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You can stop worrying
Martin Feldstein and John Taylor reassure us:
And by maintaining strong control over the growth of government spending, Mr. McCain will bring the budget into balance. His long record of fighting against excessive government spending, his plans to veto earmarks and reverse the spending binge of the past few years, and his strong commitment to balancing the budget can make this goal a reality.
Here is the full article, hat tip to Greg Mankiw.
This article claims that goldfish are as smart as mice.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 2, 2008 at 12:57 PM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
I've seen graphs (from the Obama camp?) that claim a lower future-deficit with Obama's plan. What's the best impartial call on that?
Posted by: odograph at Sep 2, 2008 1:04:57 PM
The best impartial call is that health care cost decisions will overwhelm many other variables; that is for anything other than the short run. If you just look at what is on paper, the McCain tax plan has a higher projected deficit.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Sep 2, 2008 1:09:45 PM
If we could go back in time, it would have been nice to have the Bush tax cuts have a sunset trigger in them, rather than an absolute sunset. In other words, insert something like, "these tax cuts will only sunset in 2010 if the federal budget deficit is greater than $100 billion for fiscal years 2008 and 2009." That way congress and the president would have had the incentive to control budget deficits over the last years. Is the war or the tax cut most important? Is the prescription plan or the tax cut most important? Etc.
Posted by: liberalarts at Sep 2, 2008 1:18:49 PM
If we could go back in time, it would have been nice to have the Bush tax cuts have a sunset trigger in them, rather than an absolute sunset. In other words, insert something like, "these tax cuts will only sunset in 2010 if the federal budget deficit is greater than $100 billion for fiscal years 2008 and 2009." That way congress and the president would have had the incentive to control budget deficits over the last years. Is the war or the tax cut most important? Is the prescription plan or the tax cut most important? Etc.
Posted by: liberalarts at Sep 2, 2008 1:19:22 PM
Does it even matter what McCain intends to do anymore? The election is over.
Posted by: Dan Miers Quayle at Sep 2, 2008 1:19:39 PM
This article claims that goldfish are as smart as mice.
Indeed, I had been worrying about that. But I will stop.
Posted by: Brodysattva at Sep 2, 2008 1:36:00 PM
This article claims that goldfish are as smart as mice.
Excellent!
Flying puffins, roof access ladders, goldfish, mice. I missed those, especially the last few days....
Posted by: at Sep 2, 2008 1:43:02 PM
Didn't they say the same thin 8 years ago and 8 years later the government went from a surplus equall to over 1% of gdp to a deficit larger than 3% of gdp.
You guys really need a new campaign besides the old voodoo economics.
We've heard this record time and time again.
Who besides the die hard believers or each other do you think you are fooling this time?
Posted by: spencer at Sep 2, 2008 1:47:09 PM
Why are you assuming that health care cost decisions will be the major economic factor in an Obama presidency?
As far as I understand, it's isn't really up to him, is it? The track record thus far for the Dems in passing legislation hasn't been particularly stellar.
Posted by: meter at Sep 2, 2008 1:51:33 PM
Ditto to Dan Quayle said. I pulled the intrade state-by-state predictions Sunday night, and if everyone wins those states they're expected to get at prices of 60 and over, it still leaves five states in play (Colorado [Obama-56%], Nevada [McCain-54.5%], New Hampshire [O-57%], Ohio [O-52.5%], Virginia [M-51%]). Without those states, Obama wins 260 electoral votes and McCain 227. Traders are basically saying McCain has to win all five of those states to win, and even then it's close. Two of those states have some of the worst foreclosures in the country though (Ohio and Virginia) and high unemployment, and Pilan doesn't obviously help him in any of them as far as I can tell.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Sep 2, 2008 1:57:15 PM
Puffin is still my favorite.
Posted by: vm at Sep 2, 2008 2:10:43 PM
I appreciate the effort, but you're no match for the random article button on wikipedia.
Posted by: Jeff H. at Sep 2, 2008 2:10:49 PM
Well, he did guilt me a little bit about the fate of my last goldfish.
Posted by: odograph at Sep 2, 2008 2:29:29 PM
Obama also plans to raise more revenue than McCain. According to the Tax Policy Center's Analysis, Obama's Federal tax revenue as a share of GDP is 18.3%, while McCain's is 17.6% over the 2009-2013 timeframe. So this would also reduce projected future deficits.
Posted by: Scot at Sep 2, 2008 2:55:21 PM
I'm basically echoing a commenter higher up on the thread, but how are these projections affected by McCain's expressed penchant for military intervention? For example, in Georgia? I didn't see any mention of that in the Feldstein piece.
