy Institute, Mr. Akerlof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said, "Within 10 years, we're going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility."

--snip--
(Economist Robert Solow)"There has been a dissipation of the huge budget surplus," he said, "and all we have to show for that is the city of Baghdad."

[jafap]

1. another home run for Bob

I was going to post it, but you beat me to it. It is a good thing too because the url I had was set for my NYT account.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/opinion/14HERB.html ?n=Top%2fOpinio
and so on. I will remember that next time to stop at html.

This is a great line: "This is the ferociously irresponsible crowd that has turned its back on simple arithmetic and thinks the answer to every economic question is a gigantic tax cut for the rich."

But people got their $600 per child checks this week and everyone knows that it is impossible to cut taxes without most of it going to the wealthy. I do not remember if anybody besides me has written about how the child tax credit is a smokescreen for larger cuts for the wealthy.

I think that Dean and Gephardt and whoever else needs to back off from a complete reversal of the BTC (Bush Tax Cuts). People can keep their larger child tax credits, even though it is unfair to the childless. What needs to be undone is the cuts at the top - like Clark said, start at the top and work down until the budget is taken care of.

[Merlin]

2. I'm glad Herbert highlights Akerlof's comments.

I did a google on Akerlof's remarkable slam on Bush economics and found that virtually no legitimate news outlets had picked up on it, since it had originally been part of a der Spiegel interview.

This piece gives it the kind of currency it deserves.