Stupidest Party AliveTM

People who have endorsed the Republican House caucus's objections to the stimulus package:

Donald Luskin, Chief Investment Officer, Trend Macrolytics LLC, Stupidest Man Alive Emeritus^TM: "Government spending does not create incentives for labor, innovation and investment. Instead of spending $1 trillion in Washington, let Washington forgive $1 trillion in tax revenues to create incentives for millions of individuals and firms to get the economy going again, one dollar at a time."

People who have not the Republican House caucus's objections to the stimulus package:

Eddie Lazear, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Matthew Slaughter, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Katherine Baicker, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Ben Bernanke, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Harvey Rosen, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Kristen Forbes, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
N. Gregory Mankiw, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Randall Kroszner, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Mark McClellan, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
R. Glenn Hubbard, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George W. Bush)
Paul Wonnacott, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
Richard Schmalensee, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
John Taylor, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
Michael Boskin, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (George H. W. Bush)
Michael Mussa, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Thomas Moore, Member, President's Council of Economic n SpriyAdvisers (Ronald Reagan)
Beryl Sprinkel, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
William Poole, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Martin Feldstein, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Jerry Jordan, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
William Niskanen, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Murray Weidenbaum, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Ronald Reagan)
Burton Malkiel, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Paul MacAvoy, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Alan Greenspan, Chair, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Gary Seevers, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Gerald Ford)
Marina von Neumann Whitman, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Richard Nixon)
Paul McCracken, Member, President's Council of Economic Advisers (Richard Nixon)

In fact, no current or former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers--Democrat or Republican, living or dead, sane or insane--has signed up for the Republican House caucus's list of economists opposed to the stimulus package. None. Zero. Nada. Sifr. Efes. Wala sero. Kosong sifar. 'Ole. Knin. Pujyam. Mann. Dim. Nocht. Null. Meden. Hitotsu. Sifuri. Ling. Sunya. Mwac. Ataqan. Saquui. Hun. Illaq. Wanzi. Wanzi. Pagh. Na. Uqua.

Nobody.

That should tell you something about today's Republican Party.

---

Other ethics-free Republican hacks, whose organizations share in their burning of their own credibility:

Michael Cannon, Cato Institute: "The only way Congress can spend money is to extract it from the private sector – either by taxing it, borrowing it, or seignorage. The question then becomes: will Congress spend that money more wisely than the private sector would have spent it? The answer appears to be no. Congress typically spends according to its political priorities, not economic priorities."

Antony Davies, Associate Professor of Economics, Duquesne University: "It is time for voters to wake up to the fact that government cannot create jobs. It can only shift jobs from one part of the economy to the other. It is entrepreneurs who create jobs, and it is consumers who judge whether those jobs are the best jobs to be created. The government contributes best by establishing a rule of law and protection of property rights that allows entrepreneurs and consumers to act in their best interests."

Joseph Zoric , Associate Professor of Economics, Franciscan University of Steubenville: "The stimulus plan will most probably turn quickly into pork spending. Marginal rate tax cuts would be a much more effective way to stimulate demand along with cuts in the capital gains and corporate tax rates. Evidence shows that marginal tax cut multipliers are much higher than spending multipliers. In addition the Fed is still not out of ammunition."

Edward Lopez, Associate Professor of Law and Economics, San Jose State University: "Fiscal stimulus may have symbolic value and certainly does provide an expedient for distributive politics, but there is NO evidence that it contributes to GDP or economic growth more broadly."

Justin Ross, Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University: "Empirical evidence overwhelmingly rejects federal government deficit spending as the best method for stimulating the economy, and is generally unsupportive of it having any stimulus effect at all."

Steven Horwitz, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University: "The stimulus plans assume consumption is the source of economic growth. It is not. It is the consequence of said growth. The ‘stimulus’ is a redistribution of spending, at best, and will do little to help. The next Administration should avoid large scale programs and experimentation and allow the marketplace to correct the errors made by the last 8 years of misguided intervention."

