Politicians might be shamless and senseless about government spending but Robert Samuelson does a good job of making sense of this silliness exhibited by both parties in an op-ed in the Washington Post today.
No economist did more to help us understand the problems of public debt than James Buchanan. See his Public Principles of the Public Debt, and Democracy in Deficit (with Richard Wagner).
We better get the "shameless and senseless" spending behavior otherwise they will bankrupt the US economy beyond a point that would be salvagable.
Of course, pushing the government over that fiscal edge to a place that is unsalvagable could be one way to drastically reduce spending--some argue it's the only way to do it. Obviously some people point to what happened in New Zealand as an example of this. I suppose it's an inverted Crisis & Leviathan story.
Please note, I don't support this methodology to reduce the size of government, but it sounds less and less tongue-in-cheek whenever I suggest it nowadays.
Posted by: KRM | July 20, 2006 at 02:53 PM
Samuelson couldn't be more accurate and Pete is even better a defining it as silliness.
Posted by: GoodQuestion | July 29, 2006 at 02:28 PM
Samuelson couldn't be more accurate and Pete is even better a defining it as silliness.
Posted by: GoodQuestion | July 29, 2006 at 02:29 PM