| Mendicate Bias said: I agree with your basic premise. In theory if we could regulate government spending during economic downturns in a way that assured bolstering of the economy that would be great. The problem comes after, once the economy has rebounded. Both sides of the aisle are guilty of this too, they just like spending on different sectors. I do think that there are legitimate expenses for governments to undertake, including healthcare. I'm not saying that we have the best healthcare system but it is much better, in principle, than what it was before. I'll also say that a major problem with our gorvernment is the lobby system. Private companies should have no say in government policies, while at the same time government should have minimal involvement in the private sector. Barring legitimate regulations that is. btw I heard at some point that your a professor at a university, is that true? |
More to the point, they just like different sides of New Keynesianism. The Democrats like Paul Krugman, who was a respectable, mainstream (if Keynesian) economist until '99/2000 when the double whammy of his joining the New York Times and the Bush candidacy/presidency turned him into a fucking loon. The Republicans like Greg Mankiw, who initially comes across as saner than Krugman (he'd be hard pressed not to) but still thinks that the government ought to try to finagle the economy into doing what it wants, only he prefers creating deficits through tax cuts without matching spending cuts. Actually, they're both just partisans who use economic mumbo-jumbo to justify whatever their team is doing and slam whatever the other team does.
I don't think Obamacare puts us in a better place for the same reason that all the previous price controls and other government interventions haven't put us in a better place. It's just more of the same on steroids, only with a decidedly more corporatist flavor this time. As usual, Obama put on his demagogue pants and pretended to be battling some nefarious evil (health insurers with their whopping 3% profit margins) in order to sell the thing while cutting deals to make sure that the health care industry's big players all actually supported his bill. Corporations aren't stupid, and they know that when something as huge as a health care overhaul is going to happen it's best to get on board to get the carveouts they want, so they did. Big pharma did especially well for themselves. It's actually a myth that these giant corporations have any fondness whatsoever for the free market when in reality they enjoy corporatism just as much as the government does; it keeps smaller competitors off their backs, among other things. (In other lobbyist news, it's worth nothing that Liz Fowler, the architect of Obamacare, just joined Johnson & Johnson a couple of weeks ago.)
And I'm not professor, LOL. I do work at a university, but I'm in research.
