XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.trump, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: two.idiots.in@a.pod   
      
   On 27 Jun 2024, J Carlson  posted some   
   news:v5laup$34tm5$8@dont-email.me:   
      
   > When you talk about "leftists," you talk about idiots   
      
   Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists have signed a public letter in   
   advance of Thursday’s presidential debate endorsing President Biden’s   
   economic policies and criticizing Donald Trump’s. They write:   
      
   While each of us has different views on the particulars of various   
   economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly   
   superior to Donald Trump’s. In his first four years as President, Joe   
   Biden signed into law major investments in the U.S. economy, including in   
   infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and climate. Together, these   
   investments are likely to increase productivity and economic growth while   
   lowering long-term inflationary pressures and facilitating the clean   
   energy transition.   
      
   The economists support Biden’s reelection campaign and warn that Trump’s   
   tax-cutting proposals will reignite inflation and destabilize the nation’s   
   economic standing in the world. The message was drafted and circulated by   
   Joseph Stiglitz and signed by other luminaries, including Edmund Phelps   
   (Columbia University), Robert Shiller (Yale), Paul Romer (Boston College),   
   Angus Deaton (Princeton), Oliver Hart (Harvard), and others. All are known   
   as liberal or left-leaning economists with attachments to the Democratic   
   Party.   
      
   In 2021, 15 of these same economists, including Stiglitz, Phelps, Shiller,   
   Hart, Romer, and Deaton, signed a similar public letter endorsing Biden’s   
   Build Back Better agenda, which contained spending proposals for climate   
   initiatives, health-care subsidies, schools, housing, and other causes.   
   That bill eventually passed Congress with a $1.9 trillion price tag.   
   Several pieces of a pared-back plan were eventually incorporated into the   
   so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, with an estimated cost of   
   around $800 billion. The prize-winning economists had this to say about   
   Biden’s economic proposals: “Because this agenda invests in long-term   
   economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to   
   participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term   
   inflationary pressures.”   
      
   The economists also claimed that Biden’s agenda includes “a broader   
   conception of infrastructure” that went beyond spending on roads, bridges,   
   and the like to include investments in human capital, research, public   
   education, and health care. This is a familiar Democratic Party talking   
   point: expenditures on various social causes are really “investments.”   
      
   How did it all work out? The expert economists were badly mistaken on   
   inflation. They said that Biden’s spending packages would “ease   
   inflationary pressures,” but everyone understands today that those same   
   policies stoked inflation. When they signed their 2021 letter, the   
   consumer price index stood at 273; since then, it has surged by at least   
   15 percent, to its recent level of 313. This is called “being wrong.”   
      
   Interest rates have also surged since then, much to the detriment of   
   prospective homebuyers and those planning large expenditures for autos,   
   home appliances, and school and college tuitions. The interest rate on 30-   
   year mortgages has more than doubled since the 2021 letter, from 2.8   
   percent to above 7 percent today. The prime lending rate, used by banks   
   for most loans, swelled from 3.2 percent in 2021 to 8.5 percent today. The   
   economists would do well to ponder their performance as forecasters.   
      
   We have no evidence to suggest that Biden’s spending packages promoted   
   economic growth. Real GDP surged in 2021 to 5.8 percent, mostly a bounce-   
   back from pandemic era lockdowns, but it has declined and levelled off   
   since then, to 1.9 percent in 2022 and 2.5 percent in 2023. In a recent   
   forecast, the Conference Board projects that growth in 2024 is likely to   
   slow to less than 1 percent (year over year). Contrary to what our Nobel   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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