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Tax Time
Matthew Yglesias —
... Tax cuts, as everyone knows, make for better stimulus than spending, since the money can be distributed right away. Except that government distribution of a tax rebate is only one step in the stimulus process. That money won’t actually start doing anything until people begin spending it, and they don’t generally spend it all at once. So notes Econbrowser’s Menzie Chinn, who adds a chart of dynamic multipliers for spending and tax cuts from the ...
Bipartisan bromides
Paul Krugman —
... and contained nothing but tax cuts. But the part that really got me was Broder saying that we need “the best ideas from both parties.” You see, this isn’t a brainstorming session — it’s a collision of fundamentally incompatible world views. If one thing is clear from the stimulus debate, it’s that the two parties have utterly different economic doctrines. Democrats believe in something more or less like standard textbook macroeconomics; Republicans believe in a doctrine under which tax cuts are the universal elixir , and government spending is almost always bad. Obama may be ...
Former Drug Addict Rush Limbaugh Saves the World!
Suburban Guerrilla —
Rush Limbaugh presenting his stimulus plan on the op-ed pages of the Wall St. Journal? Beyond parody.
Menzie Chinn at Econobrowser responds.
Use, delay, and obsolescence
Paul Krugman —
One question that seems worth asking right now is, how fast would the economy recover in the absence of a stimulus plan and a financial rescue? Would it, as Rush Limbaugh says , be over in a few months? Or are we talking about a sustained slump — and how sustained? Well, my general view is that this isn’t your father’s recession; it’s your grandfather’s recession. And the experience with pre-WWII recessions may be a useful guide. I’m not just talking about the Great Depression; some earlier experiences may in some ways be equally or more relevant. So let’s look at the ...
Marketing Should Not Drive Policy
The Next Right —
... In recent decades, though, the Repubican Party has turned that process on its head. Now, marketing drives policy (e.g., tax cuts are the answer to everything, and transparency is only ...
