I remember Paul Ryan saying something like this, and the helpful lefty economists pointing out how such a silly, alarmist forecast didn’t account for whatever magical thinking the extremist Keynesians were engaging in at the time whereby everything is fiscally fine, Social Security isn’t insolvent, debt isn’t anything to worry about, the Constitution is a dated document of perverse anti-fairness coerciveness we no longer should be clinging to, and besides, we can always print more money!
So I imagine the reaction to this will be more of the same: conservative teabagging sillies, stimulus is an economically-sound short-term “investment” (although built now into the baseline budget, though we won’t mention that), and we can always cut later. Besides, bunnies and Krugman and unicorns and hope and change!
It’s all very depressing: our entire society is seemingly institutionally formed around the ways leftists have thought up to defer reality in an attempt to will the world into working the way they wish it to work.
And that can only end in misery.
Hence the need to stock up on canned goods, fresh water, and cash money. There will be a disruption at some point in the supply chains, the store shelves will clear off as if a hurricane were coming, and the banks will close.
Plan for at least a month of Not Being Able To Get Anything, and keep your gas tank half full.
Can’t hurt; definitely helps if we need it.
This is how the world ends, not with a bang or a whimper, but with hyperinflationary monetarism, crony capitalism, and mercantilist populism used by the ruling elite to substitute perception for reality right up until they no longer can.
The two indispensable trade goods will be ammunition and alcohol. Anyone who can make both will be wealthy…
This.
What cannot go on forever… won’t.
So, kind of a sad psssssh-ing kind of sound?
Better get a generator and a hundred gallons of fuel buried in your yard, di.
Also, a pump action shotgun and lotsa shells.
Ol’ Slick Willie takes another tiny cut: We are in a recession, extend all the Bush tax cuts before Taxmageddon.
Really did not appreciate the racist accusation in 2008.
I can’t wait for Paul Krugman’s explanation detailing how the CBO’s models are wrong.
The details are in the math Slartibartfast, Mr. Krugman’s – ahem – expertise.