McCain: “You know the economists?”
Posted on June 24th, 2008 by bile Tags: Betsey Stevenson, California, Doug Holtz-Eakin, Ebay, Ethan Harris, Federal Hall, John McCain, Lehman Brothers, Milton Friedmanite, New York, New York Stock Exchange, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Ron Paul, San Jose, summer gas-tax holiday, Uncategorized, United States, University of PennsylvaniaJohn McCain’s model for ginning up the economy isn’t Keynesian or Milton Friedmanite. It’s EBay Inc.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee regularly asserts that 1.3 million people worldwide “make a living off EBay.” He holds up the figure as evidence the world’s largest Internet auctioneer is a model for job and economic growth.
McCain, seeking to address voter anxiety about the economy, uses EBay to signal that he is “fundamentally optimistic about the capacity of the U.S. economy to innovate, for that innovation to give new opportunities for jobs,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, the candidate’s senior economic adviser. “We shouldn’t be obsessed with looking backwards all the time, and saying, `Gee, where did those jobs go?”’
This affection for EBay as an engine for job creation, however, confounds economists such as Betsey Stevenson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia.
“In terms of jobs, there’s no net increase in GDP that comes from trading stuff that’s already made,” said Stevenson, author of a study on the Internet and employment levels. “New people selling stuff out of their closet on EBay isn’t growing the economy.”
“It’s an example of good old-fashioned U.S. ingenuity, but selling used products is a limited business model,” said Ethan Harris, the chief economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in New York. San Jose, California-based EBay transformed what was an “incredibly inefficient market for junk and turned it into a very efficient market for junk.”
McCain may not accept such criticism. He has shown increasing disdain for any economist who questions his policy prescriptions. Earlier this month, he lashed out at critics of his proposal for a summer gas-tax holiday.
“You know the economists?” McCain said June 12 at Federal Hall, near the New York Stock Exchange. “They’re the same ones that didn’t predict this housing crisis we’re in. They’re the same ones that didn’t predict the dot-com meltdown. They’re the same ones that didn’t predict the inflation that’s staring us in the face today.”
You know the economists? The ones that claimed we aren’t in a recession.
Oh wait!!! You aren’t an economist.
You just surround yourself with them. The ones who are fully versed in kindergarten level economic theory. Not to insult kindergartners.
Not that you aren’t well read. (skip to 2min 30 seconds in)
John, you do realize that there were economists who predicted the housing crisis and the dot-com meltdown and the inflation “that’s staring us in the face today.” They come from the Austrian school of economics and you had one of them on stage with you. Ron Paul is his name and if you’d like to start looking into this school of thought I’m sure he’d be more then happy to help you out.
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