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Over the weekend I flagged a blog post from Adam Ozimek called “Now Less Than Ever,” but didn’t get around to responding to it. Adam’s post is framed around this assertion from economist Russ Roberts:

[Paul] Krugman is a Keynesian because he wants bigger government. I’m an anti-Keynesian because I want smaller government. Both of us can find evidence for our worldviews.

Before I get to Adam, I just want to add a comment about this. Krugman has already defended himself in the usual way — liberals aren’t ideologically in favor of big government the same way conservatives are ideologically in favor of small government, and Keynesianism has never been about big government anyway — but I want to make another point. To the extent that Keynesianism has informed the liberal response to the financial meltdown of 2008, it’s prompted support for temporary spending increases. But this is not something that liberals are generally for. It’s just not. Outside of a recession, when was the last time you heard a bunch of lefties demanding a temporary increase in some program or another? Pretty much never. Various stripes of liberals may be in favor of various kinds of programs — national healthcare, carbon taxes, universal preschool, etc. — but the people who favor them want them to be permanent. Temporary globs of cash are very seldom on the liberal agenda.

For that reason, stimulus spending during a recession really isn’t a matter of liberals taking advantage of a crisis for liberal ends. If we’re going to allocate temporary piles of money, then sure: liberals would just as soon allocate it to stuff we support. But generally speaking, temporary spending just isn’t, and has never been, part of the liberal agenda.

Now, on to Adam. It’s easy to use a crisis like the current recession as an excuse to argue for stuff you’ve wanted all along (tax cuts, healthcare reform), but what about stuff you don’t like? “Help prove Russ Roberts’ cynicism wrong,” he says. “Tell us what favorite policies of yours we need Now Less Than Ever. These can be things that either would be downright harmful now, or that we simply shouldn’t be focusing on and aren’t as important as actual recession cures.” Sure. Here’s an example. A couple of months ago I proposed fighting the recession with a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. But:

That’s the jobs plan. A trillion dollars to make us into a first-world country again. And as part of the enabling legislation, ask for emergency powers to temporarily streamline the regulatory red tape, interagency approval processes, environmental-impact statements, and labor rules that might otherwise keep the money from being put to work speedily.

As a mainstream liberal, I normally wouldn’t favor watering down either environmental impact reviews or labor rules, even temporarily. But the problem with infrastructure as a stimulus is that it’s slow. If we genuinely favor spending a lot of money on bridges and dams and schools to boost the economy now, we need a way to get these programs started quickly. That means making some compromises we’d normally hate.

How about you? What dearly held priorities would you be willing to (temporarily) give up in order to get the economy moving again?

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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