DISQUS

Oh and of course, their will be a quasi statist enforcement of places like China if they don't eventually comply. We'll carbon tax their imports. I've little doubt that Europe would join in on that. The state is very active in this whole scheme indeed. Just use your imagination a bit. There is no alternative except denying global warming exists. But that's the dumb person's solution.

This post makes no sense. Quite obviously the coercive state will still play the main role in any cascading global warming legislation. The very simple argument that Manzi or Wilkinson can't seem to understand is that there needs to be evidence of actual widespread action before nation's start using their coercive state power to regulate green-house gases. Someone has to step out first. We are hardly first anyway but since we spew out more gas than everyone else, it's very important that we take a step. Others will follow.

If no one follows then repeal the damn thing. Come on guys, it's not that hard. And the alternative of doing nothing or almost nothing is inordinately risky.

This is why we need a Queen or King.

I really find it annoying when people earnestly compare MSNBC to Fox. MSNBC has 2 hours of lbieral programming, one hour of which is hosted by a really smart and engaging liberal (Maddow of course). Meanwhile it has a 3 hour morning show hosted by a conservative. Conservative programming actually outnumbers liberal programming on the "liberal" network. And then you compare Colmes to Buchanan. Buchanan is on Rachel's show only sparingly. I haven't seen him in weeks. I can't believe I have to refute this.

And of course, Stewart and Colbert aren't balanced in their attacks so they must be biased. The fallacy of the middle again. Balance above all. Wholly unconvincing.

"Sanctimony is death to satire."

Wow does that not make sense in the context of your post. You just quoted approvingly from Carlson saying Stewart was too earnest and then you rail on Stewart for Sanctimony. You do realize those words are antonyms.

But this is what happens when people try to figure out why they don't like Stewart. They turn themselves in loops. The reason they don't like Stewart is because they are part of the group being satirized or as is the case with Will, are hellbent on pushing the fallacy that the Left and Right are equally stupid.

Stewart is a satirist who targets that which deserves to be targeted, that which unwittingly exudes irony. And right now that is primarily Conservatives and their movement along with the ridiculousness of old media. And he does target Liberals quite often. He was not kind to Obama's DVD set gift, he routinely destroys Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, and has continually picked on Chris Dodd and John Kerry (at least since he lost to Bush).

Satire is finicky. You can't balance it as some apparently want. If you are good you go where the irony leads you. Stewart is excellent at finding it and that's why his show is as good as ever, I think better, especially now that he doesn't have the crutch of Bush who was so ridiculously easy to make fun of.

And another thing. Colbert and Stewart are two peas in a pod. I don't really see how you can like one but hate the other. They target the same things, albeit Colbert uses a persona and more parodic elements. But the jokes are nearly identical if one cares to deconstruct them. And nothing makes a joke funnier than deconstruction.

Ok, another person who quite obviously doesn't watch the show. You people are tiresome. Beyond Stewart, where do you get the idea that Olberman and Maher hide their leanings. They clearly do not.

This is off base. Stewart didn't even touch Cheney's Sunday comments and CNBC is pretty much a brand new target. Media criticism has always been the name of the Daily Show game with politics as a secondary target when appropriate. People who think the Daily Show is simply a left leaning, right targeting comedy show have no idea what they are talking about and probably rarely watch the show.

"But to suggest that CNBC, in giving bad, predatory financial advice, is solely responsible for the bubble we've found ourselves in, and the subsequent losses many Americans have endured is hysterical and ridiculous."

I'd agree but I've never heard anyone come remotely close to saying such a thing. Certainly you can't possibly be referring to the Stewart interview. Stewart's criticism that CNBC, instead of being a worthless bunch of cheerleaders telling everyone they're real journalists, they could be real financial journalists. Certainly, had the clowns at CNBC actually done what they say they do (e.g. In Cramer We Trust), then we'd be better off.

And Stewart makes a very compelling point and adds much evidence through that interview he kept going back to, that Cramer knew damn well that these finance guys were full of shit and couldn't be trusted. Yet, he just kept cheerleading as did the whole network.

This argument is far more complex than the strange strawmen you propose in your posts.

