Harvard Business School Critical of Bush Economics

gregorantic writes "From BusinessWeek Online: 'George Bush, America's first President with an MBA, has been slapped on the knuckles by 169 concerned business-school professors.'"

Comments

Poll of economists

[ratsnapple tea]

Also see The Economist's poll of academic economists, which puts Bush against Kerry and finds Kerry's policies by and large coming out on top. The article notes that while academia may rightly be considered leftist (heh), the poll isn't obviously biased against Bush in its assessment of the economy's recovery and of the president's role in it.

Highly recommended.

This is no surprise.

[Murdock037]

It's often satisfying in its own childish way to trash on Bush for all the personal reasons-- the fake cowboy stuff, manipulation of 9/11, etc.-- but most often, the strongest argument against him is purely economic. His numbers simply do not add up.

See Paul Krugman of the New York Times for the most compelling case. His book, The Great Unraveling, is invaluable.

Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts?

[mind21_98]

Something doesn't add up when one slashes taxes in the middle of a war, especially when we need the money to fight. Not that tax cuts are necessarily a bad thing, but having a deficit prevents the government from working effectively. Just my two cents.

Re:Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts?

[Yokaze]

> but having a deficit prevents the government from working effectively.

It only prevents the following government from working effectively.

Re:Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts?

[OYAHHH]

Having a deficit does not make government run ineffectively.

Actually one could make a strong argument that it makes government much more effective by providing a second way to manipulate the economy. A push versus pull sort of thing.

Without deficit spending the government could only spend what it had received from taxes in a particular year.

And due to a lack of perfect knowledge as to how much the tax coffers were going to bring in in a particular year the government would be pushed into spending very conservatively, lest it run a deficit.

Planning for long-term projects would be made far more difficult and emergency situations would tend to shutdown the government.

Deficit spending on the other hand allows lawmakers the leisure of knowing that they can start a long-term project and not have to pay cash for it today.

Emergency situations can be dealt with by using Uncle Sam's Visa card and accidental budget overruns (is there such an animal?) can be nullified.

Even more importantly the Federal Reserve can use it's enormous influence in borrowing power terms to micromanage interest rates. You wouldn't want to put Alan Greenspan out of business now would you?

Re:Record deficits, and we still want tax cuts?

[Hard_Code]

No it doesn't, it prevents YOU from working effectively. The government can loan money from itself forever. It's your children and economy that have to pay the piper. That's why the talk of "tax cuts" is so aggravating. They aren't "tax cuts", they are "tax debts and burdens" on our future generations.

Ivory Tower Partisanship?

[Nagatzhul]

Odd how they don't acknowledge that the economic deterioration began before he took office. Without that major acknowledgement, that makes their statements looks suspiciously partisan.

Re:Ivory Tower Partisanship?

[moof1138]

So I guess you'd agree that Nixon's horrible econoic policies were what we were seeing under Carter, and Carter's thoughtful economic policies were what caused the growth in the Reagan Administration, while Reagan's disastrous policies brought us the awful Bush I economy.

Re:Bias?

[demachina]

Uh, where in this did you prove anything Tsurumi said was untrue?

"My daddy got me into the guard despite the waiting list"

George's dad did get him in the guard ahead of a waiting list with 500 or so candidates, there was only a handful of openings. Even worse George outright flunked the aptitude test, and should have been disqualified immediately. Instead he was pushed to the head of the list over people who actually passed the aptitude test.

The only question here is if George had the bad judgement to brag about it. Privileged kids, and I went to college with a bunch of them, often do brag about their privilege.

"Tsurumi: Well attendance was not that bad. But his attention span was very short."

Uh, I imagine most professor can assess the attention span of their students. This doesn't qualify as a smear campaign/agenda.

"How many times did George Bush come drunk to your class, as a student?"

