Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute favors Reaganomics over Obamanomics and has been catching hell for it. He responds in his post When Keynesians Attack, Part II:
In my original post (the one he was attacking), I commented on the “burden of government” rather than the “burden of government spending.” I’m a fiscal policy economist, so I’m tempted to claim that the sun rises and sets based on what’s happening to taxes and spending, but such factors are just two of the many policies that influence economic performance.
And with regard to my assertion that Reagan reduced the “burden of government,” I’ll defer to the rankings put together for the Economic Freedom of the World Index. The score for the United States improved from 8.03 to 8.38 between 1980 and 1990 (my guess is that it peaked in 1988, but they only have data for every five years).
The folks on the left may be unhappy about it, but it is completely accurate to say Reagan reduced the burden of government. And while we don’t yet have data for the Obama years, there’s a 99 percent likelihood that America’s score will decline.
This is not a partisan argument, by the way. The Economic Freedom of the World chart shows that America’s score improved during the Clinton years, particularly his second term. And the data also shows that the U.S. score dropped during the Bush years. This is why I wrote a column back in 2007 advocating Clintonomics over Bushonomics. Partisan affiliation is not what matters. If we want more prosperity, the key is shrinking the burden of government.
The thought of shrinking rather than expanding the size of government is anathema to the left because for it the free market merely makes the rich more rich and the poor more poor.
Big government, then, is not a panacea to fiscal liberals, but a highly constrained free market is. And the only way to constrain the free market is by expanding the power of government relative to it.
The sad truth is this: Some folks do not like the results of more econmic freedom and, therefore, proffer as a solution less economic freedom.
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