One of my favorite liberal news blogs featured an editorial by Mr. Jordan Royer, who writes that we need a “new economic structure” for our state and county. I would think the discovery of a new “new economic structure” would be making headlines around the world.
Thank goodness that at least one blog thought so highly of the “new economic structure” to make it their lead opinion in last Monday’s edition in Crosscut. To explain, Mr. Royer writes that this “new economic structure” is needed to prevent “divesting capital” away from government.
So it now seems one of the ways to call for more government spending is to call it by a new name. In this case, just call it a “new economic structure.” Then follow that up with a call for more government spending. What Mr. Royer calls a “new economic structure” is the same old tired Keynesian economics that created the Great Depression and then prolonged it for 10 years.
The unemployment rate as late as 1938 was still running at 20 percent because Hoover and Roosevelt turned what would have been a three-to-four year downturn into a 15-year meltdown.
Now being copied with Obama Keynesianism which is prolonging our Great Recession years beyond what is necessary, resulting in suffering and joblessness affecting so many of our friends and neighborhoods. Furthermore, the author writes, the “new economic structure” will “grow our productive capacity.”
Of course, only a Keynesian could assert more government spending creates more productive capacity in spite of the proof to the contrary from, among many examples, the Great Depression and our own Great Recession.
More government spending and taxing prolonged the Great Depression and now the Great Recession.
So where will this so-called “new economic structure” gets us?
Using as sources the International Monetary Fund and Congressional Budget Office, one can see a budget crisis in the U.S. and mounting debt. Unless the U.S. brings down the future cost curves, our national debt will surpass even those of the most troubled nations of Europe, leading to similar economic woes.
The Obama Administration alone has increased our national debt more than all previous presidents combined. In 2000, U.S. debt was at 34 percent of GDP. The trajectory of U.S. debt goes up to 187 percent of GDP by 2035. This is higher and faster rate of debt growth then even the troubled countries of Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and even Greece.
As an example, Greece projected debt to GDP is at 153 percent by 2030. So the U.S. is on track to surpass the sickest of the European Counties by 2035. Putting that in more personal terms, using the source of U.S. Census Bureau and Congressional Budget Office, in 1970 each American’s share of the national debt was $6,435. In 2012 that share is $36,267 and growing to $135,547 by 2035.
So you can call more government spending anything you want. Some will actually proclaim a “new economic structure” so as to put a new shiny spin on more debt.
Thank goodness most will see it for what it is: more spending, more taxing, more debt, more unemployed for a longer time because the “new economic structure” repeats the past mistakes of the tired old economic planners of Keynesian.
Speaking of tired-of Keynesians, one of the most famous was Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary Morgenthau, who wrote in the late '30s after years of failed “new economic structure” (then called the New Deal): “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work … We have never made good on our promises …. I say after eight years of this administration [Roosevelt], we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot.”
Pay attention, folks. “New economic structure” is just another way to say more government taxing and spending.
Michael Plunkett
Edmonds