Its no secret George was a massive partier during this period to put it politely. To be impolite about it he was probably an alcoholic, cocaine abuser and a skirt chaser. Its a near certainty he did go to class hungover, most college students do, and its certainly plausible he may have gone to class under the influence. Again you haven't got made a case that Tsurumi was being untruthful. What he is saying is plausible and you can't prove its not, unless maybe you can find someone with sterling credentials in all the same classes who disputes him.

Either Tsurumi doesn't like Bush and has an agenda or Bush had deep character flaws especially around this time. He and his whole family admit he was a very troubled young man, at least until he quit being a drunk, quit doing Cocaine, found Jesus and decided he was going to be President though he clearly isn't qualified for the job.

My favorite Bush quote of the week, when is in White tie and tux giving a speech to the "the haves and the have-mores." Bush smirks: "Some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

Its bad enough that most politicians serve the elite and not the people, but George had the poor judgement to admit it in front of a camera, smirk and make a joke out of it. This is not a person who should be President of the United States.

Re:Ok, I read the article, and I have an MBA

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Republican president with a Republican Majority in both the House and Senate and you're saying that he doesn't have control over the budget?

Unfortunately it is you, not these profs that fail the partisan test.

numbers that don't add

[phyruxus]

Bush's federal budget was full of numbers that didn't add up... He counted some money twice, slating the same money for Iraq and Social Security. There was lots of stuff anyone could see was the worst kind of deceitful trickery. We're not talking about little mistakes either, we're talking systematic abuse.

Re:spin elsewhere, bush apologist!

[DesScorp]

I hate to ape O'Reilly, but sorry, no spin here. Look up any survey of academics in this country. See where they overwhelmingly vote.

As for Bush going down, care to make a friendly wager on that? I say he wins the popular vote 51-47 percent, more for the electoral college vote.

You're relying on Krugman???

[DesScorp]

Krugman is a democrat first, and economist second. He's abandoned any pretense of fairness or objectivity in his columns. You might as well go to James Carville for economic advice.

Oh, and thanks for at least being honest about the pettiness of the Bush-hating (" It's often satisfying in its own childish way to trash on Bush for all the personal reasons").

go read this.

[maxume]

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004940.htm l

clicky link

200 economists ain't barely nobody...

Slashdot is not as liberal as you think

[phyruxus]

>>"It's scary admitting that you support Kerry here."

>>Here?? At Slashdot??? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Yes actually, admitting that you're liberal here can get you modded troll/flamebait/overrated real fast. It's been extreme over the past month. I'm glad you think it's funny, because it means you haven't noticed it, and so it could be worse. But from a liberal point of view, slashdot has been or is being assimilated by the far right. Conservative leaning comments are modded insightful when they are nowhere near; insightful comments that have substance but are liberal get modded way down real fast. I'm not saying that no liberal comments are modded up or that all conservative comments are modded up, but it's a running battle.

The pressure and hostility are very real. I've very recently decided that I'm going to be as loud and openly pro-democrat as I can on slashdot, to do my part to keep the liberalness alive or at least half alive. You republicans may not realize this, but your party is very very good at propaganda. And liberals in general seem to have a hard time dealing with conflict based on raw emotion; we'd rather avoid the fight. Especially on a geek site like slashdot, lots of us avoid conflict.

Aww crap, I think I just bonded a little with you, DesScorp. If only because you don't know how much propaganda and suppression of dissent is going on, right here on /. let alone across the country on mainstream media (which are one step away from being state propaganda machines). Not just Fox News, but all the players repeat what they're told by the administration without question; there is no journalism, let alone investigative journalism.

Fellow liberal slashdotters, rise and criticise! Don't let the pro-bush people push their message here! If this is a liberal site, let's take it back! To arms! *dah*doot*dah*doot*! Don't back down! We're going to be called partisan anyways, let's go ahead and be partisan! There's a lot of complaining about Bush bashing, but I don't hear any, so either let's start rebutting the partisan conservatives who think anything liberal or critical is bush bashing, or let's *gasp* Talk About Bush's failures (which are legion)!! We've got a politics section, now let's rally! There's an election to be won! To arms! To arms! The Red states are coming! The Red states are coming!!