Myth 3: Government spending doesn't help the economy to grow in the long term.
Supply-side economics, as you might expect, is a collection of policies that could help the economy to supply more goods and services. It stands in contrast to demand-side economics, often associated with the British economist John Maynard Keynes, which is about spurring consumers and businesses to buy new goods and services. The Republicans' favorite supply-side policies are tax cuts and deregulation, which are two ways that the government can get out of the way of the private sector. But they're not the only ways that the economy can raise supply in the long run, nor are they the only ways government can be involved.
For economists, the classic role of government is to correct failures in the market. These often occur when the private sector can't provide something that all of society wants and needs. No American has enough incentive to buy an aircraft carrier, but by banding together through government we can buy enough of them to defend ourselves. The same goes for some of the economy's most important needs: infrastructure, universal education, and basic research in the sciences. Investing in these critical pillars of our economy pays huge dividends in the future. Reports from the United States and United Kingdom have found evidence that a dollar spent by the government on basic research in physics, chemistry, biology, and related fields pays back as much as 50 percent more in economic growth.
Yet Republicans have often lumped these investments in with every other kind of spending. Their reaction to the stimulus package in 2009 was no different. A report by McCain and his Republican colleague in the Senate, Tom Coburn, singled out several scientific projects for disdain. They compared one project, dubbed "Facebook for Scientists," to propaganda, even though its purpose was to make collaboration between researchers easier. Bizarrely, they named a research project mapping cancer patients' responses to chemotherapy under the same heading. In another section of the report, a study on primates of how addiction was related to chemicals in the body was labeled "Monkeys Get High For Science."
Of course, science was becoming something of a bugaboo for Republicans. When Jon Huntsman, the Utah governor who ran in the Republican primaries for president, tweeted that he believed scientific evidence about global warming, he was forced to backpedal by doubters in his own party. (He had even acknowledged the bizarre positions of other Republicans by ending his tweet, "Call me crazy.") If the Republicans were true supply-siders, they would see government investments in scientific research as a fundamental engine for economic growth.
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