Richard Wagner, Professor of Economics, George Mason University: "Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently. Whether government finances its added spending by increasing taxes, by borrowing, or by inflating the currency, the added spending will be offset by reduced private spending. Furthermore, private spending is generally more efficient than the government spending that would replace it because people act more carefully when they spend their own money than when they spend other people's money."

Stephen Entin, President & Executive Director, Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation: "Want to grow the economy without inflation? Cut marginal tax rates, slash the corporate rate, expense investment in the first year (instead of depreciation), keep tax rates low on dividends and capital gains, and repeal the death tax. Have the Federal Reserve focus on price stability and a sound dollar, and on not generating a monetary roller coaster. (That, in part, is what caused the housing and commodities bubbles.) Rein in government spending to pay for the tax cuts, and trim senseless regulation."

Gary Wolfram, William Simon Professor of Economics, Hillsdale College: "Rather than old style Keynesianism we should reduce the corporate income tax substantially. The problem is not lack of demand, but rather a lack of investment. By reducing the corporate income tax, among the highest in the industrialized world, we will increase the incentive for companies to invest in new equipment, technology, research and development, and buildings. This will increase productivity in the long run, leading to higher GDP and higher wages.”

Lawrence Franko, Retired Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston, College of Management: "Government ‘infrastructure spending stimulus’ programs in Japan during the 1990s produced no stimulus, but rather a vast overhang of government debt. Bridges, tunnels, roads, and trains to nowhere stimulate nothing. It is productivity growth that counts, and that comes mainly from the private sector – which is why tax cuts have always been a surer way to economic recovery.

Michael Sykuta, Associate Professor, University of Missouri – Columbia: "Government intervention and ‘stimulus’ in the housing market is largely responsible for the current economic crisis. History has shown that the Obama team’s proposed ‘stimulus’ is not only going to have little to no effect in the short run, but will create a larger bureaucratic structure, lead to tremendous investments in unproductive political lobbying among ‘stimulus project’ wannabes, and dissuade/delay private investment, recovery and growth."

David Laband, Professor of Economics and Policy, Auburn University: "Our economy as a whole will [no] benefit from taking money from current or future taxpayers to support a government spending spree. No doubt, certain interest groups will gain from feeding at the public sector trough. But losers surely will outnumber winners by a large margin. Our economy as a whole will benefit from Congress lowering taxes and letting Americans decide for themselves what is worth spending their hard-earned dollars on."

Howard Baetjer, Lecturer, Dept. of Economics, Towson University: "A government-spending ‘stimulus’ is a very bad idea. Because government can spend only what it has taxed or borrowed away from the public, it creates no new demand but merely redirects it. Recovery depends on profit and loss discipline and public confidence that the basic rules underlying free markets will be followed. The latter is hurt by government interventions such as ‘stimulus.’"

Glen Weyl, Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows and Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics, Harvard University: "Nothing about a recession justifies larger government. If we are worried about too few jobs, it makes sense to subsidize private employment (for example, by temporarily lowering payroll taxes or creating a new tax subsidy for new hires)." UPDATED: THIS IS OUT OF CONTEXT AND DOESN'T BELONG HERE: GLEN WEYL IS MAKING A MUCH MORE SOPHISTICATED POINT

Henry Thompson, Professor, Auburn University: "The current recession was caused by government fiddling with the mortgage market and the moral hazard created by the illusion of government monitoring of financial markets. Increased government involvement in the economy is not the solution."

Gene Smiley, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Marquette University: "An ‘economic stimulus’ program will do nothing to correct the serious price and resource misallocations that currently exist and are stopping the economy from moving back toward ‘full-employment.’ In fact, they will likely retard the recovery. They will divert resources from the private sector to the government sector moving us further away from a free-enterprise economy.

