I Still Hate Neil Irwin, part the seventh

Yes, I still do. He "steals" my PINO meme with his piece today. Admittedly, he gets quotes, but hey; he's a highly paid reporter for the NYT, so he should. The lede:

The thing about populism is it usually involves doing things that are popular.

This is something that European nationalists and Latin American strongmen have long known. When they come to power, they aim to deliver concrete benefits to their supporters, even at the cost of their nations' long-term fiscal health.

What he does miss is that old bugaboo, the multiple sources of inflation:

The government would pay for it all with higher deficits. Free candy for everyone! The cost -- in the form of higher interest rates and perhaps inflation -- would come later.

Of course, only if the billionaires aren't required to pull some freight. Recall an earlier missive which showed that income tax started as a rich man's tax: they paid seven times as much as the lowest tier, and that tier was much above median.

Even if Donald J. Quisling did go about doing anything, it'd be based on shovelling money to the Billionaire Boys' Club. Real fiscal policy? Not until Hell freezes over.

He offers up quotes from a tome on Latin American populism, which tome concludes that wealth equalization (the only cogent point of populism, of course) must needs lead to catastrophe through the currency. However, comparing Latin American mini-economies (and their dependent currencies) to the USofA is silly. The US Buck is New Gold, mentioned in these missives many times, and, among other things, the USofA is thus obligated to spread its Bucks around the globe to keep the world's economy running. And, of course, since the US Buck is New Gold, we still get to say how much it's worth. Latin American tin horn dictators never could make such a claim for their paper money.

the populist movements of Latin America had often generated a disastrous boom-bust cycle

Shown here, in graphic detail more than once, is the depression laden 19th century USofA economy: even with a currency in specie (actually, because of it), economic life is mostly bad for most folks. We're supposed to be smarter than lower forms of life. There's something to be said for that scene in "2001" where the hominids break bones by the monolith. Monolith, gold, monolith, gold... Supportive fiscal policy isn't, by design, disastrous. If it were, we would still be in our Post-WWII Depression.

Gifts for the BBC:

Despite the president's talk of a bold $1 trillion infrastructure plan, there is not yet an actual legislative proposal, and the approach the administration has described relies heavily on tax credits to encourage private investment. That tends to limit the scope of any projects to those that can generate revenue to pay off investors.