June 1, 2008: Ten Years Ago on Grasping Reality
- Greg Mankiw's Marginal Educational Product Is Negative: No. An UNFUNDED tax cut is not the best simple recipe for promoting long-run growth in American living standards. It is the best simple recipe for promoting long-term decline in American living standards.... Unknown, uncertain future taxes in the long run plus the medium-run costs of carrying the debt until those taxes are levied—they are almost surely a significant net drag on the economy. McCain has no plan to fund the corporate tax cut.... Some editor should have held this up. Some editor should have called Mankiw and said: "Greg, you have written a piece that analyzes McCain's corporate tax cut as if its revenue loss is offset by an equal contemporaraneous revenue gain elsewhere in the system--as if McCain is proposing a funded tax cut. But he isn't. He is proposing an unfunded tax cut. What gives?"...
J. Bradford DeLong (1982): The Classical Economists Perceive the Industrial Revolution
On the Excellence of McClatchy: Paul Krugman says that the McClatchy team is much too bashful in drawing the implications that should follow from the fact that every other ainstreamWashington journalist (save Walter Pincus alone) took a dive on Iraq...
