Now, you need to step back and understand where we were and where we need to go with our economy. I don’t think that anyone believes that the economy is where it needs to be. The question is what could have been done to correct the economy that President Obama didn’t do. That’s the question.
First let me say I hate this format. Putting four or eight or 100 people on stage so that each might have five seconds to throw out a sound bite is not helpful. It is stupid. Having David Walker and Paul Krugman discuss the situation would have been far more informative.
From Paul Krugman:
We have a terrible failure of demand — and Carly Fiorina thinks the key problem is excessive taxes on corporations (our effective rate is actually fairly low). Hey, if only we had low rates like Ireland, we could have 14.7 percent unemployment … oh well, never mind.
Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt thinks the problem is a shortage of workers in some high-skill fields. As Dean Baker points out, businesses were saying the same thing in 1935; so were the era’s Very Serious People.
Everything makes David Walker think of the need for entitlement reform. Everything makes George Will think of Ronald Reagan.
