>
> Exactly - thank you for pointing this out. This episode has been a great
> advertisement for the thesis that the interests of capital (or anyone else)
> are constructed based on history, ideology, norms, etc., and not given. Here
> in the US, in the emergency environment of early 2009, the Business
> Roundtable - the elite of the corporate elite, consisting solely of CEOs -
> strongly advocated stimulus. By the same reasoning, thy should be strongly
> advocating more now. But they're not, and I bet you it's because most CEOs
> are conservative Republicans and the stimulus debate has now become
> strongly anchored around the framing of "bigger vs. smaller government," so
> many are ideologically loathe to accept it - even though it would clearly
> increase profits.
Yeah, I think you're right. I do think fiscal rationalism (by which I mean a macroeconomic rather than an accounting logic) is in the ideological ascendancy, with balanced budget, small government ideas countervailing to a different extent in different places. The Euro debt crisis has worked in the other direction of course, even though it reflects the special conditions of governments that don't control their own currency.
In Australia the (conservative) Coalition made heavy use of balanced budget anti-debt rhetoric, and it took hold in certain sections of the media (like the Murdoch vanity paper The Australian, our Fox News) and still had some popularity. But it was generally ridiculed by expert opinion and the fact that its arguments just didn't stack up really did make a difference. On the other hand, Labor clearly concluded from polling and focus grouping that bragging about the stimulus should play no part in their election campaign, even though it would seem Australia's escaping recession would be something to make electoral hay out of. Only the Greens specifically campaigned in support of stimulus.
> On the other hand, I would think that had Republicans been in charge in
> 2009-2010 - and if they had any sense - they would have enacted a huge
> stimulus (without using the word) through a payroll-tax holiday plus some
> assorted mindless giveaways to the rich. There would have been no
> ideological conflict, since we are talking about a country that operates at
> an extremely low level of public discourse, so this would be framed not as
> "government stimulus" but as "tax cuts" and if it worked it would have been
> yet another vindication of Ronald Reagan.
For sure. I think I wrote something on this before but I don't remember when - it's really significant that someone like Greg Mankiw - a self-described 'new Keynesian' - was chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. He called Reagan's supply-siders "charlatans and cranks" in the first edition of his textbook. There's really a big gap between the political discourse and how the bureaucrats see what they're doing. That's why I think the distinction between technocrats and ideologues makes sense, even though the political effect of the ideologues makes technocratic policy more difficult.
Mike Beggs scandalum.wordpress.com