British Prime Minister Proposes Plan to Slow Growth, Raise Unemployment
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Tuesday, 08 June 2010 04:38 |
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The NYT reported on a speech by UK Prime Minister David Cameron in which he insisted on the need for large budget cuts and/or tax increases. The article included no assessment of this agenda from economists. Many prominent economists, such as Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz, have argued that deficit reduction in the near future will lead to higher unemployment and slower growth. Unlike the vast majority of proponents of fiscal austerity, these economists were able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the U.S. economy.
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Along come the transformed, new generation of "supply siders" like Dean Baker, Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz who say effectively the same thing for a deep recession from the demand side. Don't increase taxes, if you do, government revenue will just go down more, not up. If anything, reduce taxes to increase spending, including deficit spending.
At full employment, traditional supply siders treat reduced taxes as a positive sum game that supposedly generates positive net output by pushing out the real supply curve of all resources. But in a deep recession, some of them reverse position and insist on raising taxes to reduce the deficit, a zero sum outcome that flatly contradicts their position at full employment, as if the real supply curve below full employment is somehow static and can't move unless the deficit is reduced.
This condition is known as Deficthawkititus and can be fatal unless treated in time with regular doses of a drug discovered in the first half of the 20th century, known in its orignal brand name form as Keynesiancillin, however it does have severe side effects on traditional supply siders.