Not A Great Question

Yglesias knocks Chuck Todd:

...if Americans were to collectively sacrificeeveryone agree to eat only potatoes on Wednesdays or somethingthat wouldn’t help anyone except the potato farmers. Consumption in a market economically is almost always a positive-sum exchange; economic growth, and therefore prosperity, requires more economic activity, not more sacrifice. If the big national problem were a giant war, things might be differentwe could all conserve gasoline and save it to fuel the tanks. But it’s hard to see how sacrifice could solve the problem of rapidly rising unemployment.