South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Not So Brave Or Serious

James Fallows of The Atlantic points readers to the archives to see why he doesn’t find Rep. Paul Ryan’s policy ideas “brave and serious.” A few items from Fallows’ list follow:

A plan to deal with budget problems that says virtually nothing about military spending is neither brave nor serious. That would be enough to disqualify it from the “serious” bracket, but there’s more.
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A plan that proposes to eliminate tax loopholes and deductions, but doesn’t say what any of those are, is neither brave nor serious. It is, instead canny — or cynical, take your pick. The reality is that many of these deductions, notably for home-mortgage interest payments, are popular and therefore risky to talk about eliminating.
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A plan that exempts from future Medicare cuts anyone born before 1957 — about a quarter of the population, which includes me — is neither brave nor serious….
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A plan to reconcile revenue and spending, which rules out axiomatically any conceivable increase in tax rates, is neither brave nor serious. Rather, it is exactly as brave and serious as some opposite-extreme proposal that ruled out axiomatically any conceivable cut in entitlement spending or discretionary accounts.

Flunking The Test

Brad DeLong argues that Erskine Bowles “flunked” his audition for the job of Treasury Secretary.

I don’t think he would be a good Treasury Secretary, because I think he failed catastrophically as co-chair of the deficit-reduction commission.
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Bowles as co-chair of the deficit-reduction commission had two missions:
1) His primary mission was to corral Republican legislative support for a commission proposal that could serve as a long-run budget-balancing taxes-and-entitlement-reform bipartisan plan.
2) Failing that, his secondary mission to collect the Democratic members of the commission and rally them behind a technocratically-serious, fair, and Democratic proposal that the President could then use to negotiate a long-run budget-balancing taxes-and-entitlement-reform bipartisan plan.
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Bowles failed on both of these counts….

Around The Dial – August 10, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Policy Shop explains the fracas over the TANF waivers.
• Off the Charts looks at the inequities involved in exempting Internet sales from taxes.
• TaxVox unpacks recent analyses of the Romney campaign’s tax plans.
• The NC Budget & Tax Center analyzes suburban poverty.
• Economist’s View notes that many Americans die with “virtually no financial assets.”

Trends In Household Income, 1979-2009

A recent presentation by the Congressional Budget Office traces trends in household income from 1979 to 2009.

Around The Dial – August 9, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Off the Charts explains how unbalanced deficit reduction could hurt states.
• Dani Rodrik sees “no more growth miracles.”
• John Cassidy wonders about the meaning of the “Veepstakes.”
• Jared Bernstein analyzes the new productivity figures.
• Working Economics mulls the demographics of for-profit colleges.