Comments for The Arrogant David Brooks Tells Readers That Stimulus Will Risk National Insolvency at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 15 out of 15 comments http://www.cepr.net Fri, 24 May 2013 10:42:27 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1403 I hate to say this, because I think the world of Dean Baker and Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini, and all the other brilliant economists and thinkers out there, who not only intuitively, but empirically understand and are explaining reality for most of us, but: The right wing is winning hand over foot with the "mainstream" media, the Congress, and, most sadly, this White House. From their mouths to Rahm Emanuel's and Barack Obama's ears. If there is any way to address this problem, please, Dr. Baker, can you tell us? Please, because the country is going to suffer greatly if we don't counteract the effects of this noxious know-nothingism ("the deficit!" "austerity!" "cut taxes!" "slash Social Security!" "Barack Obama is the source of all our problems!" "less regulation!" "businesses aren't investing because of the uncertainty around taxes" "unemployed people are lazy" and the newest one, from Niall Ferguson, "radical fiscal reform" is needed to prevent us from becoming the "European Union") masquerading as "serious" thought. - Pareto Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:08:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1388 Conservative economic arguments remind me of somebody trying to disprove Einstein's theory of relativity because it's not compatible with Newtownian physics. Of course, Newtonian physics, just like the economics of the right, work just fine...within specific domains. But Relativity says, yes, that model works just fine in that specific domain, but now we have problems that aren't confined to that domain, so we need a better model. Conservatives seem unable to imagine a world (even though it's taking place all the time all around all of us) in which their tidy theories don't explain everything perfectly. So instead they simply insist it must be false because they can't understand it. - Devin Wed, 07 Jul 2010 11:39:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1386 Shorter David Brooks: "Why rely on those 'models,' which require 'high I.Q.s' to understand, when you can just pull your opinions out of your a** and get paid for it, like I do?" - retr2327 Wed, 07 Jul 2010 08:30:11 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1364 This reply to Brooks points the finger at housing, so in that sense is somewhat incomplete. The problem was not the housing, it was the market of CDO, SIV, and ABS derivatives that was on top of these, leveraged at a rate of 30 to 1, to the tune of 140 Trillin Dollars or more. Goldman Sachs and others would like you to believe it was the guy with the 200K mortgage, but, if that is true, why did we offer 14.4 Trillion in bailouts?? We could have purchased all of the 11 Trillion in mortgages and restructured the whole lot with money left over. It was the greed and careless behavior of banks, and no one should be allowed to forget that. Nor should they be allowed to forget that there are no laws, even with the latest financial reform, that are going to stop it from happening again. thanks for this - Jim Tucker Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:57:24 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1363 [continuing...] (2) Which brings us to their only solution, and another big Republican contradiction: the steady mantra that deregulation and tax cuts are better for the economy. The trouble is, that's only sometimes true, as it clearly isn't true right now. So the Republican pundits are turning inside-out to avoid saying it. You will be expelled from cocktail parties for contradicting this dogma. Now, we know that tax cuts of some kinds, at some times, may boost a short-term stimulus. But the effects of tax cuts on long-run economic growth have always been modest -- both Ronnie's and Dubya's tax cuts are guilty of this -- so modest indeed, that the question always arises of the lost opportunity costs, such as in lost social welfare measures, for example. Is the total economy actually poorer off? It can be hard to say. For example, the Bush Tax Cuts have not replenished the Social Security Trust funds which they so handily drained. Did they even "pay for themselves" yet? (3) Which brings us to another blindness. The success of the Republican rhetoric with the American public has also depended upon a confusion of "short-term" and "long-term". This may have started-out deliberately, to control the debate, but then become lost to frontal consciousness as a mere habit of mind: a common cognitive bias, no doubt having some technical name which those who study psychology will recognize. For example, their rhetoric depends mightily upon a confusion of the idea of "stimulus" with the idea of "growth". This is a short-term/long-term confusion. Stimulus is short term, against a business cycle. But "growth" is long-term economic growth, which depends upon innovation, which in turns depends upon education. A tax cut may give a little cyclic boost, but upon it they claim the innovative wonders of modern science and technology. (4) Finally, because cake doesn't get more