In late December, I initiated a series of posts (here and here) discussing how a severe economic crisis can open up opportunities to change the way industries work and to revise our basic assumptions about how the government can affect our lives. "A crisis presents a rare opportunity to shake off the conventional wisdom and to gather the political will to create better ways of doing things." We have now experienced our first major legislative battle of the Obama presidency, and the possibility of overcoming old assumptions seems further off than ever.
Among many disappointing aspects of the debate over the stimulus bill, perhaps the most worrying is the claim that we should not vote for infrastructure investment because such spending cannot be done fast enough to stimulate the economy. It is, in fact, simply not true to say that infrastructure spending cannot happen quickly. Sadly, decades of our willful failure even to pay for basic maintenance of roads, water systems, and so on have left us with a backlog of projects that could be started almost immediately if the spending were approved. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that we need to spend $2.2 trillion over the next five years just to repair and upgrade our existing infrastructure.
Even so, it is true that there are many new infrastructure projects that could take years or decades to plan and build. My hope had been that we could turn the proverbial lemons into lemonade during this crisis by authorizing large-scale public investment projects (such as high-speed rail) that would be not only wise investments purely in dollar terms but would also have enormous environmental and social benefits. Under non-crisis conditions, such projects have never gotten far in Congress because of the combination of reflexive anti-government ideology and the short-term thinking inherent to our political system. As we now face the possibility of global depression, it seemed at least possible that we would think big and start to fund some of these far-reaching projects that could change the world that we pass on to future generations.
Instead, we could not even get enough money to fix crumbling school buildings. Why? Because opponents of the bill stuck to their story that infrastructure spending is too slow, so the only spending that should even be included in a stimulus bill is that which will be immediately stimulative, no matter its long-term pay-off. Admittedly, there is a certain logic to this, because we surely want to know when a stimulus bill that has some price tag on it ($829 billion, or whatever) will actually affect the economy. There is no reason, however, why Congress cannot pass a bill and include that information in the bill itself. We would also want to know whether the spending on longer-term projects will be soaking up labor and capital when -- knock wood -- the economy is prosperous again. If that is our concern, however, then we even more urgently need to choose projects that will pay off even if they displace some amount of private economic activity.
In other words, because we fail to invest in sensible long-term projects during prosperous times, we need to use a crisis as an excuse to initiate projects that would be sensible under any circumstances. That is exactly the opposite of what seems to be happening. We now seem to be saying that, because some public investments do not kick in soon enough, then we should ignore their long-term benefit to the economy and get back to them "later." Forgive me for suspecting that later will never come.
This situation is a variation on Keynes's famous description of a stimulus program in which the government would bury tubes of money in abandoned mines. Private enterprise would then spring forth to create jobs "efficiently" in the money-retrieval industry. Keynes was being sarcastic, of course, and he was careful to say that he would prefer that the government instead finance sensible projects like improved housing for the poor; but if the "captains of industry" insist that the government must not build anything useful, then it is better during a downturn to spend money on something stupid than not to spend it at all.
And here we are. We cannot invest during good times, precisely because times are good. We cannot invest during bad times, precisely because times are bad. We have stumbled onto a perfect plan for long-term decline.
-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan
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Maybe Republicans have it right after all. Bush could get almost any Republican agenda accomplished with a Democratically controlled Congress. Both Clinton (first two years) and now Obama seem to lack the political strength to get Democratic agenda items accomplished even with control of Congress. Obama needs two republican votes. Two. If he has to warp his program this much to get the bare minimum support he is getting now, there is little hope for him to accomplish anything substantial during his Administration.
Utter contempt may have been too strong. But Paul Scott's comment and Neil's follow-up post have me wondering: what is it about the Democratically controlled Congress and Whitehouse that make them so impotent compared to their Republican counterparts? Is it because only the former have hard feelings about steamrolling people? "Hard ball" is something Tip O'Neill used to warm up with. Now it's a dirty word among progressives. What's the deal? Is it the prevalence of "discourse ethics," Kantian categorical imperatives, or something less theoretically interesting?
It is evident, though (isn't it?), that the modern Republican line is all just empty rhetoric w/ one end: curbing "collectivism" in any form other than payouts to the insiders.
Much has been written recently about the efficacy of “stimulus” bill. In fact, nobody really knows how many projects are “shovel ready”, and how “shovel-ready” they are—that is, how quickly jobs can be generated by funding them. But we don’t need to know these details in order to know that President Obama’s approach to stimulus is quite a bad idea.
By it’s nature, a stimulus must be temporary. It’s only a good idea when the economy is on its knees. When the economy recovers, the stimulus must stop—otherwise, it will generate inflation. But roads, railroads, bridges, school buildings, and so on, are all projects likely to take multiple years. If the economy were to stay in the doldrums for multiple years, that might be OK, but the fact is, we don’t know how long it will be before the economy recovers. It is likely that this will happen before many of these projects are completed. Then what? The stimulus must be withdrawn. Do we stop the projects in their tracks?
Infrastructure-as-stimulus proponents will answer, no, these are needed projects, and they should continue. But then, we’ve got to figure out how to pay for them. And there will be people who say that the price is too high; we’ve got too many infrastructure projects going at once. In other words, we’ll have to make fundamental policy decisions about the direction of our society —how big government should be, how much of the budget should go to infrastructure, how deeply should we go into debt to pay for infrastructure, and so on. These are not topics that should be debated after projects have been started across the country and then run out of money.
This brings up the other big problem with infrastructure-as-stimulus. There is a large segment of our society that is opposed to “big government” and willing to sacrifice long-term gain for short-term benefits for the wealthy. They are wrong, but they cannot be re-educated in the time frame in which a stimulus must be injected into the economy. We have already seen this—not only has the needed stimulus been delayed by partisan bickering, the package is probably smaller than is needed.
The correct solution was to have started sending out checks to individuals and state and local governments back in December or earlier, in amounts big enough to make a difference and for a period of months until the recession is defeated. (The details need to be figured out, but that can and should be done in time to either finish off this recession or zap the next one. Do not doubt, there will be another. It’s the nature of our economic system.) Checks to governments, especially, will staunch the bleeding of jobs immediately. As for individuals, some will spend the money immediately, for mortgage or rent payments, or on badly needed repairs such as roofs. Others, such as those on Social Security, will be less nervous about spending the money than those who are unemployed. As this initial spending starts stimulating jobs, more and more people will start spending their checks. And, when the economy recovers, it will be a lot easier to stop the checks than to raise taxes which had been cut as a stimulus. And, the plan will appeal to intelligent free-marketers: no oversight is needed; the stimulus works through the market to create jobs.
Yes, because, you know. Too many schools will lead to rampant inflation...
The problem is a fundamental difference in what most people think a "stimulus package" is and this "economic recovery package" that the Democrats pushed through.
I thought the idea was the fix the economy, but really the point is to push through all the special interest projects the Democrats haven't been able to achieve in the past 8 years.
The market has further tanked since Obama has been in office and so far the market seems to be pricing in this "stimulus" package as a loser.
Maybe we should use Federal money to build more schools/improve bridges and roads, but these projects are better suited for the budget, not a stimulus package.
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クレジットカード現金化
クレジットカード現金化
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