Ezra Klein: Technocrat in Chief
Ezra Klein is a hack of a journalist, as well as a smug technocrat who thinks Gov. Gary Johnson’s common sense approach to public policy is dangerous:
I’ve been on some panels with Johnson. He comes off a nice, sober, sensible guy. He talks a lot about being a businessman, and he’s eloquent on the failures of the two major parties. His campaign sells him as a politician who simply brings a “common-sense business approach to governing.”
Here’s what that means, though: Johnson supports a metallic currency standard and massive, rapid spending cuts. He wants to balance the budget “not five or ten years down the road, but in 2013.” He thinks, without obvious evidence, that we’re “in the midst of a monetary collapse,” and that TARP, the stimulus and the Federal Reserve’s emergency measures were all bad ideas. (emphasis mine)
[...]
No one ever promised that the way the world works would accord with our intuitions. And the same goes for economic policy. Almost all of the worst economic ideas out there are sold on the basis that they’re just “common sense.” Some of them, in fact, are just common sense. That’s what makes them so dangerous. Life would be a lot easier if bad ideas never appealed to anybody, but that’s not how it works.
Yes Ezra, because everybody knows that you are the ultimate, final authority on what constitutes a bad idea. Such hypocrisy and hubris!
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