Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Why Is Macro So Hard: The Bait and Switch About What Government Does

One of the big problems in 1) understanding macroeconomics, and 2) understanding politics, is getting a handle on the magnitude of the bait and switch going on.

More than ever government claims that it is “doing something”. But, more than ever that claim is just a fib: most of what our government does is send out checks to people.

This is drawn from David Wessel’s column in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Two GOP Leaders Differ on Spending to Fund Research”, but you shouldn’t regard the whole article as required reading.

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