Word: consensus
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...stimulate a stumbling economy? For decades, the consensus among economists was that this was a job best left to the Federal Reserve and to such automatic fiscal stabilizers as unemployment insurance. Passing laws in Congress to cut taxes or boost spending to stave off a downturn was seen as pointless at best. Such help would arrive too late or in the wrong place, the thinking went, or would have no impact at all. (See TIME's "Bailout Report Card...
...That consensus has unraveled in the face of the current recession, which appears likely to be the worst in the U.S. in three-quarters of a century. When President-elect Barack Obama arrived in Washington at the beginning of the week and began lobbying for $775 billion in stimulus spending over the next two years, the nation's economists - at least the ones who are listened to in Washington - expressed near unanimous support. This support showed no signs of wavering when the Congressional Budget Office projected Wednesday that even before any new spending, the federal deficit will top $1.2 trillion...
...this pro-stimulus consensus - "élite groupthink," as libertarian econo-blogger Arnold Kling, one of the dissenting minority, puts it - has its limits. Economists have neglected the subject for so long that their theories of how stimulus works are shockingly underdeveloped. Many of the arguments they make for one proposal or another are the product not so much of economics as of common sense, guesswork and ideology. The motley mix of tax cuts for families and business, aid to states, infrastructure spending, health-care spending and alternative-energy investment that constitutes Obama's stimulus plan is partly the product...
...option. Although Obama's tax cuts might stimulate consumer spending - and placate Republicans - any permanent cut would be a huge error, and even short-term tax cuts are an unnecessary risk. Obama's long-term success will depend on his ability to lead Americans to a new, even revolutionary consensus that the U.S. government can offer value for money...
...more than 700 Palestinians, many of them noncombatants, had been killed. But there's something tragic, too, in Israel's predicament: in any confrontation with its enemies, it is damned if it does and doomed if it doesn't. Across Israel's political spectrum there seems to be a consensus that Hamas' provocative rocket barrages could not go unanswered - though whether Israel's response has been proportional to the threat is, at the least, questionable...