Economists are surely a dismal lot, by and large. Give them some good news-say a big drop in unemployment-and they will remind you that in front of every silver lining lurks a cloud. That scarcity of jobless workers you're so pleased about could, other things being equal, jack up inflation! This sort of "on-the-other-hand-ism" is what drove President Harry Truman to wish his staff would deliver up a "one-armed economist." Were he here today, Truman would be jealous. For President George W. Bush seems blessed with economic advisers whose passion for certain remedies prompts them to omit the standard warnings about possible unwanted side effects. Tax cuts, of course, are their No. 1 panacea. Not just the "little bitty" $350 billion tax-cut package that the president derided in a precampaign speech in Ohio recently. Recalcitrant senators should understand that since tax cuts create jobs, the more the merrier. Of course, it doesn't take a fully armed economist to spot the limits of this argument: If tax cuts are an unalloyed blessing, why have taxes at all? True, you need some government spending, if only to support the military and elderly folk on Social Security, the courts, Coast Guard, highways, and such. But hey, the government is already several trillion dollars in debt and on track to add trillions more. Why not just borrow the full amount?
展开▼
