A Batshit Insane Critique of Fiscal Responsibility

Via Mark Thoma comes a very good discussion from Don Pedro. Don dismantles some utter nonsense written by Thomas E. Brewton entitled Obama’s Excremental Economics where the thesis seems to be that reversing the Bush tax “cuts” (more deferrals) will lead to a recession. Its secondary theme is:

The basic thrust of Keynesianism is the belief that control of the economy must be collectivized at the Federal level, because private business is incapable of providing full employment, and because the proper goal of economic policy must be thwarting greedy businessmen to attain so-called social justice: equal distribution of income and wealth, without regard to merit, capability, or hard work. Not surprisingly the New York Times editorial board and the Times’s propagandist Paul Krugman are prominent Keynesian enthusiasts. In practice (in the 1930s Depression and in the 1970s stagflation) Keynesian economics caused devastating harm to every citizen.

Thomas has a Statement of Purpose for this blog:

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787.

I guess he never bothered to read the General Theory, which was written in the 1930’s, as he certainly does not understand what it said. And I guess Thomas is unaware that we raised taxes in 1993 and the economy didn’t exactly fare badly after that.