deliciously poisonous than when icing is on it: the current episode shows that the Republicans can't even claim that market prices transmit information, because if this were true, then according to Republican fears, long-term interest rates would be higher. So Republicans are either theoretically wrong, or psychologically wrong. In short, David Brooks' column is another rhetorical straddle, engendered by the problematic premises from 1 to 4. Despite what he writes, there are demand-siders with a perfectly good working explanation of the last two years. The reason he gets this wrong is that he has to set up a straw man to oppose, in order to come to precisely the demand-siders' conclusions. This is where the evils of Republican rhetoric have driven him; it's as insidious as booze and pills. - Lee A. Arnold Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:38:36 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1362 The Reaganic alchemical formulary continues to implode for U.S. conservatives, and so now David Brooks lectures us about psychology. Perhaps we're actually watching another real educational moment for the Republicans. This one directly concerns the fact that it is impossible to deny that a short-term stimulus is the best thing to do at this very moment, and that even a huge stimulus ends-up being a tiny bump in the long-term scheme of things. This reality poses intellectual stumbling-blocks in the conservative Republican argument, along several conceptual avenues. So their argument has already moved to what happens after the stimulus: that it must be likely to have a bad outcome. Pursuing this, we shall find again that handful of remarkable mental double-binds they have talked themselves into, endearing them to pathologists everywhere: (1) The Republicans are saying people don't have confidence because we can't trust politicians, but THEY are the politicians we can't trust. Indeed the Democrats recently performed a great service, although none of their idiotic supporters appears to have noticed: according to the new CBO report, the long-term budget outlook is more or less in balance with revenues. Clinton did it before. The Republicans have never done this. This current long-term budget balance depends on Congress not doing anything to upset it -- no extension of the Bush Tax Cuts, no loopholes to anybody else. To be sure, the CBO assumes that politicians keep their current word, and also the CBO couldn't analyze Obamacare more than 20 years out -- perhaps they even underestimate its savings. But hey, the long-term budget is in balance! Shout it from the rooftops! So what is the Republican political strategy now? Is it to convince people to say "This will be hard to achieve" so the Republicans say "Vote for us, we'll do something else"? But what, exactly, are they going to do? St. Ronnie and Dubya are the two recent Presidents who blew the long-term deficits up bigger than anyone else with their long-term policies. Bush policy put us into deficits and is responsible for well over half of the CURRENT deficit. Republicans are now officially the worst of the spendthrifts. So if the Republicans have already insisted that Congress will be giving out loopholes and destroying the budget in the future, then aren't they the ones who can't be trusted? In essence the Republican position is, "Business is always smarter than government, but WE became politicians." Do you really want these people in charge? - Lee A. Arnold Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:37:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1359 ...is always the best, as we know from learned philosophers and our moms. When my single mom was raising my sis and me, she was in debt without end. She owed Montgomery Wards, Sears, for the stove and the phone, and she rode a bus to work--the debt was wide and the scrimping went deep. But she never let us wear old run-down shoes or go to a prom without a stunning handmade gown she designed and sewed herself. She cooked good, healthy meals. We had many friends over for dinner and parties. Once we were raised, she paid off the debts, and by the end of her life was even able to leave us a little money. So it goes. Sometimes you have to live in debt, through hard times, then you recover. Had my mom been hysterical over the debts, she might have terrorized my teen years. Thank goodness she was no David Brooks. She looked at the longer picture. Thanks mom. - mudgrrrl Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:59:05 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1357 "They have total faith in their models."