THE PLANK MARCH 12, 2007
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Today's liberal debate concerns: neoliberalism. Let me make a small point for the defense. The other Jonathan rightly points out that neoliberal aims helped rehabilitate the cause of fiscal responsibility among liberals. At Tapped, Ezra Klein expresses skepticism that there ever were any fiscally-irresponsible Democrats.
In fact, the merits of deficits were a raging debate during the 1980s. Read this Michael Kinsley article which shows just how controversial a proposition this was at the time. Ezra could also delve into some back issues of his own magazine, which argued during the Clinton years that the administration's focus on deficit reduction over social outlay was completely misguided.
I think Matthew Yglesias's rebuttal makes many of the other key points.
--Jonathan Chait
4 comments
Ok so there's no talkback for Mr. Foer's video but the audio on it is horribly off, and there's 45 seconds of dead time at the end. I considered that someone might have noticed this already, but since there seems to be no formal bug reporting system, I figured more people at TNR check The Plank, anyways.
- ClumsyMohel
March 12, 2007 at 7:20pm
has been the sole province of the GOP since Ronal Reagan and "voodoo economics". With respect to the current president of course, he far outdoes the Gipper in the recklessness of his fiscal policy, but as we have seen recently in the remarks of Mr McCain, the theology of ruinous tax cuts and enormous deficits is now baked into the DNA of the Republicans. Nobody - not even a "maverick" will dare to question Reaganomics, regardless of the evident insanity of such irresponsible fiscal policy. Of course in an America where the average citizen knows nothing about anything, it is possible for neoliberals and others to throw stones at Democrats for being fiscally irresponsible. Amazing. Neil
- purcellneil
March 12, 2007 at 10:04pm
lets move on.
- fseidle
March 12, 2007 at 11:39pm
Neoliberalism belongs to the era of skinny ties and big hair (Wham! Prince!). Not the era of shaven heads and fat ties.
- teplukhin
March 13, 2007 at 2:14pm