Scientifically the “middle course” is not truer even by a hair’s breadth, than the most extreme party ideals of the right or left

8 February 2009, 1837 EST

Steven Mufson and Lori Montgomery report in The Washington Post:

Despite a growing sense of urgency, economists across the political spectrum continue to criticize the congressional stimulus plans. Most economists agree that the Senate alterations in the plan would undermine stimulus aims. Taxpayers who fall under the AMT are generally well-off enough to be able to save some of the tax cuts they receive, delaying any positive effect on the economy. By comparison, school aid to states would probably be spent immediately to prevent layoffs of teachers.

Let’s hope the reconciliation process restores some sanity to the Senate bill.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.