Prattling Before the Pratfall

I follow the blogs of three economists — on the left, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman; on the right, Greg Mankiw; and sort of in between, but mostly left, Brad DeLong. I’m wary myself of Krugman’s insistence on borrowing more money to stimulate the economy, but he makes a good case. Mankiw is, however, never compelling to me in any of the positions he takes, which all seem to come straight from the Republican handbook. Sunday he had a New York Times editorial called, “How to Break Bread With the Republicans“. Here are some of his points, and what I think of them…

• If economic policy is to make any progress over the next two years, you really will have to be bipartisan. To do so, you’ll need to get inside the heads of the opposition.

  Oh, I think Obama understands the heads of the opposition. I for one sure do. Actually, they operate as a single head, like the Borg. Resistance is futile.

• …because many Americans lose some of the credit as they earn more, the credit reduces their incentive to work.

  Well, that sure sounds like a winning attitude to have at work. “Hey, boss, my taxes are going up, so I don’t feel like working as much as I was.” What is really being claimed here is that the personal wealth of the wealthiest affects what they do in their professional lives. Isn’t this what unions do — stage work slowdowns when their financial demands aren’t being met? This argument, more than any other, by Republicans and their apologists, needs to be thought through more carefully.

• …it is not the proper role of government to fix the income distribution in an attempt to achieve some utopian vision of fairness.

  Doesn’t the extreme concentration of wealth over the past 30 years represent a redistribution… up? Shouldn’t taxes be at least reasonably fair and progressive? Mankiw doesn’t think so, because he says……..

• One of best analyses of this long-term trend is by the Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology.” The authors conclude that widening inequality is largely a symptom of the educational system’s failure to provide enough skilled workers to keep up with the ever increasing demand.

  I’m no Harvard economist, but this is nonsense. The laborers in Chinese textile mills and electronics assembly lines aren’t better educated than American blue collar workers, they’re cheaper.

• Republicans are not terrorists. They are not the enemy.

  Give me a fuc*ing break. As if the Democrats are the ones who have spent the past 15+ years attacking and demonizing the other side. Obama made a lot of compromises in his health care legislation, and what concessions did he get from Republicans? None. And now they say they’re going to do their darnedest to get it repealed all together. Does the Republican Party ever bargain in good faith anymore?