December 05, 2003
No future?
Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration.
But the bad decisions being made in Washington mean a grim future is in store for the US, says economist Paul Krugman. While each of these decisions has its own ill consequences for the economy, their combined impact is heading the country for a fiscal meltdown.
Despite what Dubya and his minions want the country to think, some day the tab for the administration's military adventures, corporate handouts, and Medicare 'reform' (just to pick a few examples) will come due. And, says Krugman, all of Dubya's tax cuts mean that the government won't have the money to pay the bills.
The prevailing theory among grown-up Republicans — yes, they still exist — seems to be that Mr. Bush is simply doing whatever it takes to win the next election. After that, he'll put the political operatives in their place, bring in the policy experts and finally get down to the business of running the country.
But I think they're in denial. Everything we know suggests that Mr. Bush's people have given as little thought to running America after the election as they gave to running Iraq after the fall of Baghdad. And they will have no idea what to do when things fall apart.
Via NY Times.
Posted by Magpie at December 5, 2003 02:15 AM | TrackBackIt's something I've been thinking about--the historical track record of jacobins (zhah-ko-BANZ), from Robespierre to Ataturk and since. Usually jacobins are identified with the far left, although that's something of a fallacy--nearly always jacobinist regimes have a particular agenda which involves a lot of regimentation of public behavior and really strict subordination of the individual to the state.
The Jacobins were a political club of the French Revolution ("les Girondens") who soon clarified that their goal for France amounted to nothing less than a wholesale liquidation of civil institutions. No doubt a lot of their agenda would be hard to argue with; the aristocracy, for example, lost their privileges, the schools were secularized, state revenues were sharply increased, the legal system was rationalized, and suppression of certain scientic research was brought to an end. But they also imposed fanatical conformity; after gaining control of the Comité pour Salut Publique, they sought to ensure an eternity of control.
In the case of the original Jacobins, their big debacle was the assignats--the fiat money which introduced hyperinflation to Europe. In order to maintain the assignat's value, rejection of it as legal tender was made a capital offence. The Jacobins had taken full licencse to implement their plans. In this case, economics defeated them.
Krugman has come to realize how radical the Bush executive is - and the numbers are what convinced him of this.
Posted by: Stirling Newberry on December 5, 2003 01:28 PM