> > And do you think they do that because they're stupid, or because
>> maybe there's a class interest lurking behind?
>> Doug
>
>I think they do it because they are risk averse, and politicians give in
>easily to peer pressure and popular pressure, especially that "popular"
>pressure whipped up by the media, and most people make a false analogy
>between personal debt and government debt, and therefore there is the sense
>that government shouldn't run debts because normal people shouldn't run
>debts. I doubt a class interest can be involved because in a deep recession
>the business class has as much interest in seeing the economy stimulated as
>anyone else. The fact that the business class often used to come out against
>stimulus suggests they were stupid, since a lack of stimulus merely
>decreased their profits.
I don't know as much history as I should, but I doubt the masses were in the streets in 1937, urging FDR to tighten fiscal policy. Capital wanted FDR to tighten fiscal policy. And it snuffed the recovery, driving the economy back into depression.
Why the PR/media campaign in favor of fiscal orthodoxy, anyway? Surely journalists, a largely dim lot, don't come up with the idea on their own. They get it from bankers, industrialists, and the economists who think for them.
Doug