Voice For Liberty

With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true

Bob Weeks

on

What isn’t true?

On January 9, President-elect (now President) Barack Obama said “There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump start the economy.”

Not everyone agrees with our new president. The Cato Institute placed a full-page advertisement the New York Times today. Its statement reads as follows:

Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s “lost decade” in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

It would take a long time to count the number of economists’ names who appear below this statement. Of local interest are Arthur Hall and Paul Koch, both of the University of Kansas.

You can view the ad at www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf.

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4 responses to “With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true”

  1. Obama Lied, The Economy Died « Start Thinking Right

    […] The Cato Institute placed a full page ad in the New York Times signed by a ton of economists that read: With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true […]

  2. M. Kavanaugh

    Umm… Why would ANYBODY CARE whether ECONOMISTS agree with (or understand) the science behind climatological change? Do you guys get your investment advice from meteorologists??

    BTW – The “science” behind economics is a lot less rigorous than the science behind global warming. Nobody, economists included, claims that the discipline of
    economics is hard science.

  3. With all due respect M. Kavanaugh…

    that is not true. Furthermore, it seems off-topic and based off of OPINION, not FACT. Who ever said economists were debating climate change? They seem to be debating…umm…the economical changes that this country is/has/should/may go through.

    Most, if not all of those economists on the list are PhD Doctors, who have invested a great deal of time and study to the subject. You get into trouble when you start to claim that “nobody” contests your knowledge. I’m thinking that they, not you, are the authority on the subject.

    Furthermore, I would like to point out that the “science” of glabal warming is just about as shaky and inconsistent as the science of meteorology. Predictions, Watson, which may, or may not, come true. I’m pretty sure that people don’t get doctorates in global warming. There is no global warming textbook, only vague theories that lack empirical evidence. Economics at least studies systems of policies, many of which have run their course in societies so that there is at least evidence on how they may work.

    Oh, and BTW: the temperature of the Earth has dropped .74 degrees since 2006. That’s right. It’s getting cooler.

  4. Fact-Checking Obama’s Bogus Bullpuckey Stimulus Claims « Start Thinking Right

    […] But Obama’s claim that economists “across the political spectrum” had sided with him was an utterly contemptible lie a year ago, and it is an even bigger lie now.  Last February I preserved the following.  Please note the title: With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true […]

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