{"id":25824,"date":"2018-07-29T12:26:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T16:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=25824"},"modified":"2018-07-29T12:32:23","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T16:32:23","slug":"stephanie-kelton-has-the-biggest-idea-in-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2018\/07\/29\/stephanie-kelton-has-the-biggest-idea-in-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

Huffington Post<\/em> has the article Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nOnce an outsider, her radical economic thinking won over Wall Street. Now she’s changing the Democratic Party.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t usually expect much from HuffPo, but this article is pretty good once you get past the fluff.<\/p>\n

I am pretty familiar with Kelton’s economic views, so I didn’t need the Huffington Post’s explanation of it. What interested me was an explanation of some of the political events that had frustrated me.<\/p>\n

\nBut it\u2019s hard for many to believe that achieving such ambitious goals wouldn\u2019t come with some other searing social price. While she got Sanders\u2019 attention talking about economic rights and social justice, he balked at the implications of her broader theory. He had been pounding Republicans on the deficit for years and didn\u2019t want to give it up. He had voted against the expensive Iraq War, the George W. Bush administration\u2019s Big Pharma\u2013friendly Medicare prescription drug benefit and the Bush tax cuts, arguing they were too expensive and diverted resources from programs that would genuinely help the middle class. While Kelton the radical theorist wanted Sanders to shrug off deficits, Sanders the politician wanted to pay for his plan by taxing the rich.
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\nFor all its ambition, Sanders\u2019 agenda wasn\u2019t very creative. It just expanded the scope of existing programs that liberals already liked. The minimum wage would be higher. Tuition at public universities would be not just reduced, but free. Medicare would be available to everyone, with better coverage. Kelton didn\u2019t have a problem with any of it, but almost nothing distinctive about her economic thinking ended up in the platform.<\/p>\n

She thought her boss was walking into a trap by insisting that higher taxes on the rich and economic growth could pay for everything he wanted to do. She was right. When the campaign enlisted University of Massachusetts at Amherst economist Gerald Friedman to calculate the cost of Sanders\u2019 platform, Friedman relied on overly optimistic assumptions in his modeling. Economists aligned with rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton pounced, accusing the Sanders operation of fiscal irresponsibility and economic illiteracy. Sanders staffers still wince at the memory. The numbers shouldn\u2019t have mattered, but they didn\u2019t add up.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had also been warning Democrats not to get trapped into the deficit issues and not to get trapped by their own rhetoric about paying for ambitious programs. Knowing of Kelton’s position with Bernie Sanders and knowing her economics, I was wondering why he wasn’t listening more to what she had to say. Now, at least, I know she fought for her ideas, but failed in this case. I also now see what the Sanders’ excuse was for failing to heed wise advice when he received it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Huffington Post has the article Stephanie Kelton Has The Biggest Idea In Washington. Once an outsider, her radical economic thinking won over Wall Street. Now she’s changing the Democratic Party. I don’t usually expect much from HuffPo, but this article is pretty good once you get past the fluff. I am pretty familiar with Kelton’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25826,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25824\/revisions\/25826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}