Ecology or Economy
Question for Matt Yglesias:
Your answer to our economic situation is that we need to ramp up government spending to stimulate consumer demand to increase employment. It’s not important to be efficient in how we deploy our stimulus money; it’s much more important just to get people buying stuff and making stuff for people to buy.
Your answer to the problem of climate change is that we need to substantially increase the price of carbon so that consumption patterns change and we all buy less stuff that is very carbon-intensive and either spend more of our income on non-carbon-intensive goods and services or simply live lives of greater overall leisure without so much emphasis on getting and spending. The government should do what it can to ease the economic pain of the transition, but some short-term economic pain is a reasonable price to pay for saving the planet.
I think the tension between these two positions should be obvious. I think Matt would reconcile that tension by saying that, no, he doesn’t really think that ramping up government spending on just anything is a good idea – he thinks we should ramp up spending on things that would help make the transition to a greener economy, even if this means sacrificing a bit of stimulus.
In other words, he thinks we should be planning for the long term when we spend in the short term, and now more than ever since this “spend lots of money now” window isn’t going to stay open forever.
In other words, if David Brooks had said “[D]on’t engage in reckless new borrowing or reckless new cutting. Focus on the fundamentals. Cut programs that entrench the existing carbon-based economy. Spend more on those that help foster a green transition” instead of talking generically about productivity and investing for the long term, Matt would have applauded instead of sniping.
Right?
Noah, I take it you didn’t make it to the end of Matt’s post, where he says: “Having said all that, the really odd thing about Brooks’ column is that after bashing stimulus proponents for many grafs, he turns out to basically agree with stimulus proponents. … But if that’s what Brooks thinks, he should be complaining about conservative senators who don’t want to do those things, not about Paul Krugman.”
— DavidG · Jul 6, 06:13 PM · #
The transition from more to better is going to be hard for Matt and David and a lot of other people.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 6, 07:26 PM · #
Right. I still can’t get past the first line: “So leaving aside the fact that it’s a bit difficult to know exactly which programs enhance productivity and which don’t (arrogant, even)”
If we don’t know, and if it is arrogant to even try to know, why tax anybody for anything?
If you’re going to tell people to go shopping, encourage them to go shopping for better insulation instead of heroin or limited-edition Chia Pets. I don’t see anything ‘morbid’ about that.
— Walker Frost · Jul 6, 10:28 PM · #
Don’t see the contradiction. The relative price of more carbon-intensive goods in less carbon-intensive goods should increase over the short, medium and long-terms because of externalities. The absolute price of goods in money should increase over the short term because of inadequate aggregate demand. These are perfectly consistent.
— Pithlord · Jul 6, 11:38 PM · #
He’s “snipping” becasue Brooks is being all sarcastic and pissy about Krugman. Brooks could have just jsut addressed Krugman’s argument but he had to get cute. As David G points out, Matt points out that Brooks actually agrees with the more-stimulus position. SO in the end the column is just a passive agressive personal attack on Krugman and fancy pants theories which might be fancy and pantsy, but are they really what we need now as opposed to a dash of good old-fashioned conservative common sense?
And I think you are snipping at MY becasue you don’t like that he called out your boy Brooks’ pissy column (I actually like and admire Brooks, even if I think the column in question is not the most useful, so in some ways he’s my boy too).
When are we going to put aside the politics of personal destruction and just, get along? When, I ask, when?
— cw · Jul 7, 01:20 AM · #
I would imagine that Matt Yglesias would say that stimulus is to solve a short term problem. It’s a short term remedy whereas a price on carbon is for a long term problem. You don’t actually have to put the policy in place in the next 2 years. Stimulus isn’t a permanent economic philosophy. It’s to address an emergency in unemployment. I would also imagine that he would say that he does care what stimulus is spent on although spending it on anything is better than nothing.
— Nick F · Jul 7, 01:23 AM · #
Question for Noah Millman.
Why don’t you let Matt answer your question before making up his answer and then commenting on your made-up answer. It might actually be a better way to have a discussion.
— xenomera · Jul 7, 01:28 AM · #
It’s conceivable if there had been real infrastructure projects instead of nebulous make work, and ‘green jobs’ how’s Spain doing with that by the way, there might have been some real growth, as it looks now both the TARP and the stimulus is the RFC, circa 1930
— ian cormac · Jul 7, 01:35 AM · #
The better question is concerning long term policies: Why is Matt for huge amounts of immigration to the U.S. of low-skilled people from poor countries and for the U.S. (and the world) to cut carbon emissions sizably? Illegal immigrants, it has been estimated, emit four times as much carbon in the U.S. as they would back in their own country.
The current Census Bureau prediction is that the U.S. will grown from 310,000,000 people in 2010 to 439,000,000 in 2050, almost solely because of post-1965 immigration and the high fertility of illegal immigrants.
— Steve Sailer · Jul 7, 03:46 AM · #
Ka-Ching! Steve Sailer makes a racial argument!
Another drink for me!
— Scrooge McDuck · Jul 7, 04:55 AM · #
To me, the interesting question is why anyone would care what someone with a BA in Philosophy thinks about the economy. Would you hire someone like that to manage your portfolio? Or redesign your house?
Not that the views of all my fellow citizens aren’t interesting to me, in an armchair sociologist sort of way, from the bitterest of tea partiers to the the snottiest of Cantabrigians.
— y81 · Jul 7, 01:35 PM · #
The policies are not in conflict because (a) whether or not you run a large deficit now is not really related to whether or not you put a price on carbon to give the market the correct signals, and (b) a law signed today doesn’t have to start this year; things can phase in over time.
What center-lefties like Matt want is to get the price of carbon right so that the market handles the externalities properly. You are acting like the main global warming policy is to invest in green tech. That’s wrong: the best thing to do is to get the price of carbon right so the market solves the problem for us. By focusing on spending on green tech vs. spending on other stimulus is creating a conflict where none exists.
— Ano · Jul 7, 01:53 PM · #
Yglesias wants to move the Third World to Detroit. Who cares what he thinks?
— Matt Weber · Jul 7, 03:18 PM · #
vxvvzzz
— coach discount · Jul 19, 03:19 AM · #