04.26.13
Now that we know austerity is a farce, will our economic policies change?
Paul Krugman calls a TKO on austerity, The 1 Percent’s Solution.
Economic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.
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What, after all, do people want from economic policy? The answer, it turns out, is that it depends on which people you ask — a point documented in a recent research paper by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright. The paper compares the policy preferences of ordinary Americans with those of the very wealthy, and the results are eye-opening.
Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.
You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.
Does a continuing depression actually serve the interests of the wealthy? That’s doubtful, since a booming economy is generally good for almost everyone. What is true, however, is that the years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers. The 1 percent may not actually want a weak economy, but they’re doing well enough to indulge their prejudices.
And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?
I hope not; I’d like to believe that ideas and evidence matter, at least a bit. Otherwise, what am I doing with my life? But I guess we’ll see just how much cynicism is justified.
What, after all, do people want from economic policy? The answer, it turns out, is that it depends on which people you ask — a point documented in a recent research paper by the political scientists Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels and Jason Seawright. The paper compares the policy preferences of ordinary Americans with those of the very wealthy, and the results are eye-opening.
Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.
You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.
Does a continuing depression actually serve the interests of the wealthy? That’s doubtful, since a booming economy is generally good for almost everyone. What is true, however, is that the years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers. The 1 percent may not actually want a weak economy, but they’re doing well enough to indulge their prejudices.
And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?
I hope not; I’d like to believe that ideas and evidence matter, at least a bit. Otherwise, what am I doing with my life? But I guess we’ll see just how much cynicism is justified.
Reinhart and Rogoff came out with their defense today. And they’re rightfully getting pummeled for that too. Dean Baker, Reinhart and Rogoff Are Not Being Straight.
In other words, this is a fig leaf. Reinhart and Rogoff’s work is a cover for political actors who do not want to take steps to boost the economy and lower the unemployment rate and who want to cut programs like Social Security and Medicare. It is not part of a honest policy debate.
And Matt Yglesias, Reinhart & Rogoff Call Backsies.
So now we all agree and we can all be friends. But the fact is that this isn’t just some sad case of conservative politicians running around mischaracterizing a sober-minded study and then liberals overreacting in response. Ken Rogoff was writing op-eds drawing strong policy conclusions from this paper. He was delivering congressional testimony drawing strong policy conclusions from this paper. And it’s not as if he’s some political naif who stumbled down from the ivory tower into a partisan controversy he could never have predicted. He was research director at the International Monetary Fund and he knows how the game is played. He’s signed up as a paid speaker for the Washington Speakers Bureau. His “fees vary based on event location” but they promise that in exchange for your money “Kenneth Rogoff reaches beyond the theoretical and delivers quantitative proof from his frequently cited research and best-selling book to explain why our financial history continues to repeat itself-and just where the US and global economies are heading.”
But of course their is no quantitative proof. In a sense there never was, but the University of Massachusetts counter-paper helped exposed how little quantitative proof was there. Now under attack Reinhart & Rogoff are retreating to much softer, much milder, much more defensible claims. And good for them. But that shows how much credit their critics deserve.
In a sane political world everyone would realize that austerity is keeping us in a depression and that we have much, much bigger economic problems.
We should do things that are smart policies that target the long-term unemployed. Amy Taub of Demos has done convincing work on why ending credit checks as part of the job interview process would be a good idea. Extending unemployment insurance is also important. But the idea that we should change course away from boosting the general economy strikes me as a bad idea. The long-term unemployed experience the worst impact of a generally weak economy. But its that weak economy that is doing the damage. If unemployment was actually brought down, which we could do with more expansonary policy, then employers couldn’t afford to be so choosy.
We can fix the unemployment crisis we’ve done it before. And the beauty is, if we put people back to work, that will fix the deficit and many of our other economic problems. And the chained CPI scheme for Social Security should be scrapped, Why Obama’s Stealth Social Security Cut Is Bigger Than It Seems. Keynes was right, it’s time to put people back to work.
As a side note we used to have a much different economic agenda, then the 80’s happened.