HappySqurriel said:
Well, with how many economists were claiming that the housing market wasn't in a bubble in 2006/2007 and didn't see the impending credit crisis until it had already become a massive problem do you really feel confident that economists have a strong understanding of the economy? The economy really isn't that complicated and, much like a forest fires are needed to have a healthy forest, you must have economic downturns in order to keep your economy healthy. Government intervention to prevent companies from failing is like protecting trees with pine-beetle infestations from the forest fire; in the long run the government is doing more damage because the lack of moral hazard will lead to other companies making the same mistakes without fear of the consequences. Unemployment is like burnt trees that have collapsed on the forest floor, and when the government produces government jobs it is like taking this burnt material away from the forest to make it look neater; but the burnt material is the nutrients that lead to the forest re-growing stronger than it was before, and the unemployment leads to an affordable and motivated workforce which is necessary for the next generation of companies.
The health of the economy is best maintained by the government staying out of the way of people, allowing them to develop the technologies and products of the future, and to encourage them to sell their products to as many people as possible (through free trade). |
You are assuming that the GOP has any kind of credibility whatsoever on this issue or, even if they do, that they will follow through on it. This article says it better than I can:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1896588,00.html
The problem for Republicans, as the RNC's Steele memorably put it in a TV appearance, is that there's "absolutely no reason, none, to trust our word or our actions." Republicans, after all, proclaimed that President Clinton's tax hikes would destroy the economy, that GOP rule would mean smaller government, that Bush's tax cuts would usher in a new era of prosperity; now the House minority leader says it's "comical" to think carbon dioxide could be harmful, and Steele says the earth is cooling.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
