Fareed Zakaria

Excellent article by Fareed Zakaria in a recent Time Magazine.

CONSERVATISM HAS LOST TOUCH WITH REALITY

Some highlights:


Consider the debates over the economy these days. The Republican prescription is cut taxes - slash government spending, then things will always bounce back.
Now, I would like to see lower tax rates in the context of simplification and reform, but what is the actual evidence that massive tax cuts are the single best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest levels since 1950. The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies.
So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts, either past or present. It is simply a theoretical assertion.
The rich countries after all are in the best shape right now with strong growth and low unemployment are ones like Germany, Denmark and Canada - none characterized by low taxes.

****

Meanwhile, many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years.
Really?
More than that of Richard Nixon, for example, who presided over tax rates that reached 70 percent, regulations that spanned whole industries like airlines and telecommunication and who actually instituted price and wage controls?
In fact, right now any discussion of any government involvement in the economy - even to build vital infrastructure - is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad.
That's the theory.
Meanwhile, in practice across the globe the world's fastest growing economy, China, has managed to use government involvement to create growth and jobs for three decades.
From Singapore to South Korea to Germany, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by governments can act as catalysts for free market growth.
But conservatives now resemble the old Marxists who refuse to look at actual experience. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?"

****

When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this. What we do know is that of the world's richest countries, the U.S. has by far the greatest involvement of free markets and the private sector in health care. It also consumes the largest share of GDP, with no significant gains in health on any measurable outcome. We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?"

Good read, check it out here.   Check out the Time Magazine site while you're there, it's a pretty good site.