Richard Epstein, distinguished law professor and polymath writes here about the steps that need to be taken if we (or any country currently stuck in neutral) want to restore economic vitality. In the piece, he spars with Paul Krugman, who jabbers on and on about the supposed need for more government spending. Epstein refutes Krugman’s Keynesian notions. Government spending is not what causes people to use limited resources to produce the goods and services people want — entrepreneurship and profit-making business operations do.
What Krugman denounces as “austerity” means that the government absorbs less of those limited resources for its mostly wasteful programs, leaving more for the private sector to use on its mostly sensible ones.
