I criticized Michael Scherer's article comparing the McCain and Obama tax plans, but he's done a great post at Swampland following up on the article and laying out very clearly why it is that Barack Obama's plan would cut taxes for most people and how it differs from McCain's plan.
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Scherer on Tax Plans
31 Jul 2008 11:28 am
Comments (15)
"a great post [...] laying out very clearly why it is that Barack Obama's plan would cut taxes for most people and how it differs from McCain's plan."
Sorry, but I can't agree with your characterization of Scherer's post. It doesn't really say much about the fact that it would cut taxes for "most people", nor does it clearly lay out how Obama's plan differs from McCain's (until the very end of the post, and only sketchily).
The graph that you yourself posted earlier this morning ("The Shoe Factor", http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/the_shoe_factor.php) is a much clearer and simpler way of doing both these things (showing that Obama's plan cuts taxes for most people, and how it differs from McCain's).
Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession
In '93 the headlines were "Clintonomics is a Recipe for Recession". Anyone remember how that turned out? Ferris?
In '93 the headlines were "Clintonomics is a Recipe for Recession".
Obamanomics are not Clintonomics. In any case, the fact that a past tax increase did not lead to recession obviously doesn't mean that a future one won't.
The point is that you guys are just wolves who like to cry "wolf".
scythia,
Ha ha ha ha! Good one. Yeah, what does Michael Boskin know. He's only a professor of economics at Stanford.
scythia,
Do you even read your own links? The first is about a paper in which Boskin suggested that future tax revenues were being undercounted, and that they would be much larger than officially estimated. The mistake in his calculation favored tax-and-spend liberal economic policies, not conservative ones. The correction of that mistake has exactly the opposite implication for Obamanomics than you seem to think.
The mistake in his calculation favored tax-and-spend liberal economic policies, not conservative ones.
No, Mixner, the whole point behind "tax-and-spend" is that if you want to spend more money on new programs without reducing the funding levels of others, you have to increase taxes accordingly to pay for it.
The existence of a magical pool of leftover money would favor a "don't-tax-but-spend-anyway" budgetary policy, such as the ones promoted by Reagan-Bush.
Given that the paper was published in 2003, I am assuming that when BW said Boskin had "the potential to shake up the budget debate," the budget in question was Bush's. And given Boskin's Hoover fellowship, oil-company ties, and service under W's father, I am assuming Boskin's mistakes were in Bush's favor.
But I am a reasonable man, and if you can provide EVIDENCE to the contrary, I'll be happy to cede the point.
Otherwise, might I suggest confining your comments to threads you can win? Getting bogged down in stuff like this just ruins your credibility site-wide.
Yeah, it's great that Schere put up a Swampland post. Too bad that less than 1/10 of the people who read the original story even know that Swampland exists, much less might actually read his post.
Feh!
scythia,
No, Mixner, the whole point behind "tax-and-spend" is that if you want to spend more money on new programs without reducing the funding levels of others, you have to increase taxes accordingly to pay for it.
This claim is a complete nonsequitur. The point is that the mistake you cited favored liberal economic policies over conservative ones, because it inflated tax revenues and thus implied that there will be more money to spend than is likely to be the case. The correction of that mistake favored conservative policies over liberal ones.
But your post is irrelevant in a larger sense anyway. Boskin is one of the most respected economists in the country. The fact that he thinks Obama's economic plan is a recipe for recession is a serious reason to doubt the wisdom of that plan.
Considering that the last Democratic President to promise middle class tax cuts was lying, why should anyone believe that Obama will cut taxes?
Obama's priorities are pretty clear, and I'm sure very few of his supporters would be ruffled by the fact that he probably will have to abandon tax cuts should he win. But let's not oversell this tax cut plan and say how much better Obama is for middle class taxpayers than McCain. I'm not sure very many middle class taxpayers actually believe that in the real world of policymaking as opposed to the fantasy world of electioneering that Obama and a Democratic Congress will actually cut taxes on any actual taxpayers.
"Obamanomics are not Clintonomics. In any case, the fact that a past tax increase did not lead to recession obviously doesn't mean that a future one won't."
A very good point. Obama if anything is running as far away from Clintonomics as possible, which is patently ridiculous, as Clintonomics has the best fiscal and economic record in recent times. Why Obama would want to return to the liberal excesses of the past is beyond me.
A point I'd like to add is that the reason the Clinton tax increases didn't cause a recession were because there were also spending cuts to go along with it. That sent a signal of fiscal responsibility to the markets.
If clinton had raised taxes and spending, it would have blown up the deficit and depressed the economy. But since Clinton controlled spending better than any President in decades, the economic results were good. Overspending is a far greater danger than overtaxation.
Comments closed August 14, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
As long as there's a deficit, any "tax cuts" are just a way of using future generations as an ATM machine to make our lives easier.
I would prefer a debate between candidates that lays out their plans for getting us to "man up" to the fiscal train wreck that's bearing down on this country. So far, the debate has been about avoiding any mention of it.
Posted by kafka | July 31, 2008 12:15 PM