Stacie Beck, Professor, University of Delaware: "A spending stimulus will only delay the needed restructuring of the U.S. economy to remain internationally competitive. Tax cuts will facilitate that restructuring far better than spending and job creation by the government."

Steve Entin's presence on this list is sad. He was an economist once upon a time...

Comments

[john]

Wow... those comments rank high on the just-plain-false list, as well as the denial-of-empirically-observed-reality list.

Can it be possible that those people really, truly believe them? How could they? Upton Sinclair's aphorism about belief and income doesn't seem to apply...

I fear for the future of the human race.

[pants]

I cannot believe Wolfram et al are still parrotting that line about the corporate income tax being the highest in the developed world. Looking at the effective rate or looking at corporate taxes as a share of GDP the US is right about on par with the developed world.

[Blissex]

Government ‘infrastructure spending stimulus’ programs in These two points are fairly reasonable though:

«Japan during the 1990s produced no stimulus, but rather a vast overhang of government debt. Bridges, tunnels, roads, and trains to nowhere stimulate nothing. It is productivity growth that counts,»

«If we are worried about too few jobs, it makes sense to subsidize private employment (for example, by temporarily lowering payroll taxes»

as far as they go of course.

As to infrastructure spending vs. payroll tax cuts, the former has the potential to increase productivity, the latter is much quicker; however infrastructure spending is easier to direct into spending the USA, payroll tax cuts might too easily result in more consumer good imports or capital exports.

[John V]

I didn't know Steve Horwitz was a Republican. Did you Dr. Rizzo?? ;)

Funny how objecting to the very foundation of Keynesian Economic reasoning makes you a Republican.

[Ken Houghton]

Entin: "Want to grow the economy without inflation?"

At which point I answer "No" and stop reading.

(Had I continued, I would have noticed that everything he suggests is what was allegedly tried for the past eight years, and therefore can reasonably be presumed to be as useless now as it was then.)

If economists learn one thing from the "crisis of 2008" (may it remain so named because it begins being mitigated in 2009), it should be that The Great Moderation was NOT your friend, and that the tradeoff of inflation for growth is a win-win (since it rewards better investors).

[Brian J]

While you can't necessarily say Mankiw is a supporter of the Republicans, he doesn't look to be a supporter of the Democrats, either. I wonder where people like him fall and what exactly they would do.

[Anonymous]

You might want to scratch Mankiw off your good list and move him to your naughty list.

BTW - Is the huge government debt that is a byproduct of Keynesian economic policy through the decades considered collateral damage that we should ignore? Or do maybe some of the people you've attempted to smear here have a valid argument? Maybe Richard Wagner, who published Democracy In Deficit with James Buchanan, arguing legitimately that given government's ability to spend wildly, has a valid argument against deficit spending given the unethical abuse of the purse strings that neither Democrat nor Republican can control.

[aa]

hitotsu は正しくない。
日本語では rei, あるいは　ゼロ　（zero)

[SNoopy]

Ummm...hitotsu means "one item".
hitotsu = one item
futatsu = two items
mittsu = three items
yottsu = four items...

[Beavis]

Actually, couldn't we just use a different term for you? Useful idiot!

[Brian G.]

You're a tool living in fantasy land.

[Amy]

This post angers and upsets me. Just because there are people out there who subscribe to a different economic paradigm than you do does not make them ethics-free, Republicans, or hacks. I personally know one of the people you've listed and assure you that they are none of those three. The last thing that this country needs is this trend that has developed of deciding people are evil simply because you have a difference of opinion about what economic policy would make the world a better place. Name-calling in this manner only serves to discredit yourself and your supported causes, and it is both ignorant and juvenile.

[BR]

1) The lack of a verb in the fragment "People who have not the Republican House caucus's objections to the stimulus package" is confusing.

2) If I were on Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, I'd be doing whatever I could to get fired before Bush leaves office. At least it might give the impression that I wasn't in favor of Bush's economic policy choices.