The University of Chicago Democrat

[I'm Cleo!]

It was a very good article, explaining the course of Democratic Party economic positions over the last 15 or so years. It's interesting to see how he's to the left of the orthodox position on some points and to the right on others. One thing it did do is make me want to read more.

But really JerichoHill, I think there's something you have to learn about the Internet. Posting an informative, thoughtful long-form piece on the relevant views of a political candidate? Who could possibly want that?

Cleo

 

[Patroklos]

Merk and Pat, it's very likely that Obama will be your next president. Instead of encouraging people to not read an analysis (??? seriously, wth???), it would actually be a good idea to look at it yourself.

1.) Nothing I said encouraged people to not read the article.

2.) Of the two things I asked about concerning tha article are still true, whatever else the article says regarding Obama in particular doesn't matter, he will be a disaster.

 

[Bill3000]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=293324553245406
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12237.html
http://www.bullog.cn/blogs/gregmankiw/archives/165668.aspx?cid=634572
http://blogsforvictory.com/2008/04/24/obama-was-for-gas-tax-relief-before-he-was-against-it/

It just goes on, and on, and on, and on...

Seriously, the windfall profits issue should be incredibly eye-opening to anyone who understands even the fundamental basics of economics.

Are you going to do anything more productive than crappy conservative pundit blogs? You're far better at trolling Sidhe.

 

[Zebra 9]

Most recently, the campaign has come out with a series of small-bore, populist energy plans — a windfall-profits tax on oil companies, a crackdown on speculators, a partial opening of the strategic oil reserve — that seem more political than economic.

Why tax them if they earned it, they could use that money to invest in more efficient fuels or new power systems (of course don't let them monopolize and charge an arm and a leg)? Please... Opening the oil reserves could be a major mistake in my opinion. Open the reserves, use up some it, then OPEC stops selling or goes for real high prices and you don't have enough to use left. Leave it in the reserves while we still have gas that is relatively cheap, and really do you need an SUV?

Haven't finished page 2 yet.

 

[Zebra 9]

In Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he goes further: “Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing that pie — contained a good deal of truth.”

I believe I can agree with this. This hopefully shows that a staunch conservative (at least I consider my self that) can agree with a liberal.

 

[El_Machinae]

Why tax them if they earned it, they could use that money to invest in more efficient fuels or new power systems (of course don't let them monopolize and charge an arm and a leg)? Please... Opening the oil reserves could be a major mistake in my opinion. Open the reserves, use up some it, then OPEC stops selling or goes for real high prices and you don't have enough to use left. Leave it in the reserves while we still have gas that is relatively cheap, and really do you need an SUV?

Haven't finished page 2 yet.

I'd never heard that rationalization of the windfall tax (that it's recouping subsidies). I also don't like the idea of a targeted punishment, though. Subsidies have their place. Tax has its place. I don't like this extreme combination.

 

[Merkinball]

Obama’s agenda starts not with raising taxes to reduce the deficit, as Clinton’s ended up doing, but with changing the tax code so that families making more than $250,000 a year pay more taxes and nearly everyone else pays less. That would begin to address inequality.

Then there would be Reich-like investments in alternative energy, physical infrastructure and such, meant both to create middle-class jobs and to address long-term problems like global warming.

Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.

Yet he also says he believes that there are significant parts of Reaganism worth preserving. So his policies often involve setting up a government program to address a market failure but then trying to harness the power of the market within that program. This, at times, makes him look like a conservative Democrat.

Keep trying NYT.

University of Chicago professor who shares Obama’s market-oriented Democratic views.

Market oriented:

- Windfall profits taxes
- End free trade agreements
- Tax companies who outsource jobs
- Is gonna magically create 5 million new jobs.
- Universal Healthcare
- Trusting the free market...after the government subsidized it (GTFO!)
- Is gonna step in on the housing industry
- Legislate the employers set aside workers wages in retirement plans.
- auction off the permits — to let the market set their value. (SRSLY, WTF? )
- Economically, he is trying to use the tax code to spread the bounty from the market-based American economy to a far wider group of families.

Seriously guys. Come on. Have just a shred of integrity on this BS. All this talk of Reaganism, Chicago University style economics. It's hocus-pocus. There is NOTHING about Reaganomics, fiscal conservatism, or free market economics in this whole diatribe. It's bias insipid garbage from the New York Times.

