The Cliffs Of Insanity – Mark Knopfler (from his wonderful soundtrack to The Princess Bride)
Jonathan Bernstein makes a great point on Twitter:
Disappointed that WaPo poll didn’t ask effect on deficit if no fiscal cliff agreement reached. Suspect “increase” would be >25%, maybe >50%.
I don’t have a lot to add here. I am certain that his numbers are correct. Or, if anything, they might be too conservative. I really do think it’s important to keep reminding ourselves just how little people actually understand the economy and how much concern about “the deficit” is simply a stand-in for general worries about the economy. The Fiscal Cliff sounds terrifying, ergo: it must expand the deficit.
Now, this isn’t quite as big of a problem as it might initially appear. The language that people employ doesn’t ultimately matter that much. This is so because, despite the framing of deficits as essential, the public doesn’t tend to vote that way. Rather, they vote based on retrospective economic conditions – which actually tends to produce fairly solid representative incentives.
So the danger is not really that the public is forcing politicians to make terrible decisions based on a failure to understand fairly simple economic issues. The danger is that politicians listen to the LANGUAGE and choose poor representational strategies which damage the economy.
This ‘fiscal cliff’ stuff suggests that they all pretty much understand this. Despite all the freak outs about the deficit, there is basically no one who is enthusiastic about simply ‘going over the cliff’ even though this would be the single best way to massively cut the deficit.
Now, I understand journalists feel obliged to cover the story, but if the public isn’t really talking about the deficit, and if politicians aren’t ACTING like they care about the deficit, maybe it’s worth considering what the story really is.
So here’s my call to those reporting on this stuff: when we hear from the budget scolds over the next few years, please remember to point out how few of them were actually on board with cutting the deficit when it was on the table. And, if you’re really enterprising, you might want to notice that the Republicans really REALLY don’t care about deficits and (in fact) just care a whole LOT about reducing tax rates. Meanwhile, Democrats do care about cutting deficits (too much, in my opinion). Clinton helped generate a surplus (in good economic times, when it made sense) and Obama seems committed to cutting deficits (in terrible economic times, when it’s actually pretty crazy to be focused on this).