Our Economic Paradox Continues

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Tyler Cowen says there are three ways that declines in consumer demand can make itself felt, but I’m just going to focus on the first two:

  1. A general decline in spending.
  2. A disproportionate and permanent demand decline for the more income- and wealth-elastic goods, a category which includes many consumer durables and also luxury goods.

The first, he says, can be addressed via stimulus. The second can’t. For what it’s worth, this is a distinction that’s been eating at me for a long time too. One of the things that was clear after the housing bust and the financial collapse of 2008 was that Americans were simply consuming too much. Relative to the rest of the world consumption needed to go down, but in the short term this would be so economically disastrous that we couldn’t allow it to happen right away. The Wall Street bailout and the stimulus bill really were necessary.

But our current account deficit, after shrinking a bit in 2009, has started to grow again, and in the long term we can’t keep this up. International trade and money flows have to start balancing out eventually, and that means less consumption from the U.S. and more from countries like China.

This has been the contradiction at the heart of fiscal and monetary policy for the past two year. Do we damn the torpedoes and stimulate now, simultaneously swearing on a stack of Bibles that we’ll restrain ourselves after we’ve gotten back on our feet? Or should we gulp hard, work through the pain all at once, and get our economy back on a sustainable track now? Back in 2008, I remember concluding that the trend level of consumption in the U.S. needed to drop 5-10% at some point, and obviously that hasn’t happened yet. What’s more, even if we wanted to make it happen we’re constrained by the policies of export-oriented economies like China’s, which have to take the other side of the deal and increase their consumption considerably. That hasn’t happened either.

So I still don’t know how this all ends. Trying to adjust to a big drop in the trend level of consumption seems suicidal at the moment, and for that reason further stimulus seems like a good idea. But even while acknowledging that, I still wonder when and how we’re going to get ourselves back to a sustainable level of economic activity. I don’t think the answers are any easier today than they were two years ago.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate