Pete Buttigieg Knows How to Avoid a Depression
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Pete Buttigieg took to Twitter to support an op-ed in the New York Times saying “massive investments (not sacrificing the elderly) are how to avoid a depression, and are needed anyway. I’ve been more interested in deficit/debt than most in my party. But that was in a recovery, which is over. Now it’s time to think—and borrow—big.”
These massive investments (not sacrificing the elderly) are how to avoid a depression, and are needed anyway. I’ve been more interested in deficit/debt than most in my party. But that was in a recovery, which is over. Now it’s time to think—and borrow—big. https://t.co/O5MIRygogu
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) March 24, 2020
The New York Times says in part, “The economic crash caused by the coronavirus, if anything, will be sharper and steeper. If we set out to deliberately destroy an economy, requesting most people to stay home is a very effective way. The virus itself is disrupting production, but the necessary public health response to the virus is economically catastrophic — and if government doesn’t act massively to offset the damage, the collapse will worsen.
The worst thing Congress and the Trump administration could do would be to chase a collapsing economy downward, with aid packages that are too modest at each step of the way, as Herbert Hoover did. We need to get ahead of this collapse now, and we have a superb model in the World War II mobilization.
The writer of the Op-Ed Robert Kuttner is a co-editor of The American Prospect, a professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School and the author, most recently, of The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy.
