This guy–Allan H. Meltzer, a political economist at Carnegie Mellon University–is seriously delusional:

Mr. Meltzer says the risk lies not in pulling back too soon but dithering too long. And he would scrap the stimulus program immediately and replace it with cuts in marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses. "It’s certainly not a bad idea to get rid of a policy that isn’t working," he says. "It takes courage, but that’s what we pay these people to do." And, he says, the Fed should now slow the growth of the money supply.

   I added the emphasis above because I read and re-read that sentence and was repeatedly astounded that any serious economist–or at least one with a seriously sounding title–would keep regurgitating the philosophy of a bankrupt ideology. That is, that tax cuts will cure any economic ill.

   And, in act of mercy and great timing, Paul Krugman hits the nail on the head today:

Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good.

Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.

   And…

First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the “magic of the marketplace” were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn’t happen.

To be sure, the wealthy benefited enormously: the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans rose sevenfold between 1980 and 2007. But the real income of the median family rose only 22 percent, less than a third its growth over the previous 27 years.

   Again, my emphasis.

   And, finally:

But some of the blame also must rest with President Obama, who famously praised Reagan during the Democratic primary, and hasn’t used the bully pulpit to confront government-is-bad fundamentalism. That’s ironic, in a way, since a large part of what made Reagan so effective, for better or for worse, was the fact that he sought to change America’s thinking as well as its tax code.

   I never got the Reagan myth that seems to still keep hold over Democrats. It typifies the fear Democrats have: no backbone to stand up to the mindless attacks on government, no backbone to talk about the notion the taxes are a just thing to have if you want a decent society and no backbone to take on the "free market", a failed ideology.