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The Latest Reported Bankruptcy: Mainstream Economics
...The assembled economists did agree, however, on one important point: “many said that once the recession ended, the nation should not go back to the system that held sway from Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 to the present crisis. It was one in which taxes, regulation and public spending were minimized.” Is it possible that the statement I have emphasized in the preceding quotation actually represents the beliefs of most economists? If so, then we can only conclude that they have somehow removed themselves from this planet and taken up residence in another world.

The idea that since 1980 “taxes, regulation and public spending were minimized” cannot honestly be held by any sentient being who has paid the slightest attention to the events of the past thirty years—a period during which federal receipts rose from $1,137 billion in 1980 to $2,588 billion in 2007 (in constant 2007 dollars), federal outlays rose from $1,312 billion to $2,730 billion (in constant 2007 dollars), real state and local taxes and expenditures increased by more than 150 percent, and regulations spewed out of Washington and the fifty state capitals as if the bureaucrats saw no need for taking heed of the morrow. Notwithstanding all of these events and a great many others pointing in the same direction, the recent converts to active fiscal interventionism would have us believe that this ongoing blizzard of bigger and bigger government represented taxes, spending, and government regulation being minimized? The mind boggles at such flagrant nonsense...