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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

All in for the lost decade. Congrats to the President.

Look to France for your future because the road map could not be clearer. Have a nice day. 





3 comments:

RationalMind said...

I hear this a lot but it isn't very clear to me. I'm not an Obama supporter, but I do feel the right is far too harsh on the man. I'd love a blog post that elucidates these opinions concisely to make this road map clearer.

Anonymous said...

Why not Germany? They also have big safety net and the biggest Solar industry in the world, but they are also one of the strongest economies in the world. It is fair to say that US is heading towards European-style model, which may have been inevitable, but why France and not Germany?

Randall Parker said...

And that is a fair comment, although it is only now inevitable given the revealed preferences of the American People this second time around. Pretty clear they want more of what they got.

So the main question now is what makes France different than Germany? Labor markets, structure of the tax system and educational system are three of the top things that come to mind. You have got me thinking now and that is a good thing so thanks.

I was going to say the American public needs to have a discussion of how big they want their government to be. I think that discussion finished yesterday. If we are going to continue to spend 24-25% of GDP on Federal Expenditures then we need to figure out how to pay for these things actuarially. Something closer to the European tax system which has far fewer distortions than the US system would be a good place to start. I am not sure I see that happening anytime soon. So...we point more toward France. But I am thinking more about it.