Zombie economics and the comp-ad meme
| AN OUTSIDERS VIEW |
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| Ken Fuller |
James K. Galbraith’s The Predator State (2008), to which I referred two weeks ago, sets out to demolish a number of damaging myths, arguing that tax-cuts don’t work, monetarism is discredited and dead, and, as we saw in the previous column, that US efforts to achieve a balanced federal budget or a trade surplus are pointless and impossible under the current global financial regime. Much of this is, of course, directed at a US audience, but some of his attacks on recent dogma are of relevance to the Philippines.
He points out that the Washington Consensus, “a set of universal precepts of sound money, balanced budgets, deregulation, privatization and free trade,” has virtually crippled those countries which have embraced it most fervently and is now “almost universally repudiated in principle and increasingly evaded in practice.” Well, I could be wrong, but I don’t think most Philippine opinion-formers, let along policy-makers, have yet joined this chorus of repudiation. The same can be said regarding the doctrine of “comparative advantage” (or comp-ad, as we’ll call it)..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110517com4.html
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