DeLong Smackdown Watch (Wil Wilkinson Edition)
Will Wilkinson writes::
Anything at All?: Brad DeLong writes:
At this point, anything that boosts the government’s deficit over the next two years passes the benefit-cost test–anything at all.
30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? Anything?
He says it with special emphasis, as though he’s not goofing. But is it even possible to take a claim like that seriously?
All right. Anything that is not positively harmful on its own terms.
The point is that with so many unemployed the resource cost of the government doing things is very close to zero--it is using hands that would otherwise be idle and would not be happy being idle...
