Excellent Point

Wish I'd said it:

[I]f Mitt Romney’s experience in private equity gives him such unique understanding of the economy, why is what he proposes exactly what you’d hear from any Republican who spent his working life in government? It’s partly because Romney is a Republican, and things like tax cuts and reductions in regulation are just what Republicans believe. But maybe it’s also because when it comes to the things government can do to affect the economy, being a businessman doesn’t give you such special insight after all.

I'd add the obvious: what experience Mitt does have as a businessman has nothing to do with either job creation or running an actual business, the kind the knowledge of which might help, anyway: i.e., one that makes and distributes stuff, does research, knows about regulations, builds, exists within the ordinary economic environment... His business was to borrow someone else's money, use it to buy struggling corporations, fire a few people, then resell at a profit. From which he still reaps yearly millions without doing a thing, long after he left the building.

No doubt Rominee was highly successful -- it helps to have no aim other than making money, no matter by what means; nor, for that matter, much in the way of overhead costs -- but what would he have learned from that experience? Not, so far as he's offered to date, any insight that provides new ideas.

Rominee's support among today's Republicans, lukewarm as it is (which is not to say it won't be enough, given his ability to lie, and the RWS™ complicity), centers around his experience as a businessman: Somehow, it'll propel him to saving us all. But when you think about it, it's but another overhyped and undermeaninged talking point.

If all your ideas about federal economics are old ones, seems to me they ought at least be ones that have worked at some point. Or maybe I'm missing something.