As for the intrade stuff, it seems to me that Obama now is in a good position to move Biden to Secretary of State in his planned administration and to pick an experienced female Veep candidate (Clinton, Sebelius, etc.). It would take care of the one unknown factor (will white women break for the ticket with the white female veep) while not causing him any harm. Especially since now he'd be operating from a perception of relative strength. Waiting until a Palin shows an unexpected strength or Biden an unexpected weakness (think Lazio in his debate against Clinton) could be too late.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous at Sep 2, 2008 3:08:43 PM
I'm sort of curious where the notion arises that Obama can possibly change his VP pick. That's an enormous risk to take, given what would certainly be a litany of "Obama is a flip-flopper on his VP selection" echoes from the right.
I was never enamored of Biden for many reasons, most of which are political (i.e. character flaws that once exposed may damage the ticket), but I think Obama is stuck with him.
Is there any successful historical precedent for that? Or any precedent whatsoever?
Posted by: meter at Sep 2, 2008 4:09:42 PM
Re Feldstein and Taylor, what I found interesting was teh sentence before the one quoted here. It said "Tax revenues will increase robustly over the next few years with Mr. McCain's overall tax strategy as the economy grows -- even with conservative economic growth assumptions." Are the authors arguing that the McCain tax cuts will increase tax revenue?
Posted by: Greg at Sep 2, 2008 4:20:59 PM
Until I hear a Republican talk about how they will CUT SPENDING, i'm not buying anything about their economic plans.
I know that if I tried to live my economic life like the Federal Govt does these days i'd end up in jail... Its really easy to promise lower taxes but not so easy to show us how you'll compensate for it.
Posted by: Perry at Sep 2, 2008 4:22:14 PM
I don't know how smart goldfish are, but they have tetrachromat vision (ref: Neumeyer et al). That is, they can see far more colors than we can, similar to a human with normal trichromat vision seeing more colors than someone with red-green colorblindness. If goldfish used computers, RGB computer monitors wouldn't do -- it would have to be RGB + ultraviolet. Some freshwater fish can see both into the infrared and ultraviolet, but there's conflicting information on the web about whether goldfish can see infrared.
There is some evidence that tetrachromat vision can occur in humans, but extremely rarely and only in females. Interestingly, "We humans are only prevented from seeing
ultraviolet light by the absorption of the pre-retinal media, especially the lens
(Wyszecki & Stiles, 1967)." (warning, PDF link). When Gattaca Corporation gets around to offering affordable designer babies, I know what I'm asking for.
Posted by: at Sep 2, 2008 4:25:59 PM
In my extensive experiments I've found that goldfish outperform both mice and Senators when it comes to solving underwater mazes.
Posted by: Scientist at Sep 2, 2008 5:41:29 PM
"Re Feldstein and Taylor, what I found interesting was teh sentence before the one quoted here. It said "Tax revenues will increase robustly over the next few years with Mr. McCain's overall tax strategy as the economy grows -- even with conservative economic growth assumptions." Are the authors arguing that the McCain tax cuts will increase tax revenue? "
Posted by: Greg
We're now in the *second* term of the *second* supply-side administration, with results opposite to what supply-siders predicted. I'm only surprised that they didn't get the 'Dow 36,000' guy in.
Posted by: Barry at Sep 2, 2008 5:42:57 PM
Meter,
I think Obama has unique cover to switch his veep pick (only if he does it very soon), because McCain's situation of making his veep pick reactionary to Obama is also very unique. As I pointed out on my blog in advance of Obama's selection, from a game theoretic perspective it made no sense for him to select first. I think he should have said he'd announce his vice president selection at the same time McCain announced his, to avoid this type politicking. But in today's reality, I think he's taking a bigger risk NOT switching to Clinton/Sebelius. Besides the substantial number of white women who want a white woman on the ticket they vote for, Obama has the presidency almost completely sealed. I think this would be a low risk way to neutralize that one area of uncertainty.
Also, it would knock a guy off the ticket who graduated at the bottom of a low ranked law school. I think Biden is a good case example of why committee chairs should be awarded by merit rather than seniority.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous at Sep 2, 2008 6:36:43 PM
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/extending_jgtrr.html - "the McCain plan implies a $4.2 trillion reduction in tax revenues. In other words, both tax plans imply a deterioration of the debt/GDP ratio relative to baseline, but the McCain plan implies a substantially larger deterioration [i.e., $1.3 trillion (45%) bigger]"
Posted by: glory at Sep 2, 2008 6:45:31 PM
Maybe I'd worry less if presidents actually had the power to appropriate money.
Posted by: Norman Pfyster at Sep 2, 2008 6:56:23 PM
I am generally in favor of lower corporate tax rates and think McCain has credibility on holding down spending, but really : "corporate tax rate -- now at 35% the second highest among all industrial countries". Well, I suppose we shouldn't expect anything better from campaign advisers, but the World Bank place the US firmly in the middle on overall tax burdens for a representative firm:
http://www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreTopics/PayingTaxes/?direction=Asc&sort=7
Posted by: jonm at Sep 2, 2008 7:40:44 PM
