Christina Romer: Obama's Secret Tax Cutter?

Brother had Romer for class...

he got a B.

;)

Go Cal!

Freddy M. of CA @ Nov 25, 2008 02:48:05 AM

Republicans get half of it right

It I take your simplistic assessment of the Romers' research as fact, we see why the Bush administration as utterly failed to deliver economic prosperity over the last 8 years, and why McCain's economic plan condemned him to wear the label of Bush's Third Term. The Republican's traditionally talk a big game about tax cuts (always to the wrong people in the misguided belief that "trickle down" is realistic) but then fail to deliver on the other, critical half of this equation, which is to cut spending. It was famously said that Bush (almost) never saw a spending bill he didn't love and passed almost every one as he continues to do today. When Republicans reward the rich doubly with both tax cuts and economic gifts in the form of rich government programs, we see how they sow the seeds of widespread economic failure for the country as a whole.

GS of IL @ Nov 24, 2008 20:13:33 PM

Christina Romer, Keynes and international economic cooperation

Christina Romer’s appointment means that we will have at the Council of Economic Advisers an economist with a background in highly relevant economic history and with moderate Keynesian sympathies - just what we need. It is to be hoped that she underatands that one of the key lessons of Keynes is the importance of constructive US leadership in international economic cooperation - including in the international coordination of key economic policies, in building up effective international economic institutions, and in safeguarding free trade. She will be familiar with literature like Donald Moggridge’s biography of Keynes and Donald Markwell’s “John Maynard Keynes and International Relations”, which I think are very helpful in thinking and working our way - nationally and globally - through the present muddle.

D S Lamont of CA @ Nov 24, 2008 19:49:26 PM

I think Obama's plan was to lower taxes on some and raise it on others not to just raise taxes on rich people. Also Mr.Pethokoukis' rather facile analysis ignores the other fundamental conclusion of the Romer's paper; that tax cuts for the purposes of shrinking the size of government generally lead to tax increases (to pay for the ensuing deficit later). Also, while the insight is nice, if you've read the paper, the assumptions that are used to create the analysis lead to a degree of impreciseness which might give one pause as to generalize about extending the analysis to larger generalizations. Given the extremely limited dataset and the ensuing difficulty in looking at the tax cuts ceterus paribus, it is unwise to draw conclusions like "cutting taxes good: raising taxes bad" but then again Mr. Pethokoukis is nothing but unwise.

of NV @ Nov 24, 2008 17:19:18 PM

Wow! Astonishing Insight

Wasn't that McCain philosophy during the whole Presidential race while Obama was going to hammer people making $250k or more(or whatever his last number was, maybe $150k).

DV of IL @ Nov 24, 2008 17:01:28 PM