Recommended: Does anyone actually know how to fix the economy?

An interesting and well argued posting, Does anyone actually know how to fix the economy?, has appeared today on the www.salon.com/ site. The author sees four basic approaches in current discussions, which he labels as the approaches of the supply-side conservatives, fiscal conservatives, neoliberals and progressives.  He then discusses how each of these groups propose to fix the economy, and the problems with their approaches.

I think he has correctly identified the viewpoints and their problems, and I agree with his argument that none of them is adequate.  This article is well worth reading and pondering..

I would only add a general observation. Many of these approaches rely one way or another on "government experts" to make decisions about how the economy ought to operate and where major investment ought to be made. But there is nothing in the long history of civilizations to support the assertion that a few government bureaucrats, however well educated, make better decisions than a true free market system, messy as it is.  I would have thought the painful examples of a number of recent "central planning" socialist and communist economies around the world would have driven that lesson home, but apparently many in the Washington political elite still subscribe to that fantasy.