Pirate's Cove

No, really (via Memeorandum, though I did see the opinion piece while perusing the LA Times android app this am)

(LA Times) Why add to the deficit right now? Jobs. Our economic models clearly show that without increased government outlays we’ll be unable to generate enough GDP growth to seriously attack unemployment. If we tried to balance the budget through tax hikes, our still-recovering economy would be hurt. That leaves a temporarily bigger deficit as an important option.

I could probably make a joke about not taking economic advice from someone with a Greek (Dimitri B. Papadimitriou) sounding name, but that would be unfair to all those of Greek descent who understand just how absurd this notion is, not too mention that Obama and the Democrats tried it. Remember that $850 billion Stimulus passed in 2009? How’d that work out? Tons and tons of temporary jobs. Jobs that appeared only on paper. Jobs that were saved (typically union jobs like teachers) but once the federal money (mostly borrowed) dried up, those jobs were on notice because the economy still stunk and the states didn’t have the money. And still don’t in most cases (except the poster child for awesome, North Dakota, due to their growing fossil fuels industry).

As one of the commenters wrote “The man who wrote this is your worst enemy.   He is an advocate for failure.” Without knowing mroe about Dimitri, I can’t position that this is what Progressives want to do, fundamentally change the way government acts within the marketplace. Of course, when they try it, things rarely work out well in the end (see: Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, etc). And another comment

Do you want to create jobs? Then lets use an amended version of “separation of church and state” and adopt “separation of government and market place” and you will see an explosion of economic activity. Central planning has never and will never work. Central planning causes harm and any fix causes more harm.

Government is inherently unreliable and inefficient, and consider that so many have no knowledge of how economies work, just how they want them to work. And the more government digs itself into debt, the more the private companies will be concerned and be conservative in what they do. And where will this money come from? It can either be borrowed and/or taken from the private sector in the form of fees and taxes. Then government will waste it (see: Fisker, Solyndra, Abound Solar, the program to install energy efficient window, etc).

Finally, I’d hypothesize that the whole point of the opinion piece is to increase government. That’s what Liberals have been pushing.