Sambaparanoia

“Principled political discussions” never cease to amaze me. Take, for instance, the debate over whether Obama’s fiscal stimuli actually fostered the recent economic recovery (which has been reported all over the news for the last few weeks), or the discussion around the “Superfreakonomics’” chapter that seems do deny that global warming should be taken seriously by policy makers. The debaters on both sides of those issues – ie, american conservatives and american liberals – appear to rely on “principles” that seem incoherent to say the least.American conservatives are known to oppose any fiscal stimulus program. They tend to advance the thesis that such programs will be “innefective” in the long run, that they will punish future generations with a bill that will be delivered in the form of higher taxes and/or higher inflation rates. That mindset seems to stem from the principle that governments should only borrow money if they are to invest it on behalf of future generations – “day-to-day spending that benefits today’s taxpayers should be paid for with today’s taxes, not with leveraged investment”. Therefore, one could say that what some call “the Golden Rule” of fiscal policy is actually grounded on a moral principle of fairness, of reciprocity – “never impose on others (ie, on future generations) what (ie, higher taxes and/or high rates of inflation) you would not choose for yourself”.Liberals tend to disagree. Although I may be oversimplifying things a bit, one could say that, when desiging economic policy, liberals generally place more weight on short term benefits than their conservative counterparts. Wasn’t it Keynes who said that “on the long term we are all going to be dead”?. But here is the funny thing: when one shifts the debate from the effectiveness of “economic policy” to the consequences of “global warming”, Liberals seem to take the place of Conservatives as the main “defenders” of the future generations well being. Conservatives who oppose fiscal spending on the grounds that it could hurt future economic prospects usually don’t give a damn about the damage that current actions could do to the planet’s environment in the future. And the same Liberals who couldn’t care less about the gloomy consequences of excessive fiscal spending are the ones who want to protect their sons and grandsons from this generation’s environmental negligence.I know that one can find countless explanations for this seemingly “paradox”. But one thing is for sure: when someone starts screaming about “principles” in the midst of a political debate, that’s exactly the moment I’ll stop listening.

I’m ok with all that talk about “the rise of the rest” and everything, but Azerbaijan as this year’s Doing Business Report top reformer (followed closely by Kyrgyz Republic and Albania) was a little too much, don’t you think?