We Need More Sensible Republican Voices

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/10/we-need-more-sensible-republican-voices.html

by Mark Thoma
Professor of Economics
University of Oregon
Nov. 5, 2012

A few thoughts:

I started this blog a few months after George Bush was reelected (March 6, 2005). There was more than one motivation behind the choice to start a blog, but a key factor was the way in which liberal/progressive ideas were presented in the media prior to the election, particularly on television. The presentation of economic issues was abysmal, and the people the news shows chose to invite onto their programs were far to the left of what I thought of as the typical Democrat. More importantly, the people representing Democrats on news and talk shows were unable to articulate the economic reasoning behind many of the Democrat’s proposals and ideas. When Social Security was targeted as a socialist redistribution scheme, for example, and George Bush pushed privatization, the people speaking for Democrats were unable to explain Social Security’s role as social insurance rather than a purely redistributive scheme, and they were unable to articulate the market failures that underlie the need for the government to take an active role in these markets.

For one, as an economist, I wanted people to know that Democrats are not opposed to markets. The vast majority of us are not a bunch of socialists waiting for our chance to overthrow the system. In fact, at least from my perspective, we wanted to fix the market failures so that markets actually work in the best interests of society as a whole, not just the privileged few. We were trying to make the system work better through institutional and regulatory reform that improves markets, to come as close as we can to the ideal markets in our textbooks, not overthrow the capitalist system.

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hope they do, and that they are successful. We have a mixed economy and that is not going to change. Some parts are left to the private sector, at least for the most part, and in other areas there is a strong government presence. We need a healthy, robust debate about where the lines ought to be drawn between the public and private sectors, and how best to regulate the economy when the government does intervene. We also need debates on how to conduct countercyclical fiscal policy, something Republicans have always supported in the past in one form or another, we need more sensible Republican voices when it comes to monetary policy, and we need a discussion of social insurance that doesn't have one-side calling for its annihilation. There are all sorts of questions that call for a debate at the margins rather than posturing at polar extremes, and I would welcome a healthier discussion of these issues.