Samuelson Watch: This Week - He's Cynical, Yet Completely Lacking in Empathy
by Craig Jennings, 1/16/2008
I don't know where to start with this week's Samuelson column ("Lollipop Economics"). It's a mess. I guess the quality control person at the Post had the day off.
As expected, Samuelson devotes another chunk of prime pundit real estate to heft the long term fiscal imbalance on the shoulders of the Baby Boom generation and their impending retirement. This is, of course, just wrong, wrong, wrong. As has been documented numerous times, the fiscal challenges of the next fifty years lay squarely in the rapidly raising cost of health care.
The premise this time for his Social Security bashing is Washington's current obsession with fiscal stimulus. Samuelson's main point is that a $100 billion economic jump-start is nothing more than an election-year gimmick aimed at bribing voters. That Samuelson fails to recognize that good politics and good policy are not mutually exclusive is simple-minded, and absolutely cynical when literally thousands could be affected by it. However, he also objects to fiscal stimulus on the grounds that:
- Such a package is too small to do any good ("something much larger is needed")
- 1.1 million lost jobs is no big whoop ("a setback, but not a disaster")
- This recession is different than others ("Only time and patience will cure some economic problems")
- And besides, recessions are good ("[they] dampen prices and incipient inflationary psychology")