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Fragments of Wisdom
... it is important that presidential candidates fear economists...
Brad DeLong, writing about why what a politician says about a minor policy like the gas-tax matters. Of course it is even better if the public are informed and on the gas-tax they seemed to have made the right decision.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on May 7, 2008 at 03:55 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Subtract the audacious military budget from the Republican platform and what exactly is so lousy about Republican economic policy in comparison to the Democrats? To get to the heart of the matter, the wild tax cuts of the past twenty years are far less audacious once all of the military pork and typical republican crony kickbacks are erased from the budget.
Ive always felt that republican economic ideology, although rarely practiced in the real world, was on much firmer ground than the incoherent brew of typical Democratic economic ideas. When reduced to its lowest common denominator, what exactly is democratic economic policy? It usually reads like a play book for reduced trade, high taxes, inefficient regulation, and a bunch of economic activities that the market would never commence with.
Posted by: John Pertz at May 7, 2008 4:53:04 PM
Subtract the audacious military budget from the Republican platform and what exactly is so lousy about Republican economic policy in comparison to the Democrats? To get to the heart of the matter, the wild tax cuts of the past twenty years are far less audacious once all of the military pork and typical republican crony kickbacks are erased from the budget.
Ive always felt that republican economic ideology, although rarely practiced in the real world, was on much firmer ground than the incoherent brew of typical Democratic economic ideas. When reduced to its lowest common denominator, what exactly is democratic economic policy? It usually reads like a play book for reduced trade, high taxes, inefficient regulation, and a bunch of economic activities that the market would never commence with.
Posted by: John Pertz at May 7, 2008 4:54:29 PM
John Peretz--
I can see from your characterizations of Republican and Democratic economic policies that no facts from the last 20 years could possibly change your mind.
Posted by: MostlyAPragmatist at May 7, 2008 5:51:33 PM
Alex wrote:
...if the public are informed...
Shouldn't that be "...if the public is..."? Or is this similar to the usage of children? That is, "children are" instead of "children is".
ps. I'm a non-native speaker.
Posted by: Les at May 7, 2008 7:01:22 PM
Why "fear"? I got halfway through the article, thinking it made no sense, before I realized the word "fear" was being used as a synonym for "respect the opinion of". To me, when I read "presidential candidates fear economist" it makes me think of Hillary's remark "well, I'm not going to throw my lot in with economists." In my book, fear is at best a dysfunctional form of respect. Odd language.
Anyway, even though the gas tax issue itself may be a smallish one, the real debate is about whether we're going to start making informed decisions as an electorate. That's why it got so much traction. And it's about time!
Les: I think "public are" is British usage.
Posted by: Ansel F at May 7, 2008 7:14:57 PM
“It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.”
-Ludwig von Mises
Posted by: Daniel Klein at May 7, 2008 8:30:36 PM
Brad is fond of hyperbole, Ansel, sometimes slightly ironic hyperbole. The funny part of the episode is Krugman's discomfort.
John P I see no sign either party has a coherent "economic ideology." Both are shifting coalitions. Shifty coalitions, perhaps. HRC's gas tax pander copied McC's. Even Mr. Romney, who at one point seemed the most obvious heir of fiscally-conservative, small-gov't conservatism, went to Michigan and promised to rescue the car industry. Reflect on all the qualifications you felt compelled to introduce.
Posted by: Colin Danby at May 7, 2008 9:20:15 PM
As far as Clinton's comment, I thought it was pretty ridiculous--imagine if Bush had ever said, "You know, on this whole global warming stuff, I'm going to side with the American people, not the climate scientists."
On the other hand, we economists have collectively earned our low sense of trust. :(
Posted by: Bob Murphy at May 7, 2008 9:37:24 PM
Subtract the audacious military budget from the Republican platform and what exactly is so lousy about Republican economic policy in comparison to the Democrats?
Once you ignore the $2 million beach house I just bought and have to pay mortgage on, I'm living within my means. What's so lousy about that?
Less snarky, when you combine military and homeland security spending, neither of which are "temporary" or set to decline anytime soon (and which few Republicans wish to cut in the near future) with Medicare and Social Security, taxes cannot possibly remain where they are right now. The idea of balancing the budget has effectively been scrapped from the Republican Party platform since the days of Gingrich.
Posted by: Ricardo at May 7, 2008 11:24:34 PM
I think the economists are overly full of themselves. Um, that sort of hubris really should be reserved for the physicists who have a stronger claim to justify it.
Posted by: Randall Parker at May 8, 2008 1:00:33 AM
DeLong has an ego the size of an aircraft carrier.
The conventional economic wisdom is that if there is a gas tax holiday of .18 Americans will schedule just enough additional driving to increase demand and nullify the savings.
And economists think voters are simple minded (and I'm not for the gas tax holiday).
Retail gasoline is the only merchandise I can find where there is public fixing of retail prices on a daily basis. Perhaps economists should think about that.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at May 8, 2008 5:54:33 AM
Keep subtracting audatious billion dollar programs and pretty soon you get to some reasonable spending!
The dangerous thing about Republicans is that they talk a good game.
They can talk economics, which make fiscal conservatives swoon.
They can talk values and religion, which makes social conservatives swoon.
They can talk limited governmnet, which makes libertarians swoon.
By having the right words, they get off the hook of strict scrutiny. This adds up to the result that once in office, they are better at backstabbing their constituency than Democrats.
Posted by: Andrew at May 8, 2008 7:19:56 AM
