Can that possibly be true? That a roomfull of CEOs gathered by the Wall Street Journal can indicate that this bigly great again economy boosting Republican Tax Cut Cut Cut will have absolutely no effect at all on their decisions to produce more, hire more people, provide better wages?
I like to provide context but unfortunately the full video is not embeddable though it can be seen at this link to C-SPAN. Cohn is the first speaker so you don’t have to plow through the full hour unless you want to.
Thirty seven of 38 Economists? That’s like a bad Trident commercial.
Squirrels!
Surely that can’t be true.
37 of 38 economists said the GOP tax plans would grow the debt. The 38th misread the question.
By Jeff Stein, Washington Post
November 22, 2017
Thirty-seven of 38 experts surveyed by the University of Chicago’s Initiative on Global Markets agreed that the GOP tax bills in Congress would cause U.S. debt to increase “substantially” faster than the economy.
Only one economist — Stanford’s Liran Einav — said that he was “uncertain” if the bills would exacerbate America’s debt-to-GDP ratio. But after the survey’s release, Einav said his response had been a mistake, and that he actually agrees with the economists who expect the debt ratio to soar. (Four other economists in the IGM panel didn’t answer the question one way or the other.)
“I did it too fast and didn’t read the question properly,” Einav said in an email.
(The survey results mirror an episode in May, in which 35 of 37 economists concluded the tax cuts would not pay for themselves in terms of their impact on the federal budget. The two who disagreed later said they misread the question and had meant to answer with the majority.)
It’s worse than that, these are Chicago School Economists, the worst sort of rattle shaking Shamen, the exact kind of people who should be applauding. The reality is that debt levels don’t matter at all unless you have to pay more to borrow (the United States Federal Reserve chooses to pay interest, the almighty “Market” is prepared to pay for the privilege of holding Treasury Notes) or you see erosion in your currency’s ablity to buy imported goods (the U.S. Dollar stands at record levels).
So the Post is totally misguided about why the Republican Cuts Cuts Cuts are bad and reinforce the thinking that could make them even more harmful (well, in addition to giving Billionaire Plutocrats and Multinational Megacorporations even more money to buy Politicians and the Stenographic Media) which is irrational debt panic will allow Republicans (and some Democrats) to dismantle the few portions of our “Social Safety Net” that remain (Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, Veteran’s Benefits).
The result is not only that the vast majority of citizens are poorer but that they’re actually factually going to start dying in the streets.
Do you really want to live in the Central African Republic (average income $659 a year)?
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