Thursday, January 17, 2008

Recommended Reading: Russell Roberts on Economic Stimulus

Love that word—stimulus. It sounds so scientific...

Sounds like the perfect prescription for an ailing economy.

But if politicians know how to stimulate the economy, why wait for a recession? If you can make the economy grow, why wait for bad times?...

Maybe we don't know how to make a $14 trillion economy move very quickly. And if we did, it would take a lot more than an injection of even 125 billion dollars...

The standard stimulus package doesn't change incentives. It's a check from the government. The hope is that the receiver will spend it. But when you just send out checks from the government, whoever gets stimulated is likely to be offset by someone who gets unstimulated.

The money has to come from somewhere....

I'm not saying that economy policy is irrelevant. Economic policy matters because it affects the long-run growth of the economy. I'm all for policies that make us more productive or innovative by changing incentives. But those policies take time. There's little any economic doctor can do to move our $14 trillion organism of an economy in the next few months.
read the entire article

Central planning does not work

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