Friday, May 22, 2009

Boldly Going Where No One Has Gone Before

Robert Samuelson is worried about Obama's budget deficits. Nick Schulz puts this into a graph to help better understand what lies ahead:



I'm worried too.

(HT Russ Roberts via Greg Mankiw)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...
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thinking said...

Everybody is worried by the coming deficits, even Obama. It's not like he or his administration is oblivious to this.

The key is what adjustments will be made in the years ahead, as Pres Obama has mentioned time and time again. Right now it's rather premature to judge.

But at this time, economists across all ideological stripes agree that the last thing you want in a recession is for govt to cut back on spending.

In reality, Obama has no choice at this point; his hand was forced by the Bush administration and their utter failure. Can anyone doubt that the Bush administration was one of the most incompetent in history?

Then there's this fact: if you want to control spending you have to get a handle on health care costs. That's the key. Again, we'll see what type of health care reform gets done. But I do know this: there are other countries getting better results spending less.

Finally, I hope all those concerned about deficits are willing to accept some measure of tax increases; no one can be serious about deficit control without being willing to support some tax increases.

Shawn said...

th...can we not push for spending decreases, alternately?

Shawn said...

oh, and, thinking...until you can really criticize obama, at least a little, your comments will continue to be nigh-on-worthless.

HAHAHAHAHAHA on "all economists agree that the last thing to do is to cut back on G." K(eynesian)-oolaid still good, eh?

Energy4America said...

Ok, why did this chart start in 1969? And then use the misleading title "... going where no one has gone before"? Sounds like an agenda ahead of honesty! See http://cli.gs/QTGrru for a graph taking us back a bit further. Now, don't get me wrong. As a father, I'm very, very worried about the national debt. Especially because this time we can just tap more energy and resources to grow our way out of it. Time to go beyond economics to econosystemics! http://econosystemics.com

Jason said...

Yep, I was going to say what Energy4America said - we have been there before, during WWII.

Hope you weren't going to teach this to your macro students, Brian ;)