Estado Sentido

Por Steve Kelley

A meio do segundo mandato de Franklin Roosevelt, os cérebros do New Deal começaram a preocupar-se com a crescente inquietação popular relativamente à dívida nacional. Naquela época, a dimensão da dívida estava na mente de todos. Na realidade, Franklin Roosevelt havia, em parte, chegado à presidência, em 1932, com a promessa de diminuir a dívida que, mesmo sob o frugal Sr. Hoover, as pessoas tendiam a pensar que tinha atingido uma dimensão ameaçadora. Os sábios do Sr. Roosevelt preocupavam-se profundamente com essa tensão crescente. E então, de repente, a comunidade académica acorreu em seu socorro. Um grande espectro de economistas foi electrizado por uma teoria da dívida introduzida em Inglaterra por John Maynard Keynes. Os políticos esfregaram as mãos em sinal de gratidão. Retratando as consequências políticas da descoberta inebriante de Lord Keynes, o cartoonista do Washington Times Herald fez um desenho inesquecível. No centro, sentado num trono em frente a um mastro, estava um FDR em júbilo, cigarro inclinado para cima quase na vertical, um sorriso no rosto de orelha a orelha. Dançando à sua volta num círculo, de mãos dadas, de rostos brilhando de êxtase, os cérebros, cobertos de vestes académicas, cantavam o mágico encantamento, a grande descoberta de Lord Keynes: "Devêmo-la a nós mesmos."

 

Com quatro palavras talismã, os especialistas em planeamento tinham eliminado o problema da despesa sob déficit. Daí em diante, alguém que se preocupasse com um aumento da dívida nacional era simplesmente um ignorante da percepção central da economia moderna: que importa o quanto nós - o estado - devamos uma vez que o devemos a nós mesmos? Avante com a despesa! Impostos e mais impostos, gastar e gastar, eleger e eleger...

 

William F. Buckley, excerto de discurso de Maio 1958

que é preciso que "a Política se sobreponha aos mercados", ocorre-me imaginar a figura que alguém faria se reclamasse sobrepor alguma coisa às leis da gravidade. Talvez algo como isto:

Imagem retirada daqui

Espraiando a sua incomensurável vaidade e não menor domínio em matérias económicas, Carrilho recorre à técnica das 9 em cada 10 estrelas (realces meus):

J. M. Keynes

É incompreensível(...) que Pedro Passos Coelho tenha proferido as confusas, inexactas e sobretudo contraproducentes declarações que fez sobre a "missão" do Banco Central Europeu, porque a Europa precisa de facto que o BCE passe a actuar como um banco central normal, que tenha em conta o interesse de todos os europeus e não apenas os traumas históricos da Alemanha. Só este passo - defendido por consagrados economistas como, por exemplo, P. Krugman¹, J. P. Fitoussi², P. de G[r]auwe³, B. Eichengreen⁴, O. Blanchard⁵, C. Wyplosz⁶, K. Rogoff⁷, J. Attali⁸ ou J. Sachs⁹- tornará viáveis e eficazes as outras medidas já decididas, nomeadamente o "pacote legislativo" e o "semestre europeu", e permitirá abrir espaço para a definição de uma nova estratégia global, económica e política, da Europa no mundo. De uma estratégia que esteja à altura de uma União Europeia que ainda tem o PIB mais elevado do mundo (quase triplo do chinês) e continua a ser a primeira potência comercial do planeta. Se não for agora, será quando?

 

Manuel Maria Carrilho, "Sem plano, não vamos lá", 17-11-2011

Notas:

Um excelente artigo, a não perder, por Axel Kaiser, "The Paradox of the Outraged", de onde destaco os seguintes parágrafos:

«The perception that something is fundamentally wrong in Western societies explains why Hessel has sold millions of copies of his brief and provocative pamphlet, triggering social movements in France and Spain. It also explains the emergence of Occupy Wall Street in the United States, a movement that officially declares itself to be inspired by the Spanish acampadas ("camper-protestors"). The galvanization effect of Hessel's pamphlet has reminded us that intellectuals and opinion leaders, as Karl Popper insisted, have to be particularly careful and responsible with the ideas they proliferate. One should never forget Isaiah Berlin's warning that "when ideas are neglected by those who ought to attend to them — that is to say, those who have been trained to think critically about ideas — they sometimes acquire an unchecked momentum and an irresistible power over multitudes of men that may grow too violent to be affected by rational criticism."[1] This is a lesson of the history of Marxism and National Socialism that we cannot forget.

