The Keynes/Krugman/Obama Position

The Keynes/Krugman/Obama position amounts to this:

The way to achieve prosperity is to borrow more and spend, spend, spend. We should not be overly concerned about the additional debt we are running up. Nor should we be overly concerned about whether we get any return on investment for all the spending we are doing: better, as Keynes said, to pay workers to dig holes and fill them back in than not to spend at all. All of our borrowing and spending will bring back boom times. When those times return, we will cut spending and reduce the national debt.

This position constitutes a belief in a kind of fiscal alchemy that produces not gold from lead, but prosperity from debt and undifferentiated spending. All we need to do is borrow and spend freely and happy days will return. Only then will we have to make the spending cuts that we are unable to agree to now.

What is so remarkable about this position is that it requires no discrimination or judgment whatsoever to execute. What politician would not like to have free rein to borrow and spend with no accountability? What politican would not like to have the consequences of his unrestrained spending postponed until after his/her departure from office? (We can imagine that Obama and Krugman would like to see the bill come due during a Republican administration.) Why do we need the supposedly most intelligent president we have ever had to execute this policy? A chimpanzee would do just as well.

If people really believe that this is the way the economy works, then, by all means, they should vote for Obama.