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The Ultimate Irony
I have long felt that modern conservatives lack a sense of irony. I can think of no credible explanation for this impediment. Perhaps it is genetic. But, as Paul Krugman points out in Monday’s New York Times, whether they’re aware of it or not, their irony is showing.
Krugman credits Barney Frank with a phrase which accurately describes them — “weaponized Keynesians.”
Right now the weaponized Keynesians are out in full force — which makes this a good time to see what’s really going on in debates over economic policy.
What’s bringing out the military big spenders is the approaching deadline for the so-called supercommittee to agree on a plan for deficit reduction. If no agreement is reached, this failure is supposed to trigger cuts in the defense budget.
What is truly fascinating is that the modern Republican Party, which holds that government spending is wasteful spending, is wholeheartedly in favour of spending for the military. Never mind that one of their own — Dwight Eisenhower — warned Americans of the danger of the military-industrial complex.
Why favour spending on guns and bombs rather than roads and bridges? Krugman writes that the answer lies in “a point made long ago by the Polish economist Michael Kalecki: to admit that the government can create jobs is to reduce the perceived importance of business confidence.”
Republicans have argued all along that government inhibits business confidence — and that the cure for the present malaise is an increase in business confidence. The problem, they say, is that confidence is in short supply. A dearth of demand is of no consequence.
If Republicans possessed a sense of irony, they would see the hypocrisy behind their position. But to compensate for that lack of irony, they have doubled down on outrage.
Owen Gray grew up in Montreal, where he received a B. A. from Concordia University. After crossing the border and completing a Master’s degree at the University of North Carolina, he returned to Canada, married, raised a family and taught high school for 32 years. Now retired, he lives — with his wife and youngest son — on the northern shores of Lake Ontario. This post is cross posted from his blog.
One Response to “The Ultimate Irony”
It is pretty much the Republican argument that the federal government’s place is defense with the states doing the rest. In other words, a weak national government internally, and, a mega force for capitalism externally. They believe in no liabilities such as poor people, or people to old to care for themselves, or the unemployed. The republican party would privatize virtually everything, which in my opinion, would turn the United States into a bordello of sleaze and greed.
The weaker government is, especially in a democracy, the more that uncontrolled capitalism or crime proliferates. The more uncontrolled capitalism gets, can be better simplified as a kind of streamlining of the supply chain. Streamlining the money supply from your bank account into theirs. No government bumps in between. A national company store for which we all seek the approval of and are beholden too.
There is an irony though. Republicans are expressly anti-government. They advocate the reduction of government power and cost. They constantly use phrases like, “smaller government”, “less government involvement”, “get government out of my face” and so on. Therefore I find it ironic that we have fifty individual states each with governments as large as most other countries, but the Republicans never mention that cost, while just north of us is Canada were the number of “provinces” and their governments are but a handful of ours at a much smaller cost. IMO we do most certainly need to streamline government by eliminating some many states and creating a handful of provinces or whatever one may wish to call these governing bodies.
It reality though, it is not less government that Republicans want. It’s not even less cost. It’s control of government by the capitalist powers that exist. Probably even a reformation of government into a corporate republic whereby all power resides in corporate approval of law, rather than the individual.