Sure, but government and it's appointees operate under a vastly different incentive structure. Cramer suffers from assymetrical information and ironically profits more the more assymetrical it is whether its correct or not. While Geithner has an incentive to actually receive the right information so he can fix the problem. Cramer has no such incentive. If Cramer had figured out in 2006 that the market was going to collapse at the end of 2008, he would have been a fool to start doomsday proclamations as his show would have probably been canceled due to nobody watching and now a couple people would be saying, "Hey remember that crazy Jim Cramer said this collapse was coming, whatever happened to him?"

So yes assymetrical info is a problem in government as well, but at least there is an incentive to get it right, especially for Geithner at this point in time. That was clearly not the case in the financial industry the past few years. Getting it right would just lose you tons of money.

"Bad corporate governance coupled with bad government policies has destroyed the financial sector, scaring investors and freezing lending."

OK, how can we take anyone seriously who says something so stupid. What has scared investors and destroyed the financial sector is financiers making really really really bad investments. If we can't agree on that simple point, wondering which economist we all are, is a waste of time.

My Christian wife makes 6 figures. I was making fun of her fake piousness and the fact that her plan is really really stupid.

Good point.

But you greatly overestimate this effect. We're talking about a couple thousand dollars a year max for someone making 300-350K depending on deductions. You really think they'll throw in the towel. Anyone who would throw in the towel over that, probably shouldn't be trusted doing whatever they are doing for that kind of money. This argument is really really unconvincing.

Clearly you stumbled out a bar before writing your post. I love it how everything can be traced back to the big bad government. It's storytime in conservative land. Everyone gather around.

Don't be so simple-minded. Sometimes government sucks and sometimes the free market sucks. Clearly both have sucked tremendously the past few years, but as much as I hate Bush, it's pretty clear that the blame for this financial crisis lies at the feet of the Jon Galt's bravely leading our financial sectors.

Would you give this up. Exactly zero people are going to do this including that nice christian girl you keep linking too. And besides, I'm pretty certain that she's already a net-taker. If she has money, it's because of a spouse or family. No way she helps our economy.

Should our brave Galters leave their unproductive stay at home spouses if they have them? Talk about a drag on the productive. Whew!

Well, you'll end up paying for it anyway when the private company patents their product developed due to piggy-backing on your gov't funded research. But maybe I'm just being a smart ass.

I can agree that private and public shouldn't compete. But of course we also need to identify correctly what public and private do better and not fetishize either one like many ideologues do, especially on the right. For instance, Student Loans, where we know that the government can do it much more efficiently than private banks. Or Air Travel where we've seen deregulation lead to better service and cheaper fairs. Or Health Care Insurance where we've witnessed our private system outperformed in quality and cost by our own public programs (Medicare and VA) and by countless other countries.

The key is to identify who should handle what, and let them go about their business. In terms of research, I'd have to lean toward gov't here as the incentive to spend billions on crap like 4 redundant dick-hardening drugs tends to get in the way of researching things that might actually be useful for our society.

Thanks for the response although I'm not hearing anything that wasn't convincing in the past. The relative cost of leisure decreasing has always seemed like smart people applying straight economic theory where it simply doesnt apply well. Perhaps there is evidence supporting this? I would bet that there is quite little or none. My experience with human nature tells me the leisure cost effect is quite small at least until marginal rates get over 50%. Rates are too low right now for people to hyperventilate about it.

This is a completely unsatiafying response. Your answer applies before and after any tax hike. Based on other responses I've seen from you it seems you really haven't thought about it much.

"I’m among those who believe that labor supply is pretty sensitive to marginal tax rates, and I have no doubt that increasing the top marginal rate will make it so that some very productive people will quite rationally choose to produce less."

This is why I always disagree with you guys. This strikes me as clearly wrong. But I'm willing to be challenged here. What makes you think this is true? It seems to assign a sort of super rational irrationality to the rich. By that I mean they would not only accept less income due to the tax increase but they would then proceed to choose to make even less money by working less. It seems at least as likely that people would work more to make up for the lost income. No?

