|
America and the politics ofrecovery 美国与复苏政治学 The big promise;What did Barack Obama s stimuluspackage really achieve? 高飞的承诺;巴拉克奥巴马的刺激计划究竟有何成就? The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change inthe Obama Era. By Michael Grunwald. 《新新政：奥巴马时代隐藏的变革史》，迈克尔格伦沃尔德著。 The word boondoggle, Michael Grunwald points out, was coined back in the days of theoriginal New Deal, to describe make-work bits of arts and craft paid for by thegovernment at a price that was out of all proportion to their actual value. 迈克尔格伦沃尔德指出：政府常常以与实际价值完全不成比例的价格来为一些无用的奢侈品买单，其中就包括为扩大就业而安排的工作岗位早在罗斯福新政时代，人们就创造了无效投资一词来描述这一概念。 This is not necessarily a bad thing. In times of economic woe, when normal patterns ofconsumption and investment are frozen, prodigal government spending can sometimes bethe only way to break the vicious circle of declining demand and shrinking employment.Value for money, paradoxically, can sometimes be an unaffordable luxury. To sum up JohnMaynard Keynes, it can even make sense to bury money in bottles, so that miners, and thesuppliers of their pickaxes and overalls, and those who sell food and materials to thosesuppliers can, in turn, benefit from the circulation of money that they dig up. MrGrunwald s newbook is the story of what was arguably the greatest boondoggle in history andthe politics that surrounded it, both before and since. | 
