Economic illiteracy (American's biggest liability)

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by RaymondChandlerLives

The only economic policy that has been thoroughly debunked is supply-side economics. It has been a complete and utter failure.

A healthy economy takes into consideration both supply-side and demand-side economics. If you tax the suppliers (corporations and investors) too much, supply decreases and costs go up. Vice-versa if you lower their taxes. If you tax demanders (consumers) too much, they can't afford to buy as many goods. Vice-versa if you lower their taxes. It's not an either/or question; it is a matter of balance and optimization.

Laissez faire economics (what you're obviously peddling here) are another massive failure. How many economic meltdowns do we need before Americans realize that conservative/libertarian economic principles are a dud?

Economic meltdowns can also be precipitated by government control though. The housing crisis of 2008-9 was a perfect example. Government insurance of mortgage securities encourage over-speculation in them. Government stimulation of home ownership encouraged unscrupulous motrgage loans.

But most booms and busts are a natural part of the economic cycle. As new products come to market, cosumption increases at ever increasing rates until the market is saturated and the demand collapses. For the government to prevent that, they would have to reduce consumption of those products to a low level so that adoption by the consumers could be spread out over a long period of time. That would require telling people thay could not buy things that they want. This is how communism (tried to) work, and it is easy to see why it fails.

[Phil P]

Lol, as an econ graduate, all I can say is that learning economics demonstrates how the pros and cons of your listed items aren't nearly as clear cut as you make them out to be.