How The Mighty Republican Party Became So Ignorant

[applegrove]

How The Mighty Republican Party Became So Ignorant

by Nicholas Wapshott at Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-mighty-republican-party-became-so-ignorant-2013-10

"SNIP...............................

For Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the threat of America not paying its debts is not so much about economics as semantics. "It really is irresponsible of the president to try to scare the markets," he said. "If you don't raise your debt ceiling, all you're saying is, ‘We're going to be balancing the budget.' … the American public will say that sounds like a pretty reasonable idea."

An ophthalmologist by trade, Paul should forget grappling with economics and tend to his own shortsightedness.

The flat denial — even in the face of the fact that freezing the federal economy is already causing profound business uncertainty — that blowing past the debt ceiling could lead to a steep stock market slide and will provoke skyrocketing interest rates that could ricochet around the world and set the scene for another Great Recession is part of a pattern. These same Republicans were indifferent to the consequences of the sequester — a mindless, deep slashing at entitlements and defense spending they insist is doing no harm. If they looked around them they would see how the sequester is unfairly causing misery.

Economics has long been an act of faith rather than a rational scientific study for some conservatives and libertarians. The pretense that a successful modern economy could do without a strong central government or that a government should somehow not influence economic policy by intervening is fanciful. There is a reason we are living under the all-pervading influence of John Maynard Keynes rather than the Austrian economists who challenged him, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.


...............................SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. Great Op Ed. The GOP is really playing the muse to all manner of liberals

these days and inspiring lots of interesting comment.

[Plays In Traffic]

2. Wow....some Cons really do live in a bubble. Rand has already forgot about

2011, when Republican obstructionism over the debt ceiling crashed the market by 635 points in one day, and 2,000 points over the course of the next few months. To top it off our credit rating got downgraded, driving up borrowing costs by over a billion.

Libertarian economists have been constantly wrong in their predicts, such as this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-paul-believes-in-an-inflation-conspiracy-theory-here-are-all-the-reasons-why-its-wrong-2012-2
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/12/when-will-robert-murphy-conclude-that-he-just-does-not-know-what-he-is-doing.html

[applegrove]

3. Welcom to the DU!

[yuiyoshida]

4. Welcome to DU

[Uncle Joe]

5. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, applegrove.