In my previous post, Fixing The Problem We Have At This Time, I mentioned that government stimulus spending is the right thing to do at this phase of the economic cycle.  I hope I also made it clear that in a different phase of the cycle, where the economy is booming so much that it may be overheating,  we would need a little (or a lot) of restraint in government spending.

Investing in our infrastructure, which includes the education of our citizens, is something that we always ought to do.  In the last three or more decades, we have been under investing.  We need to boost that investing so that the long term trend line meets the needs of an economy and society that wants to remain relevant in a global context.

So how do we reconcile the need for a long term growth trend in infrastructure spending and the cyclical nature of the economy?

Some infrastructure investing, like the interstate highway system of the Eisenhower administration, is a long term project that lasts through many economic cycles.  The legislation that authorizes the investment ought to allow for a structure that sets the end goals and spending limits, but not the micro details of timing.  The general plan for the entire project will be written at the beginning, but each phase of the project can either be sped up or delayed based on what is right for the economy at any given time.

Even successful business people who eventually migrate to congress had flexible spending plans for their businesses.  There was a time to spend vigorously and a time to pull back.  Since business and government have very different roles in our economy and society, the time to spend and the times to pull back for business and government should be out of phase compared to each other.  The reasons should be so obvious, I won’t state them here.

The net effect of adding together two cycles that are out of phase with each other is to have economic cycles that are smoother than would otherwise be the case.

The concepts described here are so obvious, that I wonder why it took me so long to think of them all together.  Do you suppose the “business oriented” people in Congress will ever figure this out?

Should we ever elect a business person to Congress who has not figured this out yet?  I think electing such immature business people is a very real danger to our economy, especially when they think of themselves as economic experts.  They have no humility and no clue as to what it is that they do not know about economics.

In the recent senatorial debate, candidate Gabriel Gomez chided Rep. Ed Markey for not promoting more forceful action against the Syrian government.  Gomez said something to the effect that “all you have to do is find the right rebel group in Syria and back them.”  Since John McCain was recently in town to support Gomez, he might have been referring to McCain’s efforts to find the right rebels.

Here is an email that I just received from VoteVets.org.

Dear Steven –

It’s been two weeks since the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to give President Obama the authority to arm and train the Syrian rebels in their nation’s civil war.

Since then, the fighting has intensified along with Senator McCain’s insatiable appetite for intervention.

Ironically, the Senator’s relentless pursuit of more war crystalizes the case against our involvement better than anything else has so far.

By now you’ve probably heard the story about his secret trip to Syria to meet with rebel leaders and the picture he took with members of a known terrorist group during his short stay. His staff says he didn’t know who they were, and no one doubts that.

But that’s the point: if a U.S. Senator can unwittingly pose for pictures with terrorists in Syria, how can we guarantee the arms he supports sending won’t end up in the same place he did — with terrorists?

Will you use our “Contact Congress” tool to write a letter to your Senator telling them you oppose intervention in Syria at this time?

http://action.votevets.org/senate-intervention

No doubt, there’s an unquestionable humanitarian crisis unfolding in this conflict, but the truth is there are no good guys in this fight.

The government of Bashar al-Assad has the support of a number of groups who targeted and killed many Americans in Iraq. At the same time, many of the rebel fighters have also killed American and Iraqi troops, and they still seek to bring down Nouri al-Maliki’s government.

At some point we must learn that we will never, ever successfully maneuver the millennia-old fight between Sunni and Shia and the best move for our own security is to stay out. Write a letter to your Senators today.

http://action.votevets.org/senate-intervention

Thanks for taking action. We’ll keep you updated as things heat up on this issue.

All the best,

Jon Soltz
@jonsoltz
Iraq War Veteran and Chairman
VoteVets.org

As I would have said to Gabriel Gomez had I been there, ‘All you have to do’ is easy for you to say, but how are you going to do it? For somebody who thinks the government in Washington is incompetent, you put a lot of faith in them to pick the ‘right’ rebels

I favor Ed Markey’s approach to military intervention. On top of his requirements for using military intervention, I would include the caveat that you have to be pretty sure that the intervention will help our interests and not hurt them.