Jim Pethokoukis takes on the Juice Box Mafia’s reigning Arnold Rothstein.
In a column for Bloomberg, Ezra Klein declares that he’s “not particularly worried about the budget deficit. In fact, of all the major problems the U.S. faces, I’m least worried about the deficit.”
How can Klein be so blasé with the U.S running trillion-dollar annual deficits as far as the eye can see? First, he points out that if the Obama White House and Congress do nothing between now and year end, nearly $7 trillion in ten-year deficit reduction — higher taxes and lower spending — would begin to automatically kick in. Not that Klein wants that scenario to occur, mind you. He just highlights it as a sort of a proof of concept that Washington has the tools to solve the debt problem.
And if even the politicians aren’t willing to act on their own, he adds, frightened financial markets will eventually force them to. Of course, markets offer a rather terrible sort of salvation. A debt-driven financial crisis would force sudden and draconian austerity. We really would be Greece.
Second, Klein says that the future is very far away and many wonderful things are likely to happen between now and then. Indeed, he gently mock the debt doomsayers: “They brandish charts showing scary red lines reaching out to 2080. Those charts show a huge problem that requires radical solutions. … But those charts are really about health-care spending … What they’re really telling us is this: If you look at how medical costs have risen in recent decades and you draw that line out for 70 more years, we’re really in trouble. … But there’s something ridiculous about extrapolating current trends all the way out to 2080. By that point, we’ll probably either be robots, the servants of robots or a bit of both. Either way, the health-care system will probably undergo dramatic change.”
— Allow me to interject here, because I think it’s important to contextualize this “progressive” wunderkind who likes to mock charts and facts and budget projections. First, this is the same Ezra Klein who told us that he didn’t believe the Constitution to be “binding” — and besides, it being over a hundred years old, who could even really understand the hoary, racist thing? (while The Communist Manifesto, conversely? Still speaking to us today, with all its transcendent talk of progressive tax codes and free health care for all, which somehow escapes the historical boundaries of its composition. BECAUSE OF THE DIALECTICS! ) And now here he is, mocking studies wherein actual numbers, based on actual spending and growth trends, are extrapolated out by actual statisticians and actual economists based on any number of scenarios that, we can I hope concede, are far more plausible than Ezra Klein spending his dotage in a fabulously wealthy progressive Utopia being serviced by robotic hookers and enjoying the kind of crisp, clean air that only the EPA can provide us.
And I ask myself: who is it who is actually listening to this faux-intellectual and, just as importantly, why?
But I digress:
So rather than hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, Klein advocates hoping for the best and preparing for the best. Now he might be right. An accelerating pace of technological change might save us by creating warp-speed economic growth so we could easily finance all that future debt. Or perhaps technological wonders will somehow reduce healthcare costs. Maybe low-cost nanonbots roaming in our bloodstream will immediately heal us from all injury and disease. Everyone an X-Man.
Except that healthcare costs have been outpacing economic growth. Consumers seem to have an insatiable demand for healthcare services, especially when they aren’t directly paying for it themselves, a trend Obamacare, which Klein supports, reinforces. And the debt problem isn’t some futuristic, 2080 concern. For instance, there’s a Congressional Budget Office forecast that a) assumes Washington doesn’t deal with exploding entitlement spending and b) assumes sharply higher debt levels do hurt the economy. According to that plausible scenario, CBO sees debt as a share of GDP rocketing from around 70% today to 250% of GDP by 2035. That’s a recipe for a debt crisis sooner rather than later. We might not have time for Klein’s sci-fi Singularity to save us.
So what does Klein think Washington should be worried about? “Catastrophic climate change” for one. Yet the same forces that Klein suggests might make all our debt problems go away also apply to the environment. There might be stunning advances in climate geoengineering and other technologies allowing us to vacuum up all that nasty, excess carbon. And with gobs of innovation driving economic growth, we’ll have a lot more dough to pay for Medicare, right? Unless, of course, we get a debt crisis way before 2080, and the U.S. shift into slow-growth mode.
Here’s the problem Pethokoukis runs into in addressing arguments like those offered by people like Klein: he allows that they are making actual arguments. They aren’t. Ezra Klein’s function — like the function of so many leftist public “intellectuals”, is to sneer at the hoary scolds who stand athwart Progress yelling “history!” He is a Utopian statist, as Mark Levin might call him, and as such he must diminish and marginalize and seek to discredit arguments from conservatives that point to the problematic social and fiscal endpoints statism leads us toward (witness the European austerity movement, which Klein tells us we’ll never have to face, because we can always print more money!); while as a booster of progressive Utopianism (under which he would serve as an intellectual mastermind, of course), he must likewise work to weaken any claims the Constitution has on legitimate governmental restraints (much of the work in that respect being done through the institutionalization of a kind of epistemological anti-foundationalism that usually remains hidden — at least, until Stanley Fish gets into one of his moods).
That is to say, Klein doesn’t argue. He problematizes. That’s what he’s been taught to do and that’s what he does, a good little useful idiot in the service of a Greater Good to brought about by an inherently moral leftist government of the kind he’s been conditioned to reify.
And we know this because, had he been taught actually to think, he’d be a classical liberal or a legal conservative. Or at the very least, a libertarian.
