Unserious people and unserious ideas.
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Paul Krugman - New York Times Blog
November 10, 2010, 1:43 pm
Unserious People
OK, let’s say goodbye to the deficit commission. If you’re sincerely worried about the US fiscal future — and there’s good reason to be — you don’t propose a plan that involves large cuts in income taxes. Even if those cuts are offset by supposed elimination of tax breaks elsewhere, balancing the budget is hard enough without giving out a lot of goodies — goodies that fairly obviously, even without having the details, would go largely to the very affluent.
I mean, what’s this about? There is no — zero — evidence that income taxes at current rates are an important drag on growth.
Oh, and they’re talking about raising the retirement age, because people live longer — except that the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.
Still, I guess this is what it takes to get compromise, if by compromise you mean something the center-right and the hard right can agree on.
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