My Barely-Informed Economic Opinion

I spent a little time this morning reading what is apparently a fairly controversial blog posting from Chicago law professor Todd Henderson. I couldn't do this on his main blog page because the firestorm of negative, personal attacks on his family and livelihood from certain readers has caused him to permanently quit blogging.

Todd Henderson, good luck to you and your family, and I'm sorry that your blog-post put the lie to the idea of Liberals being more reasonable and civil.

Since I couldn't read it on Mr. Henderson's page, I followed a link from the Huffington Post to its reposting on the blog of UC, Berkely economics professor Brad DeLong. Mr DeLong has, in addition to posting the original blog in its entirety, has been good enough to provide a safe haven for the comments Mr. Henderson was compelled to leave in response to people attacking his character.

If you haven't clicked on either of those links, go ahead and do that now. I'll wait until you're done.

Finished? Good.

I agree with Mr. Henderson, almost entirely. He is not saying that he should be pitied, nor is he implying that he will be worse off than the poor due to a tax-hike. What he is saying, reasonably, is that he and those of his particular bracket should not be the scape-goat for what is wrong with the American economic system.

This is where it gets tricky for me. As a left-leaning, registered Independent, I generally support our President's policies and ideas. I believe in a robust government that helps those who can't help themselves, and I believe that a few bad apples skating by on the system is a small price to pay to provide assistance to families who can't make it no matter how hard they try.

I supported extending unemployment benefits for those who have exhausted their 99 weeks of benefits, and I support an extension of all the Bush-era tax cuts, at least temporarily. We can re-assess after another two years when, optimistically, our economy will be in a recovery in practice as well as in economical theory.

I guess the whole point of this post is to say:

I'm tired of the hypocrisy that many, many Republican congressmen, pundits, and voters displayed when they said we couldn't afford to extend those unemployment benefits that cost so much less than these tax-cuts, but are practicing all sorts of Newspeak to justify extending these tax-cuts.

I'm surprised and equally disappointed with our President for saying that we have to extend those unemployment benefits by adding to our deficit, but deciding that the line must be drawn in the sand when it comes to paying for tax cuts that will affect our economic recovery in a very real way.

I remember reading an analogy during the unemployment extension argument by an economics professor. If I knew who it was, or when they said it, I would quote it. But I don't, so I'll just finish up this post by paraphrasing him.

"When your house is on fire, and water is the only thing that will put it out, you don't yell at the fireman for getting your couch wet."

For those of you not paying attention, our economy is the blazing house, a short-term deficit is the water, and our couch is...well...our pure ideals about progressive taxes and low government spending, I guess. They're going to get a little soggy and we may have to get new ideologies once this fire is out. Maybe there will be a sale.

For now, though: Unemployment is, arguably, a worse problem than government spending. Let's wait until unemployment is back to reasonable levels before we throw down on the 'let's stop spending,' argument. Okay elected officials?

Please?