Greg Mankiw Endorses Democratic Policies (Maybe)

Economist Brad DeLong provides the following quote from economist Greg Mankiw:

Greg Mankiw: Economic View: If the government’s job is merely to provide services, like roads, schools and courts, competition among governmental producers may be… good…. But if government’s job is also to remedy many of life’s inequities, you may want a stronger centralized government, unchecked by competition. These are two fundamentally different visions. The next election, and to some degree every election, is about which one voters find more compelling.

A long discussion ensues on DeLong's blog. One of the most pointed comments:

Derelict said...

It's pretty clear that conservatives view government's essential role as collecting taxes from the middle and lower classes and funneling those proceeds into the pockets of the wealthy. As the record of the last 30-odd years amply demonstrates, providing for the commonweal in terms of infrastructure, social services, or even actual functioning military hardware and support is NOT part of the equation.

When Reagan said "government IS the problem," most of the people in today's GOP were impressionable youngsters who took that quite literally. Today, their motivating philosophy is to destroy the government of the United States. We used to call people like that the enemy; today, they're just Republicans.

 April 15, 2012 at 06:41 AM