: The Elite's Childlike Commitment to Austerity: "Just last week, E.J. Dionne, an unusually thoughtful Washington Post columnist...
...commented on the rise of outsiders like Corbyn:
And I think the collapse... in 2008... is at the heart.... In good times, moderate-right parties can defend capitalism, moderate-left parties can spread around money and redistribute it, but when capitalists behave badly, the center-right has trouble defending the economic establishment and the moderate-left faces a harder left...
Dionne has the situation exactly reversed. In more normal economic times, when the economy is near its potential, the only way moderate-left parties can finance new programs is either through new taxes or by cutting other spending. The economy is up against its capacity constraints, so there are no free lunches. By contrast, in the current situation where there are large numbers of idle workers and productive capacity, the government actually can spread money around without worrying about where it will get it. Again, the problem is too little demand, so we don't have to worry about pulling resources away from somewhere. The problem faced by the moderate-left parties in this story is not a real economic constraint, but rather their failure to understand economics. They apparently prefer to believe stories their parents told them about the evils of debt rather than trying to understand how the economy actually works. For this incredible level of intellectual laziness, these parties and candidates deserve the contempt they are getting from the electorate.
