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Policies Destroying US Economy

NathanNewman.org: Bush Policies Destroying US Economy

This is one of the things I just don't understand about the current administration. As others have noted, lots of fiscal problems will wait for the president after Bush. Add in an on-going presence in Iraq (and possibly elsewhere?), Medicaid, environmental issues, aging populations, immigration - in fact almost everything - and you can see that the Presidents and Congresses of the second decade of this century will have to spend a lot of time and money cleaning up this administration. It's one (unpleasant) thing for the current Republicans to make the most of their total lock on government, but are they so short-sighted that they can't see what it means in a decade or so?

I can see three alternatives. The first is that they really are that stupid and short-signted. Somehow they believe their own hype that tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation (or highly favourable regulation) for big business will bring econimic growth to all, and that this will fix the deficits on its own. The fact that it didn't under Reagan and hasn't anywhere else is simply unknown to them.

The second is that they are assuming that they will be booted out sometime in the next five or ten years, and are milking it dry while they can. (They are also using this brief period of power to try and set the cultural agenda to their liking as well.) The idea is that they funnel billions towards their own buddies and themselves, then allow the pain of repaying all that debt be shared equally amongst themselves and the middle and working classes. After a period in which a centrist Democrat government brings it all back into shape, they can then go crazy again (think Clinton cleaning up some of the Reagan deficits.)

The third, and scary, alternative is that they have some sort of trick up their sleeve to ensure that, no matter how bad it gets, they and their GOP inheritors will always be in power. This is the worst because it will be horrible while it succeeds and even more horrible when it fails.

The interesting comparison is with the Tories in the 80s. Back then it was almost impossible to imagine them ever being out of power. Labour and the Lib Dems were a mess in their own ways, the media were all in favour of the free-market policies the Tories were backing, and various policies (e.g. the Poll Tax) were designed to help lock in Conservative majorities in local government (plus they had their own permanent majority in the House of Lords.) Yet after Thatcher went they limped to a close victory in 1992 and were annihilated in 1997.

The Tories were even more sensible in some ways than Bush. Both of Thatcher's real Chancellors - as well as the lady herself - were not so wed to monetarism that they weren't willing to quietly drop bits of it. And they never ran up the scale of deficits Bush has (in part because they were able to raid the public purse through privatisations). Yet even they lost the plot and Black Wednesday dumped them. And they left behind an economy in reasonable shape (thanks - irony! - to the unplanned exit from the ERM.)

I've always subscribed to the notion that all revolutions contain the seeds of their own downfall, and that all revolutions could last almost forever if they were capable of moderating themselves. But they never can, because the most radical voices win out in the early successful days, and moderate voices are simply discarded as things turn nasty.

What's odd here is that, thanks to term limits, we all know that we'll have another President after 2008. And, even if that person is another Republican, they will end their first year in office hating George W. for the mess he left.

And that's assuming he gets that far. A lot of responsible economists are talking about a 70% chance of a U.S. meltdown (lead by a currency crash) within five years. Four of those five years belong to George. Is there nobody in the Republicans able to point out the trouble he is making for himself and the party?

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