Statist Academic Reflect: More Government

Once upon a time, there was a saying among the young: “The answer is more beer. What is the question?”

Substitute the word “government” for the word “beer” and you have what could be the rallying cry for academics today.  “As for spurring economic growth in general, there is a near consensus among serious economists about many of the policies that are necessary,” MIT economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, and Michael Spence wrote in an article which appeared in Foreign Affairs last summer. “ The basic strategy is intellectually simple, if politically difficult: boost public-sector investment over the short and medium term while making such investment more efficient and putting in place a fiscal consolidation plan over the longer term.”

“Public investments are known to yield high returns in basic research in health, science, and technology; in education; and in infrastructure spending on roads, airports, public water and sanitation systems, and energy and communications grids. Increased government spending in these areas would boost economic growth now even as it created real wealth for subsequent generations later.”  They never actually show these “known high returns” nor show how the policies they outline differ from those the federal government has pursued for the past decade.

Foreign Affairs is published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

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