Krugman: Unserious People

[ProSense]

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.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Ironic.

[polichick]

2. "if by compromise you mean something the center-right and the hard right can agree on."

It does seem as if that's what "compromise" has come to mean.

[flpoljunkie]

3. No one who's serious about the debt would give massive tax cuts to the top 1% and corporations.

[Raster]

5. Unless of course they're owned and controlled by the top 1% and the corporations.

[siligut]

4. Unserious about the economy, very serious about their own money.

The Reich needs power and equate that with money.

[rhett o rick]

6. People cant work until they are 70 anyway. They wont be kept in jobs that younger, healthier worker

can work. Many people would love to work until 70 but cant because there are no jobs for them and their health is usually not that good either.

[n2doc]

7. There is a tied and true way of reducing the deficit

Raise taxes on the rich. Worked in 1993 for Clinton. But Nooooo!


That would be too smart!

[tishaLA]

8. This thing is an unmitigated failure

At least, if the final report looks anything like the co-chairs' mess. It proves Democrats need a single party solution to this. republicons don't play well with others.