We regret this most serious post: our most serious post ever

The last eight years have been hard times for most people but now we’re entering the most serious of serious times.  Presidential debates, vice-presidential debates, and interviews with Katie Couric aside, we remember what we must make clear to voters now, so that we can at least get a four-year reprieve from market fundamentalism, if not a plan for economic recovery:

ECON 2008: Econ for real

Economic growth that creates jobs is created by investment.  Investment drives what is known as “Capitalism.”  We invest in capital, including human capital (people), to create wealth.  Investment is something that governments, individuals and firms do.  They all have to do it.  For example, governments invest in roads, bridges, airports, schools.  We can not do business without such investments occurring regularly.  Individuals invest in homes, education, health.  Firms invest in equipment and education too.  Invest today, earn income tomorrow.  Investment is done in the context of markets.  Markets are the realm, the arena, where investment takes place.  For the investment to flourish, for it to successfully generate wealth and for the cycle of investment and wealth creation to continue, markets must be regulated.  No economist alive believes that market regulation is not required although some may advocate less than others.  Remind everyone: investment and regulation are not the inventions of Democrats, but requirements of the successful functioning of our economic system.   

Two presidential candidates will have a role in decisions on collecting taxpayer money as president.  Spending is not the same as investing.  Republicans are fond of fiscal responsibility, apparently, even if not recently demonstrating it.  They are also fond of wealth, which they seek to protect fiercely with tax breaks.  They label ‘big spending’ as the addiction of Democrats.  What they have done, quite successfully, is blur the distinction between spending and investing.  They have also somehow forgotten that taxes enable investment.  Remind everyone: Barack will invest.  To grow our economy with jobs, we must invest, especially with levees breaking and bridges crumbling.  Tax breaks for the richest few does not compel them to invest in the things the rest of us need and it deprives our government of some of its ability to invest. 

Two presidential candidates will contend with regulatory reform.  Republicans are wary of regulation, lest it hinder the market and prevent wealth creation.  We like markets, right? We want them to work, right? We don’t want them to fail.  It is a fact that markets are prone to failure.  They are social institutions.  We aren’t perfect because we’re human and the markets aren’t perfect because they’re made up of human participants.  Republicans love wealth creation and its arena so much, that they have deified “The Market” as an entity to make sacrifices for.  What is forgotten is that markets are created by us for helping us.  Fortunately, we have enough experience to know steps we can take to regulate markets, to encourage market activity and avoid certain failures.  Remind everyone:  Barack will ensure regulation to protect against failures so that trust and confidence in markets are restored.  Firing the head of the SCC does not constitute improved regulation of financial markets.       

Democrats are champion investors and proponents of reasonable market regulation.  Republicans are not.  Collecting taxes from citizens and businesses to pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. and imposing market regulations smack of “Socialism” to many with Republican sympathies.  Socialism is associated with government intervention in markets and regulation in the extreme, which is inefficient and keeps us from creating wealth.  Funny, but collecting taxes from citizens and businesses to pay for infrastructure, education, healthcare etc. and imposing market regulations are also essential to well-functioning Capitalist societies.  Remind everyone: While Barack and McCain are advocating progress and change, economically speaking, a drastically new era like we’ve never seen before is not what we’re after at the moment; we’re going for sound economic policy, which we have in fact seen before.  Change, yes.  Change to what works.