Daniel Gross knows nothing

Daniel Gross' recent post carries with it the same nonsense spouted by politicians and members of the popular press who are not economists.
http://www.slate.com/id/2210570/

Speaking as an authority, he begins with:

There are three options government can pursue when the economy goes south.

He assumes without discussion that the government should do something to boost economic growth. This is the same guy who wrote that bubbles are great for the economy.
http://www.slate.com/id/2165929

Does he not realize that every bubble is followed by a burst? Gross credits bubbles for implementing new technology, but he's only right so far as the bubble increases awareness. It's the recession that destroys companies who cannot or do not implement the new technology correctly, and it's recession that enables those who do to expand into the voids left by their bankrupt competitors. Without recession to sweep away the old, there can be no recovery to implement the new.

Government should not try to stop recessions. It should treat the symptoms with unemployment benefits and subsidized education and healthcare, and let the disease run its course. Excess government action will only endanger the patient. No drastic action is necessary because this disease is not anywhere close to devastating or terminal. Even Gross admits that in his next column: http://www.slate.com/id/2210619/

Next he writes:

They have forgotten Richard Nixon's famous line that "we're all Keynesians now."

Suddenly, a statement from a compromised fallen President is now a statement of economic truth. Yes, it's true that politicians have a penchant for economic theories that prescribe greater government action, such as mercantilism or Keynesianism but that doesn't make those theories true or just.

Even Keynesian economists don't think that fiscal policy can be swift or efficient enough to react to recessions.

Contra DeMint, borrowing and spending are pretty much how the government has pulled itself out of every modern recession.

Stated without proof. It's true that the government has borrowed and spent during every modern recession, but there's hardly any reason to believe cause and effect. In fact, our government has been borrowing and spending forever whether recession or expansion. How are the two even related? We borrow more during recessions because tax revenues are lower. We spend more during recessions because the politics allow for it. There is no prescription here.

There's plenty of legitimate argument over the stimulus—too much, too little, not fast enough, too fast, the proper mix of tax cuts and spending.

Except the one that matters: Whether there should be a stimulus at all.