This post does a great job of describing the current argument that the GOP and its friends in the economics profession are making. Conservatives, since Milton Friedman, have attacked the demand side explanation of recessions and have promoted a supply side explanation which makes government the cause of recessions. I have posted articles by Mankiw and Borro who follow in Friedman's footsteps by advocating a supply side explanation that puts the blame for our slow recovery on government policies that decrease the willingness of business to invest in the economy.
It probably won't make much of a difference to those who have a religious faith in supply side economics, and who want to limit the role of government in the economy, but the data presented in this article makes a convincing case against a supply side explanation our current economic problems. You won't see this in the WSJ; you won't see it on Fox News, and you won't hear it on talk radio, unfortunately even Harvard economics students will not see the data. You can have some fun, however, teasing you tea toting friends with a foreign substance: empirical data.
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