NPR, via the APM program Marketplace Morning, was kind enough to distill all the right-wing economic memes of the moment into one brief 100-second story for me this morning.
The argument runs as follows:
- Despite Obama's best efforts, the economy is still in the tank.
- Forget stimulus: The stimulus money was wasted, and we need new approaches.
- Top priority: Cut corporate tax rates to spur business investment.
- Next priority: Extend Bush tax cuts for the absolute richest Americans, allowing them in their munificence to create jobs.
- Last idea: Tax credit for businesses to hire the unemployed.
Wow! That's a remarkably high rate of bamboozlement per second.
And on NPR, no less, rather than Fox News, where it might be expected (more) and is certainly more common. But as long as they are going to be played in this way, I thought I should respond...
Hi John,
I am sorry you got so gamed by your sources (they are using you). I am sorry you understand so little about depressed economies (please read Krugman, Keynes). But I am most sorry that you aired this misleading, politically-driven story as part of my favorite daily economics and markets program. It hurts me that you and Marketplace could be so snookered.
- US corporate taxes are the lowest in the developed world. Yes, we have high "corporate tax rates" but we also have extraordinarily high deductions. Feldstein knows better but, obviously, he has his agenda.
- A depressed economy needs someone to spend money. With unemployment at 10%, their assets down and their high debt it's not going to be consumers. With insufficient demand to meet their current capacity, it's not going to be businesses, no matter what you do to the "corporate tax rate". It's got to be government.
- CBO and other nonpartisan estimates agree that the 2009 stimulus saved us from an even worse recession. You acknowledge this at the start of your story. The obvious conclusion is that we need more stimulus.
- The continued harping on extending the Bust tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 is really pathetic. The only way these cuts impact your average listener, and the average American, is via the giant hole they would open in the long-term budget if they were extended. Please, please stop giving air time to these sorry apologists for our plutocratic overlords.
Cheers,
Derek