Neoliberal fascism
Thanks to Scenester David Sessions for alerting me that Friend of the Scene Freddie thinks I’m a neoliberal fascist because I wrote a column arguing for France to
Insert here a joke about how I don’t know which label to be most offended by.
I’ll only make a couple points, one about process and one about content.
First of all, about process. I am accused of endorsing fascism because I wrote a column urging the President of France to take rapid action to reform France’s economy.
I urge the president to “legislate by decree”—this sounds fearsome, but the process of “ordinances” is routinely used to legislate in France. What happens is that Parliament votes a law that enables the government to pass decrees that have the strength of law, on a certain topic and for a certain period, and after that the decrees have to be ratified by Parliament again to permanently gain the force of law. That’s not how a bill becomes a law in the US, but it is still perfectly consistent with legal democratic process. I’m sure there are also “fast-track” procedures in the US Congress.
I also suggest in one throwaway line that the President might wish to exercise the special powers clause of the French Constitution. It’s unlikely that he would be allowed to do so because, as a Freddie commenter points out, there are strict judicial controls on these war powers.
Second of all, about content. My “neoliberal fascist” policy recommendations for France are the following: enormous short-term stimulus spending, a revenue-neutral overhaul of the tax code and the end of various professional guilds and price controls. I don’t even say anything about unions. This puts me pretty much in line with that other sellout, liberal in name only, Paul Krugman (see e.g. here re: rent controls ).
I mean, we can have different views about financial reform and progressive taxation or what have you, but it’s pretty striking that someone would think calling for no tax cuts and a dramatic increase in government spending (I throw out a figure equivalent of 10% of France’s GDP) is neoliberal bitter medicine.
But hey, at least we now know it’s not only conservatives who suffer from epistemic closure.
PEG:
I can’t claim to know much about France, but why would you want to do something over there—massive stimulus—that has failed so miserably here?
— jd · Sep 4, 01:01 PM · #
PEG, you said that the government should declare an emergency to subvert democracy in order to put into place an economic program you admit yourself is widely unpopular in your country. That speaks for itself.
— Freddie · Sep 4, 07:17 PM · #
@jd
I know you said that you don’t know much about France, but isn’t it at least worth it to examine other countries before running around talking about what policies work and don’t work?
This is France’s quarterly GDP growth:
2010 Q3 – 0.4
2010 Q4 – 0.3
2011 Q1 – 0.9
2011 Q2 – 0.0
2010 overall was 1.4%
America’s:
2010 Q3 – 2.5
2010 Q4 – 2.3
2011 Q1 – 0.4
2011 Q2 – 1.0
2010 overall was 3.0%
If what we did was failure, then Europe surely is below that.
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— wansanshen · Sep 5, 08:15 AM · #
jd: I encourage you to read my column for more on the subject.
— PEG · Sep 5, 09:33 AM · #
PEG:
So when you said enormous short-term stimulus spending you actually didn’t mean that? You meant paying off and buying out select beneficiaries of current French government largesse, regulation and protection?
After reading you for a couple of years, I find I am in general agreement with much of what you write. However, it seems to me that you are advocating a huge slush fund for a bunch of smart folks to dole out at their discretion. Pardon me for thinking that’s a bad idea. Again, I don’t know much about France, but is its economy a small enough monster that people can be trusted to manage it? It’s my contention, along with Thomas Sowell and Adam Smith, that no one is smart enough to manage an economy—certainly not one as diverse and complicated as the United States. Anyone who thinks they can suffers from epistemic arrogance. I have always thought that you were one (probably the only one at TAS outside of Manzi) who rejected the notion that there are people smart enough to make it all better.
In your article, you say you want to avoid austerity. Maybe in Europe there is a danger of some real austerity breaking out. I don’t know. Here, austerity means cutting the rate of growth in spending—which is not really austerity at all. Sorry, but we cannot trust the bastards to do what’s right. And I use bastard as a term of endearment; I’m not sure that I would behave any differently if I had all that money to spend and all those votes to buy. We need to starve the beast.
Console:
Is there a point about stimulus somewhere in your comment?
— jd · Sep 5, 01:41 PM · #
Well, unless you think our economy during the stimulus was doing better than France’s because of pixie dust, then the entire post was about stimulus.
— Console · Sep 5, 04:54 PM · #
Oh, now I get it. You think 3 percent trailing off to 1 percent is good and represents the stimulus working. Pardon me for not understanding that.
— jd · Sep 5, 05:45 PM · #
Perhaps we should follow france’s example and go from 1.4 to 0 and face potential collapse of our currency. All so we can pretend keynesian economics doesn’t work!
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