John Hinderaker is calling Pete Stark (D-CA) the most appalling member of Congress, based on this clip. Well, I don’t know about that. But he certainly earns a dishonorable mention:
What is amazing about this clip is the condescension he is able to muster while preaching absolute nonsense: if you had studied at a good school, you would know that debt makes us richer.
ASIDE: Gee, I hope I have the credentials to criticize him. I majored in economics at a good school, but I stopped with just a bachelor’s degree. Perhaps in graduate school they take it all back and teach that debt makes us richer.
The sad thing is that, jackassery aside, Pete Stark is not alone. What I think he’s getting at is an extremist version of Keynesianism that says that all government spending grows the economy. (ASIDE: Keynes’s model predicts that government spending grows the economy under certain conditions that maybe existed during the Great Depression, but that certainly do not exist now.) Unfortunately, the president agrees.
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