4 ms·
These stories about the triumph of Mises and Hayek fly in the face of evidence. Exhibit A is total government spending as a percentage of GDP: http://www.usgov
by ef4 10y ago
These stories about the triumph of Mises and Hayek fly in the face of evidence. Exhibit A is total government spending as a percentage of GDP:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020USp_17s2li011lcn_F0xF0sF0lF0f_Federal_State_and_Local_Spending_In_20th_Century http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020...
If Mises and Hayek were triumphant, government share of the economy would have gone down, or at least remained constant. But instead it has grown substantially.
It always surprises me how many of Reagan's critics fail to point out that Reagan was a hypocrite who grew the total size of government. His anti-government rhetoric was rhetoric only.
- api 10y agoSame with Bush. I recall reading that he grew government almost as much as LBJ. I suspect that both Cruz and Trump would do likewise, maybe more than Clinton or even Sanders. Trump in particular I predict would be a big spender. But this misses the point. The part of neoliberalism that isn't working is free trade. It's turned into a way for domestic corporations to leverage foreign authoritarian regimes and their oppressed populations as a sink of cheap labor. It's becoming clear that the reciprocal side of free trade may never come as states like China won't allow it, which makes it just a unilateral liquidation of the American worker and American industry. I am absolutely for free trade with free people but that rhetoric has been used to sell something much different.
- entee 10y agoI think a great many people who would consider themselves Keynesians are rather pro free-trade. I'm thinking here of Paul Krugman who despite have recently backed off saying trade is universaly good has been very much pro free trade. It's also not at all clear that free trade is the primary culprit in the decline of manufacturing labor. Robots are way cheaper over the long term than are even abused sweat-shop workers. Krugman acknowledges that trade as universally positive is a bit wrong, but even so doesn't think protectionism is necessarily the correct solution. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/opinion/trade-labor-and-politics.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/opinion/trade-labor-and-po...
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoExactly. This being said, the poor huddled masses of the authoritarian regimes generally get a little bit freer and have an improved standard of living because of it, generally.
- noobermin 10y agoSo I found another source which contradicts at least my first glance impression of yours. Here is something that might be more instructive[0], federal spending only, not including state and local spending. To be fair to Reagan, he didn't control state and local government spending. Interpreting it is still somewhat difficult, but it looks like there was a peak of spending towards the start 80's. Definitely, other than after the 2008 crisis, federal spending did not increase as much as your other plot suggests. Once again, this demonstrates the sin that is plotting multiple plots ontop of each other, can yield misleading impressions. [0]http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020USp_17s2li011lcn_F0f_Federal_Spending_Only_In_20th_Century http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2020...
- kafkaesq 10y agoBut instead it has grown substantially. Charts like these need to be viewed with independent factors in mind. The Cold War just might have had something to do with the growth in state outlays from 1950-1990, for example. And then after 2002 there was another military expansion of course, followed by a spike for the 2008 financial crisis.