Behind Battle Over Debt, a War Over Government

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/us/politics/15deficit.html?_r=1&ref=jackiecalmes

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:52 PM
Subject: re: Behind Battle Over Debt, a War Over Government
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  Behind the battle over debt brews the clash between what we might call the Keynesian view and the Hooverian view. John Maynard Keynes was awarded the Nobel prize in economics for showing that a responsible government can and should spend money that it doesn't have in times of economic distress.  Herbert Clark Hoover was turned out of office for preaching austerity as the remedy to the Great Depression.  While history never quite repeats itself, the evidence in hand shows that deficit spending for make-work (e.g. raking leaves) and deficit spending for infrastructure (e.g. the TVA) and deficit spending for the U.S. participation in WWII (which dwarfed the other two) brought us from the Great Depression to our Post-War prosperity.  As long as president Obama is merely niggling over how to impose austerity, he is only slightly less wrong in applying the 20th century's lessons than are those who sit across the aisle.

Barry Levine