As the G20 give up on Keynesian economics and the PIIGS, the USA, and the world brace for the consequences of their spending, Jeffrey Sachs points,
we need to abandon short-term thinking in favour of the long-term investments needed for sustained recovery.
Keynesian stimulus was premised on four dubious propositions: that it was needed to prevent a global depression; that a short-run fiscal boost would jump-start the economy; that “shovel-ready projects” could combine short-term cyclical and long-term structural agendas; and, last, that the rapid rise of public debt occasioned by stimulus need not be a concern. That these ideas were so widely accepted was a testament to the perennial political attractiveness of tax cuts and spending increases.
Of course, dyed-in-the-wool Keynesians never die, they just dismiss Sachs’s words as sophistry.
Here in New Jersey the governor is doing something about the spending. It was high time someone did.