..."Are you really willing to risk national insolvency on the basis of a model?" Uh, David, "models" is how we think. All thought is "models". To number and count is to model. This one has a stripe down the middle of his forehead. This one is spotted. This one has lost a leg. But their all sheep. Not identical, but representitives of a "model" sheep. To add one to one is to employ a model, because "one" is an idealized member of a set. Higher order models lawfully relate sets to sets. Higher/higher order models relate higher order models to one another. There is no thinking apart from modeling. His argument appeals to the same level of intellectual attainment as that used by the creationists who dismiss evolution as just a theory. Roughly 25% of the adult population is capable of "formal operational" reasoning. This is thinking in terms of variables or symbols, as in logic and algebra where formal rules govern the manipulation of symbols independently of their content. Brooks' "But you're not a theorist, you're a practical executive." describes an adult capable of "concrete operational" thinking. They can reason, but only in terms that can be apprehended with the senses. I can't believe that this description fits any concrete executive in America. - diesel Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:12:07 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1356 I very much enjoyed this thrashing of Brooks. Krugman was much too kind to him on his own blog, though I'm sure Krugman would like to have said more, but had to be civil due to their common employer. Thankfully Dean Baker has no conflict of interest and can just lay into him. - Brett Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:11:28 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1355 I've been describing Brooks as "vacuous" for years. It feels good that it now seems a popular description. - Wes Cain Tue, 06 Jul 2010 12:16:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1353 Yes, I agree with Dean and appreciate his trying to counter David Brooks' nonsense with facts. Unfortunately, facts rarely if ever faze him or his editors at the New York Times. Brooks simply purveys GOP talking points, and pretends to show a little empathy for an underdog now and then, or upbraids an evildoer, but he's given a big megaphone for his vacuous 'thoughts' on radio, TV and in the Times. What a shame! What a waste! - nancycadet Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:05:40 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1347 In a rather confused piece, Brooks is trying to assert that additional tax cuts are the preferred form of stimulus and that additional spending is a risky strategy to stimulate demand. That is exactly how the GOP block in the Senate wants to characterize their egregious failure to move jobs and unemployment bills. The conclusion is that Obama can have his stimulus if only he will accept stimulus in the form of tax cuts. The truth is that the American workers have asked a hand and the GOP Senate has only extended a finger. - Ron Alley Tue, 06 Jul 2010 03:12:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1341 Brooks says in the NYT column: [quote]There is no way to know for sure how well the last stimulus worked because we don’t know what would have happened without it.[/quote] In economics, no one knows whether the glass is half empty or half full do they. It could be half empty from the demand side or half full from the supply side, or as Brooks says, half empty [i]because[/i] of the demand side which should be replaced by the supply side to make it half full, and he's not even talking about the starting point of extremely low demand from a very empty glass after the bubble burst. No, Brook's is on the same train as everyone else. It all started with trying to fix the deep recession. Never mind how we got here. Stop the blame game and let's move on. There's no mistakes from the bubble from which we can learn. It's like the teabaggers. Everything started with Obama. This is really a great mystery isn't it, which requires normative should-be interpretations rather than positive-is interpretations. It's not about what demand [i]is[/i], it's about what it [i]should be[/i], which opens the door wide to just about any interpretation one can pull off the moralistic shelf doesn't it. That way we can paint the demand siders, for example Mark Zandi, as flaky wanna-be free riding intellectual snobs devoid of economic reality for recommending more stimulus spending rather than slamming on the brakes with an austerity package. And when Zandi says it, of course that makes Baker a hard left commie pinko of the highest order. - izzatzo Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:02:30 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1340 The insolvency risk of US debt is zero. The Fed would not have any choice in paying bondholders, or in supporting US Treasury Debt. Mr. Brooks should look at section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,... shall not be questioned." On this, the Supreme Court said in 1935 in PERRY v. UNITED STATES, 294 U.S. 330: "... the government is not at liberty to alter or repudiate its obligations". So Mr. Brooks should stop questioning the validity of US debt, or people will start calling [i]him[/i] unconstitutional, and soon after, UnAmerican. - Calgacus Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:55:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-arrogant-david-brooks-tells-readers-that-stimulus-will-risk-national-insolvency#comment-1339 Brooks wrote: "Only 6 percent of Americans believe the last stimulus created jobs, ..." However, you could also describe the poll as 47% believe that the stimulus has or will create jobs. See http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/poll_Obama_Congress_021110.pdf STIMULUS PACKAGE AND JOBS 6% Has created jobs 41% Has not, but will create jobs 48% Will not create jobs - AndrewDover Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:45:35 +0100