It should be clear that the administrations fiscal policy runs counter to the core of its professed intellectual roots. Running huge budget deficits is not consistent with an adherence to orthodox economics. Of course it is matter of discussion to what estent the administration is responsible for the deficit. Some have seen an ulterior motive in running an expansiory fiscal policy, mainly through tax cuts. With this policy they think the administration hope to force Congress to confront what they perceive to be excessive spending.
However disregrding the above, which is well known, I believe that many of the economic arguments beeing made in favour of tax cuts are completely out of line with what we might term “conservative economics” Talk about giving people and buisnesses more money to spend in order to increase demand mirrors keynesian
demand managment.
I think you have it backwards. It is Bush’s opponents who argue that the tax cuts are not stimulative because they go to the wrong people. Across the board tax cuts, such as Bush’s, are done to stimulate the whole economy from both the demand side and the supply side. I think some arguements are made more on the demand side because that is what non-conservative economists are more comfortable with. I have heard Bush and others make the connection between tax cuts and economic growth many times.
Well, I make a living, but more importantly than country’s economy is doijng very well. The average growth rate during the Bush years has been 4.1%. The postwar average is 3.3%, so it seems that we have been doing very well recently. How much of this is due to the tax cuts I don’t know.
People are forgetting that Bush and the Bushistas are not conservatives. They have suckered many conservatives into thinking they’re of the same cloth, but they’re not. The Bushistas are far closer in doctrines and dogmas to various forms of 20th-century collectivism than they are to 20th-century forms of USA conservativism. Bushistas are ideologically far closer to the Soviet Union than they are to the old conservative mold.
I think Tax Cuts are appropiate if you want to reduce Govt. Size… now the way it was done it doesn’t help demand that much. Investment and big guys yes.
On the other hand running a huge deficit certainly doesn’t seem like Smaller Govt. and together with Tax cuts it seems like wacko economics. The US economy is doing well DESPITE Bush… not because of Bush.
Tax cut? Like so many you hang up on the surface details and refuse to see the roots. In ideology and practices–greater and greater state centralization, actively “exporting” our government at the point of a gun, instigating and implementing police state tactics (at least they weren’t able to require utility workers to all be Federal snitches), “our unique philosophy against the world”, and many other traits hallmark the Bushistas as being ideologically far closer to the philosophies of the Soviet Union and other forms of collectivism than they are to old-fashioned individualist conservativism.
