Paul Krugman: Voodoo Economics, the Next Generation

[Hestia]

Even if Republicans take the Senate this year, gaining control of both houses of Congress, they won’t gain much in conventional terms: They’re already able to block legislation, and they still won’t be able to pass anything over the president’s veto. One thing they will be able to do, however, is impose their will on the Congressional Budget Office, heretofore a nonpartisan referee on policy proposals.

As a result, we may soon find ourselves in deep voodoo.

During his failed bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination George H. W. Bush famously described Ronald Reagan’s “supply side” doctrine — the claim that cutting taxes on high incomes would lead to spectacular economic growth, so that tax cuts would pay for themselves — as “voodoo economic policy.” Bush was right. Even the rapid recovery from the 1981-82 recession was driven by interest-rate cuts, not tax cuts. Still, for a time the voodoo faithful claimed vindication.

The 1990s, however, were bad news for voodoo. Conservatives confidently predicted economic disaster after Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax hike. What happened instead was a boom that surpassed the Reagan expansion in every dimension: G.D.P., jobs, wages and family incomes.

more at link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/opinion/paul-krugman-voodoo-economics-the-next-generation.html?_r=0

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If if they are going to drag us kicking and screaming into the past, let's revisit this most recent chapter in our history. There's a sentence that is off the mark, but I guess he has to please his handlers.

The millennial's were mere babes then and may not have been aware of just how bad the economy was that Bush I inherited. People are still living economically like it is still late 80s, early 90s, because TPTB have kept it that way.

There needs to be an economic revolt - a series of them that can have lasting repercussions with TPTB.

Right now, every major company is being bought by hedge funds and other instruments, which spells trouble for the unions. If a hedge fund (or whatever) buys say Company A, they get to hide behind faceless entities and make edicts to each manager to not give in to labor, wages, full time, etc., oh well, since the hedge fund (or whatever) controls the companies, they do not have to declare their shareholders. WTF you gonna blame? Who's really in charge? The same 50 people who have always been but you just can't quite prove it...

So, incremental but slightly lethal economics gouges each time that let's them know we are serious.

If not, are we just going to sit around and bitch on a forum? I wouldn't know how to pull something like this off, but surely someone out there does. Occupy peeps? I can slightly monthly contribute to an organization.

Anyway...

[Gothmog]

1. Dynamic Scoring is a false concept based on Voodoo economics

Paul Ryan and the GOP want to adopt dynamic scoring so that Ryan's budgets can be made to look less insane

[Jim Lane]

2. I thought dynamic scoring was valid and that the CBO already does it.

It's obvious that tax laws do affect people's behavior to some extent. The issue is not that Democrats want to deny such an effect; it's that Republicans want the CBO's incorporation of the effect to be based on ideology rather than empirical evidence.