Anything at All?

by Will Wilkinson on November 30, 2009

Brad DeLong writes:

At this point, anything that boosts the government’s deficit over the next two years passes the benefit-cost test–anything at all.

30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? Anything?

He says it with special emphasis, as though he’s not goofing. But is it even possible to take a claim like that seriously?

  • AC
    Just shows you what happens when you take your aggregates too seriously. Does it not occur to him that spending does not automatically use idle resources?
  • Brad_DeLong
    All right. Anything that is not positively harmful on its own terms.

    The point is that with so many unemployed the resource cost of the government doing things is very close to zero--it is using hands that would otherwise be idle and would not be happy being idle...
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  • Let's be fair; maybe he forgot what "boosts" means.
  • lhhunt
    Delong has just passed my deranged Keynesian test.
  • I'm not sure if you aware of this, but DeLong criticizes Cato's own Chris Edwards here (http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/10/the-cato-...).

    "As long as it employs utter fools like Chris Edwards, the smart people who work there will have a hard time being taken seriously.

    Just saying...

    Think about it. Think hard about it."

    And that's literally all he has to say on the matter. No analysis, just an ad-hominem attack.

    So the short answer is, no, we can't take DeLong seriously.

    -Cato Tax & Budget intern
  • I mean...wow. Really? The absurd possibilities are limitless.

    Let's pay to refurbish all of America's schools as prisons. That'll increase the deficit, so it's good! Let's compensate every doctor in America to not do their job Monday-Thursday. That'll increase the deficit, so it must be good!

    Remind me why anyone takes DeLong seriously again?
  • Grant
    I eagerly await DeLong calling for the construction of The National Money Hole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyS5n0ByLag
  • I suppose you could view it as a very crude, inefficient version of quantitative easing. And it's not totally ridiculous to claim that the efficiency losses are worth it. (It may still be wrong. I don't know nearly enough to judge.)
  • It is impossible to take Brad DeLong seriously. He has all of the honor, character, and good faith of a feces-throwing monkey--perhaps less.
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