Rick Perry’s 20-20 Vision
Charles Pierce sums up the true issue:
It is on days like this that I don’t envy political economists. They’re the ones that are going to have to take this Message from Goobertown seriously. They’re going to have to score it. They’re going to have to do the math, such as it is, and try to find a coherent formation in this unwieldy parade of hackneyed talking points (Kill the Estate Tax and Save the Family Farm!) and tired applause lines (The Job Creators Are Uncertain!). They’re the ones who are going to have to find a way to square the utter abandonment of the progressive income tax, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, a return to explosively inflationary health-care costs, an unchained and undoubtedly newly amok financial-services industry, and the partial privatization of Social Security, all of which Goodhair has managed to wedge into “Cap, Balance, and Grow (!).”
(By now, I figure the political economists are going to be hopelessly drunk and firing rubber bands at each other.)
They’re the ones who are going to have to tell the family of the sad-eyed young intern in the corner that their son, a Wharton grad with a brilliant future, studied this plan for a couple of hours and then screamed, “But it doesn’t make sense!” prior to trying to feed himself into the fax machine in a vain attempt to get as far as possible from any place where this nonsense is taken seriously.
Personally speaking, I’m not bothering. When you’ve already lost Pete Davis, you can pretty much give up on anyone believing your economics will work:
Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) proposed his tax reform plan today and wrote this Wall Street Journal op-ed. Unfortunately, it’s just a slapdash of slogans. If this plan were enacted as proposed, it would lose a lot of revenue, reward the rich, and complicate filing for most taxpayers.
Giving taxpayers the option would also mean that only those who pay less would opt in, guaranteeing significant revenue loss. [OPENING QUOTE ADDED, sans original links; go read the whole thing]
And Andrew Samwick piles on with the politics:
And now we have another version of the flat tax, as if the crushing irrelevance of Steve Forbes to the primaries in 1996 and 2000 were not an indication of how unproductive the discussion will ultimately be. What are the prospects that a Republican President would actually be able to implement such a change if elected? They are equal to the chance that Republicans will both retain control of the House and secure a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in 2012. In other words, absolutely zero.
Personally speaking, I don’t think the odds on that election scenario are “absolutely zero” (but I count people like Ben Nelson, who fellated George W Bush from the beginning, referring to him in interviews as “the King,” as part of that “filibuster-proof majority”). But the rest of the analysis is spot-on.
The Republicans will just need a majority. They will either kill the filibuster outright (or put togther a Quisling of 14 again) or they’ll do it through reconciliation. Perry’s plan is much more likely than Cain’s.
The Republicans make you want to weep for the country. Perry comes across like another punk.
“They’re the ones that are going to have to take this Message from Goobertown seriously. They’re going to have to score it. Etc.”
Take it seriously? No, that’s not necessary. Analyze it? Certainly, if only because some group of political funders has brought the Republican Presidential nomination process to the zenith of cynicism. Maybe Perry is only meant to be the extreme that brings the center yet further to the right. Obama’s need for “bipartisan” accommodation has shown classic Republicans the way to their goals in spite of a Democratic administration and majority in the Senate (as slim as that may be).
The professional economists should be shouting from the roof tops. The editorial pages of the NY Times and WaPo will do for a start. The WSJ is too far gone though with Pat Robertson recently finding fault with the rhetoric of his possible electoral choices to come, who can tell?
Jack beat me to it.
The plan doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to sound good to enough voters to get him elected, or the other guy that sounds almost the same but “more moderate.”
Then they will be free to do what they really want to do which is to kill Social Security and consolidate their rule of the country.
Don’t count on the Democrats who reliably demonstrate they don’t know what they are talking about either, but are willing to “me too” if it gets them the money to get re-elected.
As for “professional economists.” Don’t make me laugh. The professional economists have always been whores, and if the CBO can manage to give Kotlikoff’s “generational accounting” a gentleman’s “C”, you know they are not serious.
Kotlikoff is the originator of the “211 Trillion Dollar Deficit!” “using CBO numbers”… at least the first three of them. you know… one… two…. ah…. Three!
“The professional economists should be shouting from the roof tops.”
Yes. If economics really is a profession, and really does influence gov’t policy, why don’t they speak out about nonsense, even from politicians in “their” camp?
I think that there are still some in the profession, and near to the top of its intellectual hierarchy, who have a voice and have expressed their dismay at the current rhetoric that masquerades as theory. Stiglitz comes to mind, along with Galbraith and Dean Baker and even Krugman. They need to be encouraged to speak yet louder and more vociferously about the bull shit that these candidates are disseminating as economic plans. And the media might just begin to tune into a message with an audience. I try not to be pessimistic about the truth and its ability to come out. I don’t see us at the barricades. Nor is Robespierre any where in sight though the rumblings of Marat are beginning to shake things up around the rest of the world. We have to have hope for a better and saner political class.
Jack
never happens. the powerful just get more and more insane until either they are replaced by one of their lieutenants who has not yet become so insane, or they inconvenience enough of the better class of poor that, with the help of the forever insane poorest of the poor, they are overthrown… for a time. until the new boss becomes just like the old boss.