Comments on: Thinking About Fiscal Policy http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/contd/2008/12/18/thinking-about-fiscal-policy-getting-off-square-one-on-america%e2%80%99s-long-term-fiscal-deficit/ Continuing the Conversation Thu, 08 Sep 2011 20:35:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Peter Atkinson http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/contd/2008/12/18/thinking-about-fiscal-policy-getting-off-square-one-on-america%e2%80%99s-long-term-fiscal-deficit/comment-page-1/#comment-309 Peter Atkinson Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:06:51 +0000 http://the-american-interest.com/contd/?p=683#comment-309 You are quite right to suggest that if we do not consider our long term fiscal policy that the invisible hand is likely to be asleep when we need most and the burdens of our policy, or lack thereof, are bound to land with a great thud upon those able to bare them least. It is easy to be cynical. I prefer your brand of pessimism. Just because we are perfectly able to imagine the future, despite having developed remarkable methods to calculate it, we cannot control what happens and of course the banality of this observation is extremely bright. Nonetheless the obviousness of this lack of control may be apparent, even shinny without its being a bit understood. In economics (and probably everything else), time is and has always been difficult to isolate. An analysis of Keynes’ amusing quip, that in the long run we are dead, bares more attention that it is often given, which is to say it is extremely interesting that most economist, traders, investors, et cetera seem to agree that macroeconomics events cannot be predicted and yet continue to work on calculative models and schemas. Thank you for reminding me that my lack of capacity to adjust the future to my liking, does not seem to relieved me from the responsibility to lean into the future with my eyes open doing what I can. In particular, just because we do not understand completely (or even barely) how what will happen is going to happen in our economy, I want to liken our policy response to the overwhelming overhang building around medical and retirement costs to our current implemented strategies concerning global warming. I am comparing the two, not because we have been slow (and I am being kind) in addressing either set of issues, but rather because most of the proposed 'solutions' to global warming seem like reasonable courses of action no matter what temperature of the planet is in fifty years. Likewise if a debate were to open on our long term fiscal policy, we might be pleasantly surprised. Thank you for your posting. You are quite right to suggest that if we do not consider our long term fiscal policy that the invisible hand is likely to be asleep when we need most and the burdens of our policy, or lack thereof, are bound to land with a great thud upon those able to bare them least. It is easy to be cynical. I prefer your brand of pessimism.

Just because we are perfectly able to imagine the future, despite having developed remarkable methods to calculate it, we cannot control what happens and of course the banality of this observation is extremely bright. Nonetheless the obviousness of this lack of control may be apparent, even shinny without its being a bit understood. In economics (and probably everything else), time is and has always been difficult to isolate. An analysis of Keynes’ amusing quip, that in the long run we are dead, bares more attention that it is often given, which is to say it is extremely interesting that most economist, traders, investors, et cetera seem to agree that macroeconomics events cannot be predicted and yet continue to work on calculative models and schemas.

Thank you for reminding me that my lack of capacity to adjust the future to my liking, does not seem to relieved me from the responsibility to lean into the future with my eyes open doing what I can. In particular, just because we do not understand completely (or even barely) how what will happen is going to happen in our economy, I want to liken our policy response to the overwhelming overhang building around medical and retirement costs to our current implemented strategies concerning global warming. I am comparing the two, not because we have been slow (and I am being kind) in addressing either set of issues, but rather because most of the proposed ‘solutions’ to global warming seem like reasonable courses of action no matter what temperature of the planet is in fifty years. Likewise if a debate were to open on our long term fiscal policy, we might be pleasantly surprised.

Thank you for your posting.

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