Here’s why the government stimulus worked: it kept hundreds of thousands of Americans at work, at least. It added percentage points to GDP. It sent billions of dollars to unemployed and low income Americans to prop up private demand as consumption was ready to fall off a cliff.
That’s my take anyway, but not everybody agrees. In fact, if my regular commenters are any indication, quite a lot of people think my interpretation of the stimulus is utter bogus. In the spirit of balance and fairness, I wanted to hear from an academic member of the anti-stimulus team, so I spoke with Don Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University* and a blogger at Cafe Hayek, about the new jobs bill and the theory of Keynesian stimulus. Here’s our chat:
We should probably begin with his explanation for why he thinks
government stimulus doesn’t work the way the Obama administration
hopes. Here’s Boudreaux:
I’m in the camp — it’s in the minority — that argues that stimulus
is not good policy for a couple of reasons. First, money taken to spend on
stimulus projects are taken from elsewhere in the economy. The second thing, the deeper problem, is what’s being stimulated? For the past eight years leading up to the crash,
we had a lot of economic activity that everybody understands was built on
wealth that wasn’t there. People were employed doing things they
shouldn’t have been doing. A lot of it came through the real estate
sector. If the stimulus keeps people in these jobs that they shouldn’t
have been in to begin with, we’re just delaying the day of reckoning. I
want to see the economy adjust to a more sustainable growth path where
people are not artificially propped up by bubbles or by stimulus, which
I worry is is the case now. That said, we can debate giving unemployment assistance.
So the jobs bill: Here’s a $15 billion plan to give companies who
hire unemployed Americans an exemption from paying payroll taxes on
those workers through the end of this year. It also provides a $1,000
tax credit to employers who keep new workers on the payroll for at
least for 52 weeks. Will it work?
As you know, I’m very skeptical of the whole stimulus idea to begin
with. The problem with a tax credit for hiring new workers is maybe
that a lot of those workers shouldn’t be hired where they’re gonna be
hired. I’m a tax cut kind of guy. I’m always aiming for tax cuts. If we
want to get the economy back on a sustainable long run track of
economic growth we don’t want to bias the economy in favor of capital
or labor. If we’re going to have tax cuts we want them in general so
firms are not biased to use capital in bias of labor. That might be
good for labor in the short run. In the long run, it’s not good for
labor because workers wages tie closely to productivity, which is tied
closely to the amount of productive capital they have to work with. So
by biasing the production in favor of labor, you put more people to
work today but you reduce capital and productivity, which means their
compensation in the long run will be lower. These are gimmicks. I
realize politically that employment is a big problem, but you can solve
that problem just as well with general across the board tax cut tax
credits that aren’t targeted at one factor of production.
The
administration is stuck with terrible unemployment, but also a $1.6
trillion deficit that’s getting slammed. So let’s say you were the
president’s Jobs Czar. You have his ear. What do you tell him?
I would say cut taxes generally.
What kind of taxes? Payroll?
I
would cut payroll taxes and corporate profits taxes. By cutting the tax
on corporate profits you don’t bias employers toward labor. If you
really are worried about the deficit being too high and you really do
want to put private sector business activity back on the tracks and
moving along so that more workers are hired and wages rise, you have to
make it more attractive for business in general to produce more.
Cutting corporate taxes does that, if you’re asking me as your economic
adviser to get employment going in a sustainable pro-growth way.
Would you make the cut temporary for budgetary reasons, or would you make it permanent?
If
it were up to me I would eliminate the tax on corporate profits. I
would make it permanent. If you announce that it will only be temporary then it won’t have the stimulus effect. It’ll have some, but a lot of
production plans go on well beyond three years. If they’re building a
factory that’s in operation 16 years down the road, you diminish the
effect if you limit the time. I would prefer a temporary cut to no
cuts. But still, a permanent tax credit to hire new workers still
really biases the production decisions.
One concern here would be that you’re cutting taxes dramatically on
top of a significant deficit. In fact, the size of the deficit is
making some budget experts call for additional taxes, like a
broad based consumption tax, or value added tax (VAT), possibly in
exchange for slight reductions in the income tax. What would you say to
that deal?
I am very leery not so much for economic reasons,
but because the income tax has been so deeply instituted into the
political structure in America that I can’t really imagine it being
significantly scaled back. As I understand it, the idea is we’ll move
to a VAT and we’ll get revenue from there and we’ll offset revenue from
the consumption tax by eliminating the tax on middle and upper class
income and corporate profits. Right?
Politically, I’m skeptical that that would happen. Academically I think
you can have a serious and interesting debate about the virtues of
income and consumption tax. And if I had to choose between the two in a
hypothetical world where the taxes are implemented with the best
interests of the public in mind, I would probably go with the
consumption tax. I’m sure I would, in fact.
I could imagine two
years from now, if there’s another terrorist attack or the recession
deepens, or whatever emergency happens: whatever party’s in Washington
says we need more revenue and the income tax is still there, so they
start using it again. People are accustomed to paying income taxes.
With a VAT, it’s more hidden. You walk into a store and you pay the
price that’s listed and it’s not obvious to you what portion is tax. We
won’t pay attention to it in the same way there’s an income tax form
that you mail in in April. I’m worried that the political deal won’t
take place as advertised.
*Corrected.
