Let's say you are a Republican policymaker and you already contradict yourself by a) "we can afford to extend the Bush tax cuts" and b) "we can't afford the current version of Social Security" not to mention c) "tax cuts for business are good." Do you still favor both a) and c)? And what if you have to pile on d) "Everything Obama proposes is bad" and yet c) leads you to e) "we should defund the very system which we can no longer afford"? What comes out at the end? I am curious.
Who is “we”?
I think you’re (generously) overstating Republican interest in the actual effects of policy. The balancing concerns are:
a) What will give Republicans more power?
b) What is better for America’s largest corporations?
c) What is better for America’s richest people?
With rare exceptions, who are all in the process of being booted from Congress, you seek in vain for consistency or principles.
“We” pretend social security is a separate accounting entity, but then “we” spend the excess money (surplus is too positive a term) it takes in all the time knowing that outlays are increasing while the money “we” spent is not increasing the employment base (i.e. was a poor investment) that pays to cover recipients and (past) surplus. So, is social security a separate entity, or not? Who is being contradictory? The existing system is internally contradictory.
Republicans are right. We can’t afford higher taxes, the government can’t afford lower taxes.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve started a sentence with “we”, asked myself who I was really talking about, rewrote the sentence with greater specificity, then realized I was talking cock.
Andrew +1
Well, it’s almost foundational. Even a hard-core liberal doesn’t really believe that “the government is us.” In fact, they want the government to have more money for the very reason that it’s not us. They think the government will do things that the private sector won’t. If the government really was us, it wouldn’t matter who had the money would it? They will focus on the public goods or the coordination problem or market failure. I will focus on the multiplier or ROI or barriers to entry and picking winners. Either way, noone really believes that “we” really means “we.”
I’m not trying to make a zinger here. The left is so convinced of ‘our’ hypocrisy, but private balance sheets matter too, perhaps they matter even more because ‘we’ can’t run deficits as far as the eye can see like the government can get away with.
“we can’t afford the current version of Social Security”
Why are Republicans so preoccupied with Social Security when it is actually Medicare that’s running amok?
Just slightly biased, Tyler? Or are you about to ask “Given that Dems are already contradicting themselves” with the opposite positions?
I agree with Jim H and also (after replacing “Republican” with “politician”) Chris D.
“Why can’t you be a libertarian who believes that lower taxes are always good–for the economy and for social justice.”
Then the optimal tax rate is 0%? This belief is what undermines the promotion and adoption of libertarianism.
Ok this is a confusing post by Cowen.
All people should support a temp cut in payroll taxes. Should have done it rather then the stimulus bill.
People should support broad based tax cuts that reward growth in the private sector and oppose the growth of government funded with market distorting taxes and regulations.
We should trust markets to allocate resources and avoid the redistribution of resources paced on the power of the state
Now what is Tyler against?
Say that the tax cuts are good and demand using paygo that we also cut spending.
People do not like being confronted with internal contradictions when they believe they are rational actors guided by consistent principals.
You stepped on a live wire pointing out the inconsistency.
We’ll do what we always do: YELL LOUDER and blame the other guy for a stalemate. We don’t need to be responsible. There’s an election coming up. We’ll deal with it later and attach it to something we want, like long term, deficit creating tax cuts for my income class.
Tax cuts for business is good because businesses collect and pass on taxes. People pay them.
Cutting the payroll tax is long overdue. Sure, we have to pay for spending one way or another, but I would rather tax income or consumption than payroll.
The comments on this post are unusually illogical relative to the MR average.
Easy. Just smile and nod. No reason to get caught up in an implosion-in-process.
B : “we can’t afford the current version of Social Security”
This is what you call a bald-faced fact.
As for A+C, many people believe that lower taxes are better for all aspects of the economy, including the deficit. Disagree if you wish, but it is hardly a new idea, a rare one, or an absurd one.
As for D+E, it is surprising to me how often you sound like a bitter third-grader when discussing politics.
