My mother and children were so proud to hear that the former finance minister of Greece thinks I belong in Hell! I sure hope I end up in the first circle with Socrates and Plato, rather than the 8th circle, with government agents who rack up reckless debt and leave their citizens dumpster-diving for gyro sandwiches.
I think it’s wonderful to debate Yanis Varoufakis during the autumn season, a time of pumpkins, corn, and hay, because Yanis has based his entire reply on a flimsy straw man. He accuses me of furtively favoring cruel spending cuts during the year of COVID. In fact, earlier this year just as the plague hit the U.S., I publicly supported vast aid and proposed in The Wall Street Journal a targeted stimulus plan to help the hardest hit workers in the economy. The Wall Street Journal draws over 40 million readers. I must be pretty bad at being sneaky. So let’s move beyond fact-free fields of rhetorical straw. Will Yanis ever think the time is ripe for government officials to scrutinize government debt? Or must we wait until a cataclysmic crisis hits, as in Venezuela, a place that likes his self-described “erratic Marxist” advice? Yanis jets around the world warning about climate change. I’m pretty sure he wishes we started facing up to that challenge a few years earlier. The longer we wait, the bigger burden to come, right?
During the 1990s Canada and Sweden faced dreadful financial crises, wiping out millions of jobs, because they scoffed at debt. In 1992, Sweden’s central bank had to raise interest rates to 500% to protect the currency from frittering away, after politicians doubled their borrowing. Both countries then began to responsibly shave back spending, and their economies boomed.
During the 1990s, the U.S. created about 18 million net new jobs, a bonanza kicked off by a courageous spending pact between President Clinton, a Democrat, and a Republican congress.
In the next ten years, Medicare and Social Security trust funds will run dry, which could spark automatic cuts of 10-25% for the elderly. Wouldn't it be a good idea to do something about this sooner, and avoid much pain and cruelty?
If caring about such matters now places me in one of Dante’s rings, count me in. I’ll wear SPF 50 and, best of all, I’m sure I’ll make some memorable new friends. Hey Yanis, hop on your motorcycle and come along!