In the course of researching yesterday’s column that explains why Tyler Cowen’s faux “hyper-meritocracy” endangers our world I read a number of articles discussing the Northwestern University study on the public policy views of the wealthy. One of those columns was published by UPI on February 24, 2013.
One of the central points that the scholars who conducted the study made was that the wealthy use their political clout to try to cause the American public to adopt the belief of the wealthy that reducing the federal budget deficit, in response to the Great Recession, was the most important problem facing America. In my column yesterday I noted that the scholars pointed out the logical incoherence of that position given the wealthy’s strong support for the policy view that the federal government should run budget deficits as a counter-cyclical fiscal policy to a recession.
