If you set things up so that there’s easy money to be made, someone will make it, whether or not it is “moral” to do so.

This piece deals with what she sees as false parallels of today and the Great Depression.

“You’ll be able to keep your own insurance” was the most important political lie of the last year. But NASA’s new mission is the most revealing truth. The MSM understands this, which is why it’s been so resolute in keeping it out of sight.

It strikes me that we have a pretty good model here for reforming human health care. Just treat us all like animals and the whole system would be largely repaired.

So when Democrats are in power and stimulus is mostly spending, liberals think that the stimulus is an issue of fierce moral urgency stymied by venal greed and rank idiocy, while conservatives develop deep qualms about budget deficits. When Republicans are in power, and stimulus consists mostly of tax cuts, Democrats get all vaporish about deficits and the income deficit, while Republicans suddenly realize that the normal rules don’t apply in an emergency. When out of power, both sides will grudgingly concede that some small amount of highly temporary stimulus might be all right, but note (correctly) that the other side seems to be trying to make permanent as much of this “stimulus” as possible.

If the government borrowed the money to spend, it would need to eventually pay the money back. That means higher future taxes, on top of the future tax increases that President Obama already will need to impose to finance his spending plans. Higher future taxes reduce demand today for at least a couple reasons. First, there are Ricardian effects to the extent that consumers take future taxes into account when calculating their permanent income. Second, those future taxes are not likely to be lump-sum but will be distortionary; it is plausible that at least some of those future tax distortions may adversely affect the incentive to invest today. That is, businesses may be reluctant to invest in an economy that they expect to be distorted by historically unprecedented levels of taxation in the future. The more the government borrows, the higher taxes will need to go, the more distorted the future economy will be, and the less attractive is investment today.