The Liberal Who Terrifies the GOP Isn't Who You Th
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-liberal-who...ertainment
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Joe Biden may be ushering in a revival of Keynesian economic principles that Republicans have lived in mortal terror of for decades.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the liberal today’s Republicans fear most. It isn’t Biden. It isn’t Sanders or Harris or AOC or Elizabeth Warren. In fact, this person isn’t even alive. He’s been dead for 75 years. It’s John Maynard Keynes. And despite what they say for public consumption, Republicans and right-wing elites live in mortal terror of a revival of Keynesian economic principles.
Republicans have a few basic assertions they make about the economy.
One, that tax cuts always stimulate activity and pay for themselves. Two, that we should let the market find solutions to problems, and if problems persist, well, the market has decided in its wisdom that they deserve to persist, hence they’re not even really “problems” but simple facts of economic life (inequality, notably). And three, that government spending will almost always be wasteful and do more bad than good.
All three are lies. First, we’ve seen over and over and over again that tax cuts, especially for the rich, do not pay for themselves. They balloon the deficit. All. The. Time.
And it’s Joe Biden leading the way. That scares Republicans, too; they know that a man who carries essentially zero ideological baggage is exactly the kind of person who can make the new economic case to middle America, especially at a moment when Republicans are taking on more baggage than John Jacob Astor on the Titanic. If Biden succeeds here, the Republicans are headed for an iceberg of their own.