“The market is the best mechanism ever invented for efficiently allocating resources to maximize production,” Obama told me. “And I also think that there is a connection between the freedom of the marketplace and freedom more generally.” - Barack Obama

Which is why you're looking to kill so many free markets? Bludgeon the rich with taxes? Take from the creators, and give it to the leaches? Because we'll all somehow be a little bit more free with some of the riches money?

In other words, free-market policy isn’t likely to dominate his agenda; his project would be fixing the market.

Yet laissez-faire capitalism hasn’t delivered nearly what its proponents promised. It has created big budget deficits - NYT

This is just f----ing absurd. How are you peddling this crap JerichoHill. Laissez Faire capitalism has not created big budget deficits. SPENDING HAS! Jesus.

the most pronounced income inequality since the 1920s

So what?

“We’ve probably done a better job of the last 20 years on the problems the market can solve than the problems the market can’t solve. We’re doing pretty well on the size of people’s houses and televisions and the like. We’re not looking so good on infrastructure and education.”

This is so ironic. Ya know? Because we're doing well on free market things like the size of peoples houses and televisions. But the things that the GOVERNMENT HAS A MONOPOLY ON...we're not looking so good on. What exactly is being peddled in this article?

It's funny too. Because Obama's stance is just exactly what on school vouchers?

The most tangible way that today’s economy feels unfair is the lack of real income growth

Oh yeah, because economic policy and the way to grow our economy is by judging peoples feelings. This is a great foundation for future economic growth and economic policy for shizzle yo.

Economically, he is trying to use the tax code to spread the bounty from the market-based American economy to a far wider group of families.

So we're not educating our people enough. I got an idea. Let's take a whole bunch money from the people that ARE educated. That ARE investing. That will spend that money the wisest. And let's redistribute it to the people on the bottom of the barrel. That way they "feel" better about the economy. Nevermind the actual state of the economy. Nevermind all that stuff in the article on the previous page about how the rich weren't investing in the seventies because taxes were too high.

Yeah Fifty, I bet this section of the article is really going to have a drastic impact on your fathers opinions that Obama is a socialist.

I gotta get going...but if you guys do not understand how this man is going to absolutely KILL productivity, the will to work, the drive to work, the reason to work, the reason to get an education...then I don't really know what to tell you.

How is he going to create 5 million new jobs when he's just going to give a whole bunch of handouts to people to make them feel better about their economic situation anyway? Absurd.

Good luck.

 

[Zebra 9]

If there is a theme to the Obama tax philosophy, it’s that the tax code is not quite as progressive as you think it is. Most of the public discussion about taxes tends to focus on the income tax, which taxes the affluent at a considerably higher rate than anyone else. But the income tax doesn’t take the biggest bite out of most families’ annual tax bill. The payroll tax does. And even as the federal government has been reducing income taxes over the last few decades, it has allowed the payroll tax, which finances Social Security and Medicare, to creep up. That’s a big reason that overall tax rates for the bottom 80 percent of earners have not fallen as much as rates for the affluent.

Obama’s second-most-expensive proposal, after his health-care plan, is the equivalent of a $500 cut in the payroll tax for most workers. (It is actually a credit that is applied toward income taxes based on payroll taxes paid.) In a speech this month in Florida, he proposed that the cut take effect immediately, in the form of a rebate, to stimulate the economy. For most workers, it would be the first significant cut in the payroll tax in decades, if not ever.

Ok so how do you expand Medicare and reduce the payroll tax at the same time? If you reduce the payroll tax you have to reduce Social Security and Medicare since it pays for them.

 

[Zebra 9]

Ok, read it all (did more then skim), and well, I have the same opinion as before, he is very far left but knows how to talk!

 

[Integral]

- auction off the permits — to let the market set their value. (SRSLY, WTF? )

Auctioning off the permits is preferable to just handing them out.

Ok so how do you expand Medicare and reduce the payroll tax at the same time? If you reduce the payroll tax you have to reduce Social Security and Medicare since it pays for them.

In reality, instead of cutting the payroll tax he'll probably just expand the EITC.

--

Reading the article now.

 

[Holycannoli]

Why tax them if they earned it, they could use that money to invest in more efficient fuels or new power systems (of course don't let them monopolize and charge an arm and a leg)? Please... Opening the oil reserves could be a major mistake in my opinion. Open the reserves, use up some it, then OPEC stops selling or goes for real high prices and you don't have enough to use left. Leave it in the reserves while we still have gas that is relatively cheap, and really do you need an SUV?

