Politics with Marc Ambinder

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Feb 6 2009, 2:50 pm by Marc Ambinder

It's OK To Be Afraid Of Something That's Really Scary

Critics of the Obama administration have accused the President of trying to spook the American people into believing that the only to prevent economic Armageddon is to pressure Congress to support the stimulus package. They're using the language of Democrats who criticized Republicans and the Bush-Cheney administration for trying to scare the American people into a state of suspended obedience to political authority. The terrorist threats might have been real, but we know now that a lot of the "facts" marshalled to support the rhetoric wasn't.  In the case of the economic crisis, though, maybe Americans aren't panicking as much as they should: the job market spiraldown continues, and more apocalyptically, the rate of decline is picking up. The labor force is contracting rapidly; the unemployment rate is close to its 1990s peak at 7.8%. (Want higher than that? Go to the 1970s.) Americans are working fewer hours, too. Scary! Christina Romer, the White House's chief economist, noted that of the 3.6 million jobs lost over the past year, most of them have been lost in the last four months. The rate is comparable to the rate recorded by economists in 1938, during the....yep.

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Comments (6)

illinoisan

My comment relates to Jonathan Rauch's factless column you're suggesting as a top click. Anyone who thinks Rauch makes a persuasive case needs to read this takedown, written by a top Illinois Statehouse reporter who actually knows how this process played out. Rauch obviously doesn't.

http://thecapitolfaxblog.com/2009/02/06/apparently-national-journal-has-no-fact-checkers/

Jay

Marc,

A zombie invasion is very scary. My neighbors MAY be zombies, so killing them MAY avert the catastrophe. Therefore, I must kill my neighbors with a shotgun, then dismember them with a chainsaw.

No matter how scary the zombie invasion may be, that is no excuse to go around killing my neighbors without first verifying that they are, indeed, zombies. Having a bunch of lunatics going around killing everyone in sight simply because they MIGHT be zombies is insanity.

Moral: You can not simply gloss over the necessity and effectiveness of a proposal simply because you are scared.

- Jay

Jim Manzi

I believe that the US unemployment rate was over 9.5% for both 1982 and 1983.

slag

I think a lot of us are scared and want to do something about the problem. But we don't want to invade Iraq when those who are threatening us are in Afghanistan. And we don't want to throw a lot of money at banks when that won't help our economy.

If we assume Jay's neighbors are, in fact, zombies (which is really the only way that analogy makes sense since we pretty much know the economy is, in fact, tanking), we still need to answer the question of how to deal with the emerging zombie menace. Democrats have needed to explain exactly how their stimulus plan will work. Luckily, Obama is starting to do more of that, but before yesterday, we've heard precious little of *specific* arguments as to why theirs is the right solution for this problem. And the continual evolution of the bill certainly doesn't help alleviate these concerns.

We don't want to go to Iraq again. Nor do we want to spend all of our money on bullets to kill Jay's neighbors when, in reality, only axes will do the trick.*

*=In no way was this statement an endorsement of violence against Jay's actual neighbors.

Jay (Replying to: slag)

Slag,

The problem with zombie analogies is not everyone watches enough zombie movies! In this analogy, some people are zombies and some are not, there is no way to know. Kind of like witches! We know there are zombies, but we don't know if my neighbors are zombies, so we don't know if they should be killed or not. Some people would say, since we just don't know, the safest thing is to just kill them and not worry. But that is nonsense, such action is counter-productive. It's just what the zombies would want!

The analogy only serves to illustrate that not all frenzied action is a good idea. In fact, actions done in a panic are unusually bad. If you have ever been in a mandatory evacuation you have some idea. People panic, and before you know it, we have a trillion dollars in debt and a street of dead neighbors.

A stimulus package passed in haste, like neighbors murdered in haste, may do nothing to stop the crisis, and could just as easily make it worse.

slag (Replying to: Jay)

True that, Jay, but if you have a zombie coming at you trying to kill you, you'd better be making some decisions in haste. So, the reverse is also true: sometimes you need to make decisions in haste or you die.

A stimulus package passed too late, like zombie neighbors murdered too late, may do nothing to stop the crisis, and could just as easily make it worse.

My point was that, like many economists, I'm pretty sure we're dealing with a zombie. And I want to kill it. Dead. And I may have only one shot to get it right (given the complex nature of zombie killing), so I want it to be a good one.