Alan Blinder (professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton) has a timely (in my opinion) piece in the Wall Street Journal today in which he takes on the claim that seems to surface almost everywhere these days that government spending is a "job killer." We have people running for office here in Mississippi making this claim currently.
I confess that I am puzzled on two fronts: (1) that people keep making this claim without any supporting facts, and (2) that it hasn't been confronted more aggressively. As Mr. Blinder says,
It is easy, but irrelevant, to understand how someone might object to any particular item in the federal budget—whether it is the war in Afghanistan, ethanol subsidies, Social Security benefits, or building bridges to nowhere. But even building bridges to nowhere would create jobs, not destroy them, as the congressman from nowhere knows. To be sure, that is not a valid argument for building them. Dumb public spending deserves to be rejected—but not because it kills jobs.
Again, I'm not making an argument for government spending in general. The concern that has arisen over the national debt is appropriate (if often only motivated by political agendas) and placing our nation on a more sustainable path of spending is a good thing. Again, professor Blinder:
In sum, you may view any particular public-spending program as wasteful, inefficient, leading to "big government" or objectionable on some other grounds. But if it's not financed with higher taxes, and if it doesn't drive up interest rates, it's hard to see how it can destroy jobs.
Once again, we need to ask people who are making the claims to "show us the data." I am perplexed that candidates (and sitting officials) can go unchallenged while making very dubious claims. A strong democracy demands more of us than this.
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