Recent Blog Posts
-
Republicans Talk Turkey on Health Care
Nov 20 20093:54 pm EDT -
Contracts Stolen From Veterans
Nov 19 20093:57 pm EDT -
Main Street's Credit Crunch
Nov 18 20095:41 pm EDT -
Criminalizing Failure
Nov 17 20095:55 pm EDT -
Casablanca on the Potomac
Nov 16 20095:22 pm EDT -
So Big It Will Fail?
Nov 10 20093:02 pm EDT -
Health Care’s ‘Wild West’
Nov 09 20093:57 pm EDT -
Obama's Secret Jobs Plan
Nov 06 20093:13 pm EDT -
Health Bill Wins Key Support
Nov 05 20093:15 pm EDT -
Chamber Goes Green?
Nov 04 20093:54 pm EDT
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Larry, What's So Wrong with Stimulus?
I was on Larry Kudlow's show yesterday where he was on rant against a stimulus package. I understand his point. Sometimes short term stimulus ideas have unintended consequences. He was worried about the panicked measures of the Nixon years like wage-and-price controls and going off the gold standard. Amity Shlaes, who is on a jihad against the New Deal, kept echoing his sentiment. But i don't see why the bipartisan consensus for a stimulus package--the Bush administration is coming out for one today and so is Bernanke--is so terrible. Some things government does are designed to be temporary. (Sending troops to Grenada, cutting the Fed Funds rate.) Temporary doesn't by definition mean ill conceived. Sure, there are unintended consequences and there would be good consqeunces from getting tax rates steady. Larry and the supply siders want big cuts, of course. I don't buy that for all the obvious reasons but even with that caveat, there is a lot to be said for straightening out the tax code so we don't have to revisit rates every couple of years or major questions like the estate tax.