Haven't finished page 2 yet.

Absolutely right. Opening the reserves is a very bad idea, and windfall taxes are just redistributing the wealth. That's not something Americans do; it's a socialist idea. How do the people who have invested a lot in these oil companies feel about it? I can tell you if you want.

We haven't quite gotten to the point where these record profits are hurting the country, so I say leave it be (the companies and their profits). If it gets to a point where people can barely afford their groceries let alone drive around, then something should be done. We aren't there yet, and might never get there.

Ok, read it all (did more then skim), and well, I have the same opinion as before, he is very far left but knows how to talk!

Oh yes he knows how to talk! He's a master. Of course when it's unscripted he tends to fumble a lot...

 

[JerichoHill]

Well since JerichoHill asked us not to turn his thread into a "partisan bickering contest" I will respect that and not say what I would have said.

P.S. I didn't say I wouldn't read it, I said I didn't feel like reading it. So if you guys can wet my appetite I might read it.

I'm sorry, but you shouldn't have such a closed mind. As an independent, I try to learn about both sets of opinions. Since this was an 8 page article brimming with information not only on Obama but on economics and economists and how they're viewed politically, it was a fascinating piece.

 

[Zebra 9]

Well I didn't feel like reading it because I knew it would only give me more reasons to not want him, and I read it, and I was right, now I really don't want him.


EDIT: Jericho what do you think of Obama's economic ideas?

 

[WillJ]

That 8-page article was more informative than most 300-page books.

 

[Verily]

Ok so how do you expand Medicare and reduce the payroll tax at the same time? If you reduce the payroll tax you have to reduce Social Security and Medicare since it pays for them.

Obama's plan includes getting rid of the cap on the payroll taxes. Right now, you pay payroll tax on the bottom $90,000 (approximately) of your income, but any income above that level is tax-free, at least as far as the payroll tax is concerned. This affects only a small portion of the population, those individuals (as opposed to families) earning over $90,000 a year, and affects significantly only those with individual incomes substantially above $90,000 a year. This would, however, easily cover any additional expenses.

I've actually never heard of an Obama plan to reduce the flat payroll tax, just to remove the cap. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course, I've just never heard that part of the plan.

 

[emzie]

Oh wait, Obama actually kinda gets economics? Well sh*t, that's more than I hoped for.

 

[WillJ]

My main beef with Obama's views (at least the NYT's presentation of them) is not enough focus on education, which is the ONE and ONLY (yes, only) ultimate cause of the jump in income inequality and stagnation of wages toward the bottom. Take this, for example:

Technology has remade the economy, and education and retraining were the best ways for workers to keep up. But any public-policy response couldn’t be about just education; it also had to take account of the psychology of the workplace, Obama continued. Some laid-off steelworkers might indeed be able to go back to school to become health-care workers. But many of them don’t want to work in health care or any service job. Factory workers, he said, want to make something. It’s part of their identity.

[thus he proposes having them work in new, government-led infrastructure construction and such]

And a while ago the identity of most Americans was that of the farmer, but we seemed to get over that without much trouble. This is just delaying the inevitable and seems like a rather idiotic viewpoint (although I bet it sounds better when coming out of Obama's mouth directly ).

Market oriented:

- Windfall profits taxes - Agreed, those rub me the wrong way too (although I can't imagine them doing much harm).

- End free trade agreements - He talked a lot about this before the primaries were over (imagine that), but I seriously doubt he'll do anything with free trade besides expand it --- you can blame him for some dishonesty, but not misguidance.

- Tax companies who outsource jobs - See above.

- Is gonna magically create 5 million new jobs. - Are you referring to his proposed increased investment in infrastructure?

- Universal Healthcare - He doesn't think health insurance should be compulsory.

- Legislate the employers set aside workers wages in retirement plans. - Um, they have the option of opting out. Considering there has to be a default one way or the other, how the hell is this more interventionist than doing the reverse?

- auction off the permits — to let the market set their value. (SRSLY, WTF? ) - Um, seriously, WTF is wrong with that?

- Economically, he is trying to use the tax code to spread the bounty from the market-based American economy to a far wider group of families. - Yes, tax structures of almost every kind tend to do that....

