Sharing the Pain

[athenian_abroad]

Brad DeLong writes (pdf):Three weeks ago I was talking to some activists from the California Tea Party. I was trying to explain the Keynesian perspective: "Shouldn’t we keep public employment from falling," I said, "because right the government can borrow at such extraordinarily good terms, and if we keep our teachers at work then they educate our

Comments

[athenian_abroad]

True enough...it is a bit tiresome to be reminded that, for a non-trivial section of the population, politics basically boils down to a white-hot hatred of the public employees' unions. Sigh.

At the same time, I do run across the "share the suffering" phenomenon in contexts not quite so benighted as a Tea Party meeting.