I'm calling BS here. If you are going to raise taxes, you have to raise taxes starting somewhere. You could start at 0 or you could start at 100,000 or you could start at 250K (which on average is probably 300K after deductions). To call this class war is farcical. Tax rates for the uppermost bracket simply return to a level equal to the Clinton years and less than the rate we had from 1932 until 1986. That would be a range of time full of strong job growth, GDP growth, and the rise of the U.S. as the lone superpower. Until 1981, the highest tax rate was still 70%. I could entertain the idea of class war if Obama was proposing that, although I'd still find it a bit simplistic. This particular increase applies to less than 2% of Americans, which by the way, contains most of the idiots who are responsible for our banking disaster. And if you hadn't noticed, these lower tax rates have hardly led to prosperity.

And the charitable deduction is unfair right now. When I didn't itemize it cost me $1 to donate $1. When I was in the 25% bracket and donated money, it cost me $.75 for each dollar. Now it costs me $.67 for each dollar. I have no idea why we would design charitable giving this way. Capping the deduction isn't class warfare, it's common sense. Perhaps we'll get even more common sensical someday and make the deduction the same for everyone. I say get rid of the deductions altogether and turn everything into tax credits.

Yes, and in 1999 the CBO said we'd have a surplus of 381 billion in 2009. Whoops! Stupid delusional lying CBO!

Anyway, I'm not going to argue that these tax increases will pay for the largesse as you call it but it's a start and I think Steve's larger point stands: Quit being hysterical about tax levels on the rich that are still much lower than the median over the past 100 years!

And I forgot to add that he's not returning Capital Gains rates to their proper level, which is equal to income tax rates. It's really non-nonsensical in a market economy to tax labor higher than Capital. That imbalance has undoubtedly contributed to some of our current problems and yet Obama is proposing a Capital Gains rate of 20% instead of 15%, still far below what is logical if you really believe in free and equal markets. And that certainly benefits the rich, no?

I think JB, Clive, and Will are not adjusting for history. Let's get a little perspective here. The so-called soak the rich tax policies basically take us back to the mid 90s where we soaked the rich much less than we did from the late 1930s to the mid 80s. So relatively speaking, I don't really think Obama is returning us to some soak-the-rich era. I see him as returning us to a more balanced era. Right now our income distribution matches that of the 1920s. From 1935 on it slowly evened out until 1980 when the wealthy started taking more and more until it now parallels the roaring 20s and the start of the Great Depression.

So maybe the rich will be paying more than during the wonderful Bush era, but it's a bit hysterical to use language like “The rich are responsible for this mess and it is payback time" and "soak-the-rich". Obama is simply returning us to equilibrium. I mean, he's not even raising any marginal tax rates, he's just letting them expire while bringing a bit of sanity to our tax deduction system that favors high income earners.

A nice post. I would however point out that Krugman's main proposal in his book is nationalized health insurance which is vital to a high-growth egalitarian social insurance state. I also think it completely within bounds to look back at a previous era as a model while de-emphasizing it's more lousy properties. And I think Brink may be exaggerating a bit as well. I don't have the book in front of me and I haven't read it in months but I seem to recall a fair bit of criticism mixed in with mostly praise for that bygone era. I'd love to hear Krugman's cranky response.

I find it a bit silly to compare this to terrorist fear-mongering of the Bush/Cheney variety. That was about a constant state of fear with vigilance demanded no matter the policy. Wasn't that a multi-generational war with no end in sight that used it's unending nature as an excuse to hold terrorist POWs without trial.

Quite a bit different than the stimulus scarefest we are seeing now. Presumably, you pass it and that's pretty much it. Unless this is indeed another Great Depression, our economy will start an upswing over the next year and the scare tactics will have ended with the stimulus. There is an end. Of course, I'm wrong here for one reason. Republicans will start using economic language to scare people once the bill passes simply to discredit the Democrats. I'm sure Will will join in.

As for Barro, I don't think you can get much more strident than the quote above. He hardly seems in a position to complain about Krugman. He basically calls Summers an idiot in the linked interview. He is clearly as partisan as Mankiw and the other Republican tax-cut marauders that prowl our nation these days. He apparently is working away in his economics lab trying to prove tax cuts, especially for the rich, are always best according to the interview. Clearly he's the embodiment of rigorous scholarship.

I think the one thing we learned from this whole debate is that economics is a very very very young field.