Dangerously, Hessel has failed to recognize that he is endorsing the same attitude that ended up in Nazism and Communism: collectivism. Indeed, both National Socialism and socialism were derived from a rejection of the individualistic philosophy that laid the foundations of Western civilization.

(...)

The fiction that government can safeguard a common good that transcends the diverse and irreducibly complex world of individual interests necessarily entails the idea that it can also provide for our necessities. This fallacy is the origin of the fatal myth of the welfare state — an idea brought about by French rationalist liberalism. This kind of liberalism, as Friedrich von Hayek noted, saw no limits in the power of human reason to plan social life and the economy, becoming thus the predecessor of collectivist movements such as socialism and fascism.

No one understood the implications of this myth better than Frédéric Bastiat, a French intellectual who is barely known in his own country. Writing shortly after the constitution of 1848 was created, Bastiat argued that unlike the Americans, who did not expect anything but from themselves, the French had transferred the province of social construction on to the abstraction of government. It was the responsibility of the state to elevate society to a higher level of morality, happiness, and material well-being.

(...)

Bastiat' s words turned out to be prophetic. The myth of the welfare state spread from France and Germany to the rest of the Western world, leading to an explosion of welfare transfers and an equal explosion of the people's expectations with regard to their so-called social rights.

Self-reliance was progressively replaced by a mentality of rights with no duties. As a result, a gigantic disconnect arose between what people are willing to pay in taxes and what they expect in return in the form of government benefits. Because promising welfare is the easiest way to win elections, politicians kept expanding the size of government over the decades. And because the public would not have tolerated an honest increase in taxes to finance the new welfare programs, governments started borrowing the money necessary to finance them. Thus, governments became dangerously in debt. Then the financial crisis came, to a large extent caused by government actions: welfare programs to make true the progressive "homeownership-society" dream in the United States created the structural conditions. Government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought and guaranteed around 50 percent of the total US mortgage market, offered the financial vehicle to transfer the wealth; and the Federal Reserve provided the easy money necessary to finance it. In addition, the US government was borrowing and spending money at an all-time record in order to finance its warfare/welfare policies.

In Europe the situation was not that different. The creation of a single currency, again a government decision that in many cases was not even submitted to popular scrutiny through a referendum, enabled countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain to borrow money at very low interest. The market rightly assumed that if some of these countries defaulted, Germany and France would rescue them. This explains why private investors considered Greek bonds to be as good as German bonds. Using this unique opportunity, politicians in southern countries started an orgy of credit. Their purpose was to win more elections through the promise of more welfare policies. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank was keeping interest rates artificially low, inflating housing bubbles in Spain and Ireland. For a time everyone was happy: politicians were being reelected, the people were getting new government benefits every year, bankers were making tons of money, and industries were booming. It was all an illusion. When the bubble burst in the United States, it quickly became clear that Europe's economic and fiscal situation was also unsustainable.

Now it's time to pay for the party. Inevitably, this means a dramatic reduction in our standard of living. Because people do not understand that the source of the crisis was government, as Bastiat predicted, they now go on the streets demanding even more of what caused the problem in the first place: government. That is the paradox of the outraged.»

Ontem, o Público trazia uma tradução do artigo de J. Bradford DeLong (aqui, no original) intitulado “O mundo de sonho de Ben Bernanke”, em que o articulista, professor de economia na universidade da Califórnia e membro proeminente da ortodoxia keynesiana, se insurge contra a ausência de (ainda mais) medidas de estímulo monetário à economia americana por parte do banco central (a Reserva Federal). Na opinião de DeLong, existe o sério risco de as autoridades, ao não actuarem com o volume de estímulos necessários, prolonguem no tempo a quase-estagnação actual, com altos níveis de desemprego e baixos níveis de investimento. Para justificar a sua argumentação, escreve DeLong, a certa altura:

«Após a Grande Depressão dos anos 1930, a vasta onda de investimento em capacidade industrial durante a Segunda Grande Guerra cobriu a escassez da década perdida. Consequentemente, a Depressão não causou danos ao crescimento futuro – ou melhor, os danos foram compensados pelos resultados positivos de cinco anos de mobilização para a guerra total contra a Alemanha Nazi e o Japão Imperial.»

Ou seja: DeLong é, não surpreendentemente, mais um defensor da teoria das “virtudes regeneradoras” da guerra. Não vou discutir os méritos da validade empírica da tese de DeLong (Robert Higgs já o fez, disputando-os vivamente). Recordo apenas, subscrevendo-as, as palavras de Ludwig von Mises na apreciação desta tese no seu livro Nation, State and Economy: “War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.”