Tuesday, December 30, 2003
(3:41 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Always Nay-Saying!
From Mr. Krugman's column today:
The bottom line, then, is that for most Americans, current economic growth is a form of reality TV, something interesting that is, however, happening to other people. This may change if serious job creation ever kicks in, but it hasn't so far.
The big question is whether a recovery that does so little for most Americans can really be sustained. Can an economy thrive on sales of luxury goods alone? We may soon find out.
As we all know, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The history being repeated here seems to be "trickle-down" or "supply-side" economics. This was first attempted in the 1980s, when the "conservatives" took power under Reagan. It didn't work. No reputable economist ever thought it would. Anyone who thinks it works is an idiot or a complete party hack.
Naturally, then, we're giving it another try -- since Bush has no actual "ideas" of his own, the job of running the country falls to his retro 80's cabinet. We were supposed to trust Bush because of his good, experienced advisors. Maybe some journalist somewhere should have done a little digging around to see the kinds of policies those people actually supported. I can certainly see the place of super-capitalist income inequality during the 80s, when we were at the tail end of fighting the Commies -- it is certainly a symbolic victory if capitalism at its most decadent and unjust is able to defeat communism, and I applaud Reagan for the foresight of allowing us that symbolic victory. Similarly, a dualistic worldview where we blindly support and prop up rulers who are nominally loyal to us in a clash of civilizations while those same rulers act to undercut our national interest and our supposed "values" -- that makes a lot of sense when you're fighting the Cold War, like we were in the 80s.
But guess what: We're not fighting the Cold War anymore, morons! Get a calendar! The Berlin Wall fell over a decade ago, and now much of the world views the excesses of capitalism as a primary obstacle to justice and human welfare. Even though the long-term value of "Third Way" liberalism and humanitarian interventionism are questionable, at least the "liberals" made a token gesture toward coming up with new ideas during that lengthy period. The most original idea a conservative has come up with in the past decade has been to put Reagan's face on the dime. All the conservatives did was bitch and moan and plot character assassinations and come up with dirty tricks -- so that they could just repeat their program from the Reagan years.
