I find that many people on this board, being broad minded, intellectually curious and interested in the world around them, read a variety of journals. This, at any rate, is my excuse for reading The Economist, a British originated erudite publication that is written for the smart set. It's politics are essentially liberal in the classic European sense of the world, that is they are generally 'liberal' on social policy (even libertarian at times), but unabashed free traders and conservative economists; apparently the foundation of the magazine was in part a reaction against British corn laws. In fact, may I quote Instant-Knowledge-i-pedia
The Economist claims, correctly, that it "is not a chronicle of economics." Rather, it aims "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress."It takes an editorial stance which is supportive of free trade, globalisation, and environmental regulation. It targets highly educated readers and claims an audience containing many influential executives and policy-makers.
Look, I have no problems about expressions of love between any two consenting adults. Love is beautiful, Persona freedom, and all that. But there are times in life we expect professional behavior, and so, well, please you say, just stop it or get a room.
I am referring to the very puzzling case of man-love that the pages of that said august Economist newspaper is developing for Willard Mitt Romney. Really.
It is the latest piece of piffle that has sparked my remonstrances, which I'll get to in a minute. But first a disclaimer: Trying to react against every bit of editorial meadow-muffins is a masochistic and losing business; there are just so damn many of them, and the writers themselves don't really care, they sling them out and on to the next one. Bitching about them is generally as rewarding as bitching about the hash that Mrs Bernice Beazley slings out in the Archie comics. But every once in awhile something comes out that is such a howler, you cannot let it go unremarked, particularly when it reflects a really bad lack of judgement.
And so we come to this almost shocking display of Mitt love in the latest issue
The probable Republican nominee should stop pandering to the left on China and to the right on taxes
TO UNDERSTAND why Mitt Romney has triumphed over his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, look no further than March’s disappointing job numbers. With growth fragile and petrol prices soaring, the economy is Barack Obama’s gaping weak spot, and Republican primary voters have backed the candidate best equipped to exploit it.
Yeah, sure. What was the rate of job loss when Obama got into office and what is it now? What's the Dow Jones standing at now? And I am sure it is those March numbers everyone is going to remember in November. Anyway, they go on:
Yet it is very far from clear what they are getting. Blame that, in part, on a nominating contest that repeatedly veered into irrelevancies. But blame the candidate, too. In the past year Mr Romney’s views have metamorphosed worryingly as he has tried to protect his flank against a succession of conservative challengers. It is no exaggeration to say that there are now two Romneys when it comes to economics.
The first Romney is the relatively pragmatic, businesslike figure who emerges from his 2010 book (“No Apology: The Case for American Greatness”, a tome which is mercifully cleverer than the title), his formal speeches and his campaign documents. This Romney offers several welcome alternatives to Mr Obama’s policies. He would compel regulators to pay closer attention to the costs they impose. He would take a modest step towards tackling America’s unsustainable entitlement programmes by raising the age at which the elderly can collect public-pension and health-care benefits. He would convert the federal contribution to Medicaid, the federal-state health programme for the poor, to a system of block grants.
Never mind that this is a lot of teabagging bullshit. Looking carefully at the tradeoffs between costs and benefits - and overseeing regulators - is congress' job. And yes, I guess that's what got us into the current economic mess, all those costly regulations against those poor innocent global financial firms. It has been too well covered that modest steps can easily be taken to ensure Social security viability (like raising the salary cap and taxing 'carried interest', and Oh by the way, the program already has an incentive to delay benefits; the reason they are not taken later is that about a quarter of the population have nothing else); and as far as medicare, they are right, there does need to be reform, and the only credible ones I have seen are actually imbedded in the Affordable Care Act. Oh yeah, Romney sort of supported it before he was against it. And what a health care disaster block granting medicaid would be. . .states have to have balanced budgets, cannot print fiat currency and thus doing this would guarantee a whole lot of people dont get access to care when the economy goes bad. Like it is today.
Anyway, more risibly, they go on:
But there is also a second Romney—the desperate crowd-pleaser who will say anything to win over his audience of the day. This Romney lurches both to the left and the right. On trade, he has promised that on his first day in office he will have China branded a currency manipulator. This is doubly daft. Economically, it is unjustified: as China has allowed the yuan to appreciate, it has become far less undervalued, as evidenced by China’s shrunken current-account surplus (see article). Politically, it would needlessly inflame the prickly Chinese during their own leadership transition. For the chief executive of the world’s biggest economy to start by picking a fight with the second-biggest would be plain stupid.
Well, I won't deny that Romney is a desperate crowd pleaser - who doesn't even crowd please
all that good but to call his pablum on branding China a currency manipulator pandering to the left is triply daft. I have been on these boards awhile, we are pretty leftist here and I have never ever ever seen it raised seriously as a major issue. In fact, the only people who keep on raising it are right wing types, like Michigan's Mike Rogers, as a smokescreen for economic policies that clearly favor corporations and the 1%.
And then:
As troubling as his pandering to the left on trade is his swing to the right on taxes. Until February, Mr Romney had promised to cut taxes only on corporate profits and investment. Then, in a crude attempt to catch up with his tax-slashing rivals, he pledged to cut all personal income-tax rates by 20%. That would take the top rate of tax down to levels last seen under Ronald Reagan. Mr Romney claims he could pay for this by closing loopholes for the affluent—an excellent reformist idea, but meaningless unless you say which loopholes are going to go. Apart from sketching out a few small ideas to a group of donors, ideas that his aides rapidly downplayed, Mr Romney has said almost nothing about which tax breaks should go. The most likely reason is that any realistic cull of loopholes to pay for his lower income-tax rates (and the lower capital-gains and dividends rates he wants) will hit the middle class.
Well, i will give them that, in the sense that any 'loopholes' he would want to close (i.e those that are not fiercely protected by a powerful group of special interests which is actually pretty much all of them) would if carefully thought out, probably hit the middle class. But careful thinking is not what we are after here. Perhaps the economic geniouses at the economist might reflect how helpful it has been to the economy so far, this relentless lowering of marginal tax rates. Remember the extension of the Bush tax cuts?
To credit the editorialists then they go on to point out that surely somehow somewhere extra revenue must be raised as part of a 'deficit reduction package'. And really, if that is your ideology, that the overwhelming problem today is the deficit, fine, you can disagree if you want to. They think Romney might actually listen to them (charming, those amusing illusions in love) But maybe it might occur to the economist that there is one politician out there who is trying to balance revenues and expenditures; who, in their words is "promising to cut tax rates only as part of a credible, medium-term plan to stabilise the debt, and refuse to rule out raising net revenue in the process." That man is the President, Barack Obama.
Surely you must remember him. You endorsed him in 2008 Now please take your tongue out of Mitt Romney's mouth it verges on the unseemly