So. QED!
Arithmetic was invented over a hundred years ago, using weird language Ezra doesn’t grok.
Ezra should be sent back to kindergarten.
” . . . in the service of a Greater Good to be brought about by an inherently moral leftist government of the kind he’s been conditioned to reify.”
In the indefinite future. Sometime. Whenever.
It’s coming: now hold still or the drill bit might run through your femur instead of your patella.
If you read between the lines, he’s saying that he doesn’t have to worry about it because the adults will. He clearly spells out the mitigating forces working against the debt implosion: fiscal hawks and bond vigilantes.
We will be saved by those he consistently demonizes… is his thesis.
If he’s going to credit his opponents with his assured salvation we should at least return the favor. For one, I’m more than willing to equally credit our downfall to Klein and his ilk if they get their way.
Meh … we’ll all be dead and buried by then. Well … me certainly. What are the odds our children will be smarter?
proggtardism explained
Even sooner than 2035… If I recall correctly, there was a Trifecta a few weeks ago, in which they played some video of an interchange between Paul Ryan and Timmy G.
One of the scary graphs showing debt to gdp (or somesuch) only went out to 2027, because at that point the CBO’s model projected an impossible situation, like debt service == 100% of GDP or god-knows-what. This got Whittle to flip out (uncharacteristicly) over the fact that Ryan’s talking about The End of Our Economic System in 15 years and Geitner’s joking about it.
Sorry for the overly vague, and no-doubt erroneous recollection. I’m sure the thing’s behind their paywall by now, so it doesn’t really matter…
Arithmetic was invented over a hundred years ago, using weird language Ezra doesn’t grok.
Heh.
Granted, being thousands of years older than The Constitution he probably thinks the thing was some kind of Ouija board.
Given that the child is the father of the man, one hopes that for his most foolish, foolish sake, Tiny Ezra writes under a pen name.
Yeah, I know.
newrouter … you might want to explain yourself. Sometimes sarcasm goes just …. poof!! … right over your head.
Now important things plot up sharply as they head off into madness. Which to They Who Would Rule in the post-Cloward-Piven age, is just peachy.
(If it weren’t all hatey I’d even comment on how this came to be. Lesson learned!)
Ha! Go to, JHo! Get your propaganda on!
Still too busy digging out from under all this confirmation bias, sdferr! And arithmetic! Thanks!
By that point, we’ll probably either be robots, the servants of robots or a bit of both.
‘zonoes !
The clip John Bradley refers to.
But if a Wells Fargo or a Citi or a Sachs can trade digits freely in the bonds-for-ink game of Teh Bernank’s Jenga, it’s all really about liberty! I always say! Hate avoided! Thanks!
“In the long run, we’re all dead” —John Maynard Keynes
Can’t we all just get along?
Saving Propaganda Ryan! Go to Paul! Thanks!
That is to say, Klein doesn’t argue. He problematizes. That’s what he’s been taught to do and that’s what he does, a good little useful idiot in the service of a Greater Good to brought about by an inherently moral leftist government of the kind he’s been conditioned to reify.
Snot nosed little punk.
Instapundit is sounding all Visigothy here. Wonder if Mittens will denounce such mean language? :
“… I’m not sure Obama’s actions can be characterized as stupid. I think he knows what he’s doing.
MORE STILL: Prof. Stephen Clark writes:
‘All of these moves are consistent with a desire to see the domestic price of commodities rise. ….
I think the time has passed for looking at these policies and acts as the product of incompetence or lack of coordination, and rather to ask what policy goals do they serve? These things should be openly discussed and laid out as part of the process leading to November’s decision.’
Indeed.”
Gosh, such unhelpful notions must be tamped down before any of the sainted Independents and Moderates hear this.
Thanks for finding that clip, JHo.
The thing that blew me away (and still does, having just watched it again) is that the Trifecta crew, who strike me (with the possible exception of Whittle) as largely respectable Establishment, non-Visigothy, happy to vote for Mr. Electable, “go team R!” -types– are all like “the CBO says the economy ceases to function in 15 years and nobody seems to have a problem with that! Has everyone gone mad?”
For a brief moment, ‘they’ sounded like ‘us’, which I found noteworthy for the novelty.
If Paul Ryan is making the same case as JHo I’ll eat my hat.
One represents hawkish monetary policy. The other says that fiat currency and fractional reserve lending are of the devil. I see some daylight between those positions.
Whenever someone like Ezra Klein says that deficits don’t matter, ask them why bother to collect taxes then. Just have the government borrow or print the money it needs. Or is it that taxes are collected because that it isn’t fair that some people should have more than others?
Well?
That would certainly tax everyone at the same rate, charlesaustin. I saw it proposed as one solution in a lengthy video about the Fed and money in general.
Go here to watch it. It’s about two hours long. I would not be surprised if JHo linked it here in the past.
“But there’s something ridiculous about extrapolating current trends all the way out to 2080.”
So what does Klein think about AGW?
I had a free money conversation the other day… the point was conceeded just before… but its free money.
Do share.
Many Pubbies love them some of that good old fashioned Private Banking Religion, John. If it has to print itself insane and us all bankrupt, so what? As long as JPM and the Fed benefits and the US Treasury makes it all go here in the USSA, cool!