For some reason, I keep hearing the notion that large deficits are a principle of the left.
I'm not sure where this comes from, but it's certainly not true. The left favors reduced tax evasion and more progressive taxation, coupled with robust programs...
For some reason, I keep hearing the notion that large deficits are a principle of the left.
I'm not sure where this comes from, but it's certainly not true. The left favors reduced tax evasion and more progressive taxation, coupled with robust programs. Just spending based on borrowing as a long term policy is not a position of the left, and never was. The closest one can get to accusing the left of holding that position is by pointing out the stimulus President Obama passed in the beginning of his term--but that has nothing to do with the left, in fact President Bush passed a stimulus at the end of his term too. That's just a matter of crisis management. The left's prescription to every downturn is not deficit spending, it just happens to be that in extended liquidity trap scenarios, of which we have had exactly two in the last century.
President Obama's speech was not "center-left" just because he proposed reducing the deficit. Moving "rightward" from the left does not mean lowering the deficit; and in fact it has not meant that for a very long time, if you look at the deficit over time. Before 1980, both parties cut the deficit. After 1980, the only president to decrease the budget deficit was Clinton, and everyone else increased it drastically. As I posted about previously, if anything moving to the "right" only means shifting the deficit burden down the social ladder. And that is definitely not what President Obama was proposing.
My blog: gnomanomics.com for more.