Increasing the Federal Deficit

In the Column Left article by economist Robert Pollin (Commentary, July 15), the headline “Washington Must Spend to Spur Spending” at first appeared profoundly logical to me. After all, isn’t that what Washington does already, spend, and then spend some more? Yes, spending begets more spending. Makes sense to me.

But upon reading the article further, I realized that what Pollin meant was not that government spending would spur more government spending, but rather that more government spending would spur more consumer spending.

Ah, yes, liberal logic. The government needs to spend more of the taxpayers money so that wage earners will have less money after taxes to spend but they will spend more of what they don’t have because the government is spending more of what it doesn’t have.

I don’t know what kind of an economist Prof. Pollin is, but I think I know what kind of economics these are: “Hoo Doo” economics. As in “Who do these tax-and-spend liberals think they are, and how dumb do they think the rest of us to be?”

RON YORKE, Reseda