Three decades on, Lucy's still teeing it up, and Charlie Brown's still falling for it
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Thomas Hazlett, Reason Magazine, 1993, discussing the New Speak that’s transformed government “spending” into “investing”. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing: swap the older names for current politicians, change billions to trillions, and you’ll think you’re reading the news of today.
As "Tax & Spend!" loses its ring as a rallying cry, "Grow & Invest!" seems absolutely inspired. And it can be provided without any new taxes—simply "contributions." The Clintonites may well lift the entire U.S. GDP to 8-percent annual growth based purely on the robust recovery they are personally staging in the relabeling sector: More money for welfare/pensions/job training/prisons is "investing in our people." Subsidies for business are "investing in jobs." Funding bloated government make-work projects, "investing in infrastructure." In Clintongue, the only form of consumption is when you, you '80s throwback, hog your income to buy something for yourself. That deprives us of contributions, depletes the infrastructure, disinvests in our people, and shrinks the economy!
The "economic stimulus package" is even more indicative of the power of Clintongue. This "jobs program" is everything that is out of whack with the federal budget process: We're $300 billion away from a balanced budget, but somehow we find $X million for Congressman Heavylifter's municipal pork, er, park, er, "investment in local infrastructure." Even that billionaire cracker Ross Perot sniffed this fiscal ugly, nosing his way to the obvious truth (unremarked upon in the press) that an incremental $16-billion boondoggle would have a hard time creating real jobs if the $1.5 trillion already squandered hadn't yet performed the alleged macro magic. Still, amazingly, Ross (joined by the Republicans) condemned the scheme as simply too little, too late. It won't be but "a small bump" said Ross, who suggests we leave the present recovery unmolested.
Clinton's gotcha! Wasteful government spending ain't "trickle down"—no, that's what private spending does—it's economic stimulus, job-creating economic growth. Clinton's just rolled his midget challengers, who evidently concur that raiding private investment markets to borrow $16 billion will create more economic oodles than will be flushed out of private businesses, which must contract by the identical $16 billion. In Clintongue, "the first serious plan to deal with the deficit" becomes "shop 'til you drop." Score one for the master debaters of Clintonomics. Why couldn't Mondale think of that?
