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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (105623)	3/7/2009 10:30:47 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540836

Michael, lists like this are a dime a dozen. The best one can say for it is that some economists, a few prominent, disagree with something Obama proposes to do strongly enough to sign a petition. We don't know from this statement how many are prominent, not quite so prominent, not prominent at all. Even university of affiliation doesn't settle that issue unless they are otherwise prominent because they might be grad students, adjuncts, who knows. Moreover, different faculty members may have signed different versions of the petition. The statement itself is a very generic one, the sort you need to get widespread support. Finally, I think but am not certain, that most statements from the Obama administration said the "spending more from government" portion of their policy was a "consensus" view of economists, not that there were no dissenters. If anyone believed that the economics profession had single-mindedley left it's Hoover-like base, they were wrong. Friedman revived it and his influence grew, for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, the signers of that document should be scolded for their very bad history of Roosevelt's policies during the 30s.

To: greenspirit who wrote (105623)	3/7/2009 1:01:23 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Respond to of 540836

Michael; This list of economist reminds me of a list of scientist that said the Spotted Owl wasn't endangered and that if we set aside land for its survival we wouldn't have any lumber to build houses. Clinton set the land aside, then we had the biggest housing boom in history - all while lumber prices remained stable. Now with the set asides still in place, lumber companies are going broke across the country as no one will buy enough lumber to keep them going. Lumber hit an all time low a couple weeks ago! More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s But what the spending by Roosevelt did was give America benefits through the CCC that are still being used today. What a deal huh? steve

To: greenspirit who wrote (105623)	3/7/2009 2:01:24 PM
From: NAG1	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540836

Michael, It is an impressively sized list. The thing it points out to me is that there are probably too many economists. I wonder how many economists(on the list and off this list) missed all the bad things that were going on in the economy, at least until it was too late. Honestly, even the ones in the present administration that missed it all and are now in the cleanup phase, how many of these should be in government and shouldn't we have picked those that tried to call attention to the problems coming up. The one thing about Roosevelt and I think it is also true about Obama, is that they realize something needs/needed to be done and they are/were not dogmatic about it. Things need to be tried. If some things don't work, ditch them and try something else. But to do nothing because nobody can really tell if it is the right or wrong thing will, in my opinion, prolong the problems we are facing. I think this quality is important in these times. I think there is going to need to be some trial and error practice to see what does and does not work. Anybody that says that they know exactly what to do and how to do is not being honest. JMO though. Neal