This is just f----ing absurd. How are you peddling this crap JerichoHill. Laissez Faire capitalism has not created big budget deficits. SPENDING HAS! Jesus.
-Indeed, that was a stupid blurp by the NYT.

So we're not educating our people enough. I got an idea. Let's take a whole bunch money from the people that ARE educated. That ARE investing. That will spend that money the wisest. And let's redistribute it to the people on the bottom of the barrel. That way they "feel" better about the economy. Nevermind the actual state of the economy. Nevermind all that stuff in the article on the previous page about how the rich weren't investing in the seventies because taxes were too high.

Yeah Fifty, I bet this section of the article is really going to have a drastic impact on your fathers opinions that Obama is a socialist.

I gotta get going...but if you guys do not understand how this man is going to absolutely KILL productivity, the will to work, the drive to work, the reason to work, the reason to get an education...then I don't really know what to tell you.

How is he going to create 5 million new jobs when he's just going to give a whole bunch of handouts to people to make them feel better about their economic situation anyway? Absurd.

-What in the world are you even talking about? His tax plan won't make taxes much more progressive than they were under Clinton, an age when productivity was not exactly killed.

 

[Cutlass]

People around here may hove gotten the impression that I'm a hard core Democrat, and they'd be right. Still, I don't love Obama all that much, I'm just disgusted by the Republicans.

My main worry about Obama has been his lack of experience and lack of having formed firm views on many issues.

This is an excellent article and makes me feel a lot better about him.

The second criticism is that Obama’s tax increases would send an already-weak economy into a tailspin. The problem with this argument is that it’s been made before, fairly recently, and it proved to be spectacularly wrong. When Bill Clinton raised taxes on upper-income families in 1993, his supply-side critics insisted that he would ruin the economy. As we now know, Clinton presided over the longest economic expansion on record, the fastest income growth most workers had experienced in a generation and the disappearance of the federal-budget deficit. His successor, Bush, then did exactly what the supply-siders wanted, cutting upper-income tax rates, and the results were much worse. Economic growth wasn’t quite as strong or nearly as widespread, and the deficit returned. At the very least, Clinton’s increases did no discernible economic damage. Rubin, citing academic work on tax rates, made the case to me that rates under an Obama administration would not be nearly high enough to stifle innovation.

“I think I can tell a pretty simple story. Ronald Reagan ushered in an era that reasserted the marketplace and freedom. He made people aware of the cost involved of government regulation or at least a command-and-control-style regulation regime. Bill Clinton to some extent continued that pattern, although he may have smoothed out the edges of it. And George Bush took Ronald Reagan’s insight and ran it over a cliff. And so I think the simple way of telling the story is that when Bill Clinton said the era of big government is over, he wasn’t arguing for an era of no government. So what we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government, so that the government is laying the groundwork, the framework, the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market. And it’s now a global marketplace.

Republicans, on the other hand, have an economic strategy that may still sell politically. But is there much reason to think that it would lead to a very different result from Bush’s? There have now been two presidents in the last 30 years — Bush and Reagan — who cut taxes and promised that deficits would not follow. But the deficits did come, and they went away only after two other presidents — George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton — raised taxes. It also seems fairly clear by now that tax cuts for the affluent do not necessarily trickle down to everyone else.

 

[I'm Cleo!]

Obama's plan includes getting rid of the cap on the payroll taxes. Right now, you pay payroll tax on the bottom $90,000 (approximately) of your income, but any income above that level is tax-free, at least as far as the payroll tax is concerned. This affects only a small portion of the population, those individuals (as opposed to families) earning over $90,000 a year, and affects significantly only those with individual incomes substantially above $90,000 a year. This would, however, easily cover any additional expenses.

I've actually never heard of an Obama plan to reduce the flat payroll tax, just to remove the cap. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course, I've just never heard that part of the plan.

Actually I think he's going to have a donut hole where upper-middle class folks won't pay more, but the tax will start again on $250,000+ up to infinity. Your points still stand, though.

Cleo

 

[El_Machinae]

People around here may hove gotten the impression that I'm a hard core Democrat, and they'd be right. Still, I don't love Obama all that much, I'm just disgusted by the Republicans.

My main worry about Obama has been his lack of experience and lack of having formed firm views on many issues.

This is an excellent article and makes me feel a lot better about him.

I really liked him in the early debates, because his answers showed a nuanced understanding of economic issues. When you know how complicated something is, it's easier to see when someone is describing a complicated situation in a knowledgable way.