As we come to the end of another election campaign, we continue to hear (and read) partisans of various political sides argue about the state of the economy, whether President Obama has mishandled it or been victimized by it, and what should be done going forward. The problem with much of what is out there passing for argumentation is often merely someone’s politics masquerading as economic discussion. The problem isn’t as much what is being said as much as it is that the same people are making the same case for the same policies year after year and decade after decade. These people, and I include certain Nobel Prize winning economists writing for certain well-known publications in this, are writing about economics as if they are advocating for a religion.
What I mean by “advocating for a religion” is that no matter what the economic circumstance, the prescription is the same. The Republicans always argue for tax cuts and less business regulation as the method for spurring economic growth and Democrats always argue for more government spending. While this may work for a religion with a God who never changes, it doesn’t work so well for economic policy. An economy is more like a human body. As such, policies that are appropriate at one point in time may not be appropriate at another point in time. In fact, the other guy’s policies are virtually guaranteed to be the appropriate policies at some point in time. Those who simply argue for “their” side’s policies and against the other guy’s policies again and again and again are really no better than a doctor listens to a patient and prescribes the same medicine (say, chemotherapy) no matter whether the patient is describing cancer, a heart attack, a stroke, or a broken leg. Sometimes the medicine is appropriate, and sometimes it is not.
Where economic ideology ultimately has brought us to in society is that economic policy debates have taken on characteristics more reminiscent of religious arguments than a relatively dispassionate debate that should characterize such as dry a subject as economic policy. When you have certain political pundits characterizing those who oppose their economic point of view as “mean”, you know that they are saying that opposing their economic viewpoint is not merely mistaken (diagnosing a heart attack instead of a stroke) but morally wrong. Having this view of economic policy is not conducive to rational discussion, and in fact inhibits the process of finding the appropriate policy as some large group is going to be morally opposed to what ultimately will be the correct policy mix at a given point in time. As long as we look at economic policy ideologically instead of ‘medically’, we will continue to have more dissention in society than is necessary.