I don’t understand what is meant by lowering payroll taxes. Isn’t it just a way of giving people access to their own wages a few months before some are to be confiscated or given back at the same tax rates? I’m all for it, but for a completely different reason than economic stimulus. It would slightly increase the awareness of the tax burden to many people who, for reasons that I will never understand, only think their tax share is reflected by what H&R Block tells them they get or owe by April 15th…
I don’t believe we can have an honest debate about taxation unless it is much more obvious to everyone what their current ‘fair share’ has been deemed to be. If all citizens were to write ONE check to the IRS every year without having had any income OR sales tax withheld from any of their economic activity then I think there’d be far more fiscal conservative people in this country.
A is good policy — for helping peaceful voluntarily funded companies grow and create wealth (or go bankrupt trying, and failing).
C is good policy — to increase employment.
B is a “true statement” — if current SS policies are not changed, taxes (and/or deficits) will increase to unsustainable / crisis creating amounts.
Really, I don’t quite see the contradiction.
The US can, and should, be printing more money — until inflation reaches at least 3%.
Or, perhaps better, printing 1 year, 0% coupon bonds that the US gov’t promises to accept immediately as tax payments, but also uses to pay “excess salaries” of Federal Workers — all wages higher than the prior year’s non-gov’t after-tax average wage. (The Fed borrowing from workers isn’t really money … or is it?)
Federal Gov’t employee retirement should be replaced by mass Social Security & IRAs / 401s; with the same contribution going into the general SS fund. It needs to become means tested.
We need to move Federal gov’t wages to be some formula related to average wage, and not grow any faster than average wage grows.
“Even if they somehow convince the American public that we should switch to some form of investing the social security program, that will eventually fail”
How do you figure the eventual demise of such a scheme? Even if one were to put contributions all in EE Bonds, he’d probably double the return he’d get from the current payout scheme.
One further contradiction on top of the others is that of the two parts of Obamacare that the GOP is actively trying to dismantle (one is the reporting requirement on small businesses, fine) is its new board to control costs. This was a key part of the reducing future increases in medicare (and medicaid) spending, and one of the key parts of making the program actually save money. However, for reasons that remain very unclear to me, it has become a big target of the GOP, rather than all the increased subsidies for various medical interest groups. This just adds to the fiscal mess and foolishness, not to mention outright hypocrisy.
I’d like to find the tip-over point when libertarians & conservatives and rationality parted company. I think it was 1976 when the Two Santa Claus Theory political theory and strategy was developed by Jude Wanniski.
Quoting R Reich & Galbraith:
The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income
John Kenneth Galbraith’s characterization of America as “private wealth amidst public squalor”
Time to
fire the Randians & Laflerians and
hire some real Burkians
get some Trots to coral T party Zombies currently on the payroll of the estate owners Kochs & full of Murdoch’s Fox victim agitprop.
David Frum: http://www.frumforum.com/the-tax-that-started-the-tea-party
I suspect you [plural] of short-sightedly & gleefully re-arranging the deck chairs.
It is going to take decades, like E/W Germany, Ireland, Israel, like the Hatfields & McCoys at war in your congressional district.
It is going to take Republicans 3 or 4 more elections to get over it and then we might begin rebuilding the country.
No matter what, Republicans can’t allow a return to the Clinton tax rates because it would be impossible for Republicans to gain control of Congress or the White House in the future when jobs are created, unemployment falls, and the budget heads toward balance like it did after Clinton rammed his tax hikes through Congress though reconciliation.
But by winning one or both Houses in 2010, Republicans will be able to attack Obama constantly, holding hearing on what commie said the words embroidered on the new carpet, whether the executive seal was used without authorization by the rug makers, whether all the weavers were US citizens will proper documentation.
In between hearings, ram through bills that Obama vetoes to shutdown government.
That was the past to the Bush landslide in 2000.
a=pro lower taxes
b=pro lower spending
c=pro lower taxes
d=pro lower spending
e=pro lower spending
I don’t see a contradiction in there…. it’s possible to be for lower taxes and for lower spending, it’s called reducing the overall size of government.
Tyler seems to think that the objective is to reduce the budget deficit and so he sees a contradiction in lowering taxes. “Tea Party” Republicans and “fiscal conservatives” don’t care about the deficit in absolute terms as much as they care about the overall size of government and the level of power given to the bureaucracy.
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