I’m referring to the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, who regularly writes columns indicating that he is either intellectually dishonest (saying things he knows are not true simply to help out the left) or lazy (saying things he could easily discover are not true, but doesn’t bother to). Most recently, it’s his assertion that only “antigovernment ideologues” doubt that government spending is necessary to stimulate the economy. Books and articles abound by scholars who maintain that government spending can have no benefit, but in fact further weakens the economy by misallocating resources to favored government projects and constituencies. Why does Dionne refuse to recognize that fact?
Don Boudreaux takes Dionne to task in this letter.
Editor, Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW
Washington, DC 20071
Dear Editor:
E.J. Dionne suggests that only “antigovernment ideologues” doubt that
“If governments around the world, including our own, had not acted
aggressively – and had not spent piles of money – a very bad economic
situation would have become cataclysmic” (“Why We Didn’t Crash,” August
24).
He’s mistaken. Earlier this year three Nobel laureates along with
nearly 350 other professional economists – employed by institutions
such as Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Johns
Hopkins, Northwestern, NYU, Penn, Rutgers, UCLA, and the National
Bureau of Economic Research – signed an open-letter contesting the
alleged need for stimulus spending.* Of course, Mr. Dionne might
respond by accusing these economists of being antigovernment ideologues
– an accusation that, should it be made, would demonstrate only that
Mr. Dionne is a progovernment ideologue.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
