Leave a Comment

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?
The Glittering Eye — I think that Robert Samuelson is a bit too harsh in his criticism of the Obama Administration: We cannot build a productive economy on the foundations of health care and “green” energy. These programs would create burdens for many, benefits for some. Indeed, their weaknesses may feed on each other, as higher health spending requires more taxes that are satisfied by stiffer terms for cap-and-trade. We clearly need changes in these areas: ways to check wasteful health spending and promote efficient energy use. I have long advocated a gasoline tax ...

Robert Samuelson: "We should not be stampeded into far-reaching changes that have little to do with today's crisis"
Hit & Run — The Washington Post's resident op-ed economist argues today that President Obama's big-think plans constitute the opposite of what we traditionally consider "economic progress"; i.e., the productivity of getting more output for less money. ...

Obama's Economic Mirage
The Corner on National Review Online — ... ] Robert Samuelson has a great article in this morning's Washington Post . First, he reminds us of President Obama's grandiose plan for our nation: President Obama has made no secret of his vision for America's 21st-century economy. We will lead the world in "green" technologies to stop global warming. Advancing medical breakthroughs will improve our well-being, control health spending and enable us to expand insurance coverage. These investments in energy and health care, as well as education, will revive the economy and create millions of well-paying new jobs for ...

The making of the biggest government in history
PoliGazette — Writes Robert L. Samuelson: They’ve left the impression that somehow magical technological breakthroughs will produce clean energy that is also cheap. Perhaps that will happen; it hasn’t yet. They’ve talked so often about the need to control wasteful health spending that they’ve implied they’ve actually found a way of doing so. Perhaps they will, but they haven’t yet. Jennifer Rubin comments: The result is a return to a style of government that was popularized decades ago: large ...

Obamanomics: Like economics, but backwards
Patterico's Pontifications — [Posted by Karl] Robert J. Samuelson deconstructs Pres. Obama’s economic vision: What Obama proposes is a “post-material economy.” He would de-emphasize the production of ever-more private goods and services, harnessing the economy to achieve broad social goals. In the process, he sets aside the standard logic of economic progress. Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, this has been simple: produce more with less. (”Productivity,” in economic jargon.) Mass markets developed for clothes, cars, computers and much ...