Bookworm on Aug 21 2012 at 9:59 am | Filed under: Presidential elections
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I see Paul Ryan’s appointment as a negative for the Romney ticket. It feels like you on the right are whistling past the graveyard here, hoping those of us on the left don’t notice Ryan’s obvious ignorance on matters relating to the budget. Lucky for us, we have Paul Krugman to lay it out clearly.
“Paul Krugman doesn’t think Paul Ryan’s budget plan should be taken seriously.
“This is just a fantasy, not a serious policy proposal,” Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist, wrote in a blog post Monday:
Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, announced Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, as his running mate on Saturday. Ryan has led the Republican Party’s charge to shrink the size of government, including cutting spending on welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, while slashing taxes for the wealthiest.
Krugman wrote in another blog post published on Monday afternoon that Romney chose Ryan in order to dupe the media into making “Ryan’s unjustified reputation for honest wonkery…transfer to the ticket as a whole.”
Ryan has been praised as a deficit hawk, but his budget proposal would raise $2.2 trillion less in tax revenue over the next 10 years than President Obama’s budget, according to the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer. To offset that lost revenue, Ryan also has proposed spending $5.3 trillion less over the same time period, but has not specified exact cuts.
Ryan’s budget would slash all federal spending — outside of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — by 70 percent by 2050, perhaps an unrealistic assumption considering that Romney has promised to keep defense spending above those levels,according to Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein.
Ryan also has proposed cutting individual and corporate tax rates and getting rid of taxes on corporate income, capital gains, estates, interest and dividends, according to Bloomberg. Ryan’s budget proposal also promised to close tax loopholes, but declined to specify which ones.
Ryan’s budget is generous to the wealthiest Americans. Romney, for example, would have paid an effective 0.82 percent tax rate in 2010 under Ryan’s budget, thanks to the elimination of the tax on capital gains, the Atlantic’s Matthew O’Brien notes.”
I won’t try to confuse PaulScott with explanations of why capital gains taxes are a bad idea, because people that think like him don’t understand how capital works. I also will not waste time trying to explain why and how Paul Ryan is trying to save entitlement programs instead of cutting them, because that requires an understanding of government finances and economics that is simply beyond the ability of the Left to comprehend.
To the Left, in their limited understanding, cutting taxes means reducing government revenues. For that matter, throwing out numbers such as a net-present value of government liabilities of $222 trillion, together with explanations for why this inevitably means bankruptcy and the total dismantling of safety nets and entitlement programs, is also beyond their comprehension. So, why bother.
It is a bit rich, however, for Democrat Lefties to sit on the sidelines slinging arrows at Ryan for his budget proposals when the Democrat President and Democrat Senate have shown themselves utterly incapable of doing budgets at all.
Gosh, thanks Danny for sparing me the detailed explanations of all this high finance. I agree that it’s way beyond my capacity for understanding. And I wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble for nothing. Just keep doing what you’re doing. The election is clearly in the bag for you guys. Ryan is a great choice! And since Akin is not likely to win the Senate seat you so desperately need, maybe you can make him head of HHS. He’s clearly qualified for that position.
:~)
PaulScott: There’s a fundamental premise that differs between conservative and Progressive. Conservatives believe that government doesn’t create wealth, individuals create wealth. Government’s responsibility should be to ensure a stable, law-abiding society in which people have equal opportunities to create wealth, with the government providing a mechanism to prevent cheating, rather than being a Leviathan that controls the economy. Progressives believe that government, by taking in more money, actually has the capacity to distribute that money in such a way as to create money.
Ryan’s budget is predicated on the belief that two things will happen if the government stops controlling the marketplace, especially the medical marketplace. First, costs will drop because government subsidies and government policies drive costs unnaturally high. We’ve seen this is college education, where cheap student loans have driven tuition up at a rate far exceeding inflation. We also saw this in the housing market, where government mandates about loans drove up the cost of housing. One bubble burst, the other bubble will burst. Second, Ryan believes that allow citizens to control their own money means that they’ll force competition, be less free with spending than a vast bureaucracy is, and that market fluidity will drive innovation, which inevitably lowers costs. In other words, taking money from the government and given it to citizens will revitalize the marketplace, lower costs, increase innovation and, ironically, end up enriching the government as there will be more money available to tax, even with taxation at lower rates.
Krugman doesn’t believe in the marketplace. Since he is fixated on government, all he believes that will happen if you take money away from the government is that the government will have less money. He sees no concomitant rise in individual wealth. I don’t know how to argue with that. History doesn’t support it. It’s just sort of a fixed belief that government is beneficent, can solve all problems, and ought to have maximum funds to do so.
Honestly, I can never understand how those who hate corporations because they’re so big that they can control things, love government, even though government is infinitely bigger — and has gones.
I notice PaulScott sticks his head in the door here from time to time to sneer at us mouth breathers. I take his appearance as a compliment, Book. The left is beginning to shee-ite in its pants, and its surrogates are desperate to see if any of them can make headway against the denizens of rooms like this. If your third-hand leftist arguments can make it here against the likes of Danny Lemieux, they can make it anywhere.
Alas, when the sharpest arrow in your intellectual quiver is the clueless Paul Krugman, I’d have to say you’re just going through the motions. PaulScott, go find worthier tasks. Clean out the bathroom drawers, or walk the dog—do something that’s grounded in reality.
A new meme will be in the fore soon. Paul Ryan voted with Akin on bills such as equality pay for women etc. What did he vote on that can be cast as anti women and what was the real bill?
I apparently differ with PaulScott in our opinions of Herr Doktor Krugman.
I find him to be an arrogant, tendentious propagandist. According to Herr Doktor Krugman, Enron was evil – ignoring the bucks Enron paid Herr Doktor Krugman, of course. More Stimulus? Like $800 billion wasn’t enough? Yeah, right.
Anyone who cites Herr Doktor Krugman as support for his point of view has no credibility with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fexz8Ij-OBQ Krugman gets pwned.