Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Long termers don't want helicopter flights.

Destructive Long-Termism


One of my long-running gripes about much discussion of current economic issues is about what I consider the long-run dodge. By this I mean the attempt to change the subject away from unemployment and inadequate demand toward supposedly more fundamental issues of education and structural reform. Such efforts to change the subject seem to me to be both wrong and, to some extent, cowardly. After all, if the clear and present problem is inadequate demand, then we should have policies to deal with that problem — I don’t care how important you think the long run is, we should deal with the crisis at hand.

This is Krugman making a rear defense of drunk helicopter pilots.  The  game is spend the deficit on  one's interest groups.  Then at helicopter time the groups with the  most debt get the bigger bailout.

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