Ideology. Partisanship. Rigidity. The Past
These are all very bad things, dangerous traps to fall into. Except when we’re talking about rigid, unquestioning fealty to a curious, unproven idea from the past — 1931 — known as Keynesian economics. Which means betting $787 billion of money we don’t have, most of which won’t be spent this year, to fight a recession that most economists think will be over in a few months. With respect to this partisan ideology, we must remain completely silent, not bothering to weigh its proposals to competing ones, before it is signed into law. Retaining some provision for flexibility in the stimulus? That would have been too rigid. And measuring the current plan against history, such as the failed Keynesian stimulus in Japan in the 1990s, would amount to getting stuck in the failed notions of the past.
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