In Praise of Recessions

See Whitman's previous post here.

An interesting post, Whit. You know, all politicians for the last few decades have deemed it to be the most important thing in the world to prevent recessions - whatever the cost. Mostly because politicians tend to lose their jobs during recessions.

But conservatives, it seems, would be well advised to NOT avoid recessions. Periodic economic downturns are, as you say, unavoidable, and trying to prevent them only makes matters worse. But as you also point out, long economic expansions tend to make people too confident, and consequently they are less amenable to conservative arguments against dreamy liberal programs. Toss another few billion into SCHIP to insure children who are already insured? Why not? It's for the children. Wall off more property from energy exploration and production? Why not? It will stop the greedy capitalists. Tie up nuclear power and refineries in regulatory nightmare? Why not? It's to save the environment. And so on.

The Why not? is answered quite simply in all cases, but when everything seems to be working out okay for people, they are just not interested. After 25 years of a Reagan economic expansion (fueled to excess by Federal Reserve expansionist policies) people have just forgotten the hard lessons learned in the 1970's as to what is prudent and possible in this world. And here we are today with the kind of administration in Washington that would have gotten less votes than Ron Paul in any other election year. I mean, for goodness sake, this administration actually ran on (and is now implementing) policies to solve the nation's energy problems via raising car fuel efficiency standards that were first tried and failed under Gerald Ford in 1975!

Periodic recessions, naturally occurring, would be the very things to remind the electorate that there are limitations in this world that cannot be overcome by government fiat. The goal for conservatives, as the economy is slowing down, would be to restrain government (principally the Fed) from doing things that would artificially prevent the recession, and to counsel patience. I think that argument would be a lot easier to make than advocating for more coal mines or less health care mandates during economic good times, which is where conservatives seem to have found themselves the last number of years.