The Audacity Of Dopes
by digby
I am definitely naming my next cat after Paul Krugman. And the first mouse he brings in will be named Paul Ryan.
Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”
But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce.
Needless to say he goes on to dispatch Ryan’s Randian Austerity wet dream in a few short paragraphs. It’s a beautiful sight to see.
And in case anyone’s looking for some real world examples of what will happen if this flimflam man get his way, I’ve got one for you right here:
It was the first country in Europe to hack away at spending to wrestle a raging budget deficit under control, winning praise as a trailblazer whose decisive austerity program showed the way for the rest of the continent.
But nearly two years into its shock treatment, Ireland is faced with rising public debt, dwindling private investment and record numbers of people out of work, and some are asking whether the Emerald Isle is indeed a role model, or a cautionary tale instead.
The answer has implications for nations across the continent as governments that only months earlier had argued for stimulus packages to keep their recession-hit economies afloat are scrambling to tighten their purse strings. And it has resonance across the Atlantic, as Republican lawmakers raise questions about the cost of President Obama’s stimulus initiatives.
Officials in Ireland say the payoffs from their austerity plan are gradual, designed to put the country of 4.5 million people on more sound financial footing and set the stage for sustained growth through structural reforms.
But with the unemployment rate exceeding 13% and consumer demand crippled, a number of economists and analysts are expressing concern that Ireland has been sucked into a downward spiral from which escape grows more difficult by the day.
“The key question is … has the medicine worked? Has what the government said would happen happened in terms of reviving economic growth?” said Michael Burke, an economist based in London. “The resounding answer is: Absolutely not.”
But don’t let that stop us from doing the same thing. America is exceptional, you see, and things that don’t work elsewhere will certainly work here. We just need to clap a whole lot louder.
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