hard heads soft hearts

a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists.
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
 
why I'm voting (optional)

creating jobs, improving health care, ending the wars, stewardship of environment. Dems, while not perfect, are better than the alternative.


Friday, September 24, 2010
 
Krugman & Wells's NYRB pieces:

The Slump Goes On: Why?

The Way Out of the Slump

It really does seem like people reject depression economics because it strikes them as too easy & self-indulgent. i.e. "Surely the way to improve things is by hard work, restraint & sacrifice, not running deficits & printing money." But running deficits & printing money is merely a means to employ people: it does not diminish the need for hard work, restraint and sacrifice. I guess one successful example of trying to explain the logic of depression economics was the Marshall Plan speech:

Speech Delivered by George Marshall at Harvard University on June 5, 1947


Saturday, September 18, 2010
 
Deep Thought: no jobs, no adoring mobs.

The need of the day is creating more jobs. How to do that, I don't know, thought one person I'd listen to is Dean Baker. Re: Obama, I believe he's trying to create jobs, perhaps doing everything in his power to create jobs. Nevertheless, one thing I don't think I've ever seen from Obama, nor from his economic team, is a reasonably detailed, candid explanation of how his policies and proposed policies are appropriately sized to the scale of the problem, i.e. neither too big, nor too small. Obama can't be just any garden variety civic leader, talking in a generic way about a creating some jobs here and there. He has to be a POTUS, taking responsibility not just to address the issue of jobs, but to address the issue at the appropriate scale.