The New Republic

Your book did a great job of showing this paradoxical thinking on the part of the GOP on tax cuts.  I would venture to say that this admirable elasticity has now been transferred over to their rationales for staying in Iraq.  Iraq is going poorly, we need to stay.  Iraq is improving, we need to stay.  Iraq is the same, we need to stay.

It has become a a regular feature of this new conservative thinking...

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 27, 2007 at 2:13pm

Speakin of on cue ... If you click my name it will (hopefully) direct you to an article by Gerald Seib in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required).  He argues that the coming slow-down/recession will give extra force to Republican calls to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.   When I read this article this morning the first thing I thought of was the "heads we win tails you lose" approach to tax cuts that you did a brilliant job of explicating in the Big Con.  

- seanwright

November 27, 2007 at 2:32pm

Why is it that the conservatives cannot simply say "We want tax cuts because we are greedy old white men who cannot think through a problem beyond 'cut the taxes"' and just get it over with?

- awrobi01

November 27, 2007 at 2:33pm

The comparison of Conservative economic policy to Conservative Iraq policy is specious, at best:

Where tax policy initiatives should make themselves clear after a short time (ie. a few years), democracy-building initiatives take many years.  Recall how long it took a strong American military presence in Japan, Germany, and South Korea to establish real democracy -- and that was AFTER the countries were decimated by years of war within their countries.  The difference with Iraq is that we bought the Neo-Con bologna that democracy could be established in a few years, without major social change, and without street-level desperation and willingness to go along with whatever peace and stability we could offer.  

The point at which Iraqi people are ready to try something new appears to be approaching.  Unless we have the same faith in Iraq that we had in Japan, South Korea, and Germany a half-century ago, we can never hope to see the Iraqi people choose their lifestyles, their leaders, or their future.

- scottlooper

November 27, 2007 at 2:36pm

Ho ho. I should have clicked on the link before I posted.  The first thing Kudlow refers to is the same Seib article I attempted to link to.

- seanwright

November 27, 2007 at 2:36pm

Perhaps Chait, with his recent immersion in Republican economic thinking, can answer a question that I regularly put to my conservative friends without ever being answered: How is it a "tax cut" if the government cuts my taxes this year by $1 but promises to repay bond buyers with $1 plus interest in future taxes? Eventually, the government pays every expenditure with cash raised from taxes. The only question is whether it pays the price in cash now, or pays the price plus interest in cash later. And tax-cuts-spur-economic-growth isn't an answer, since that only makes sense if the economy grows at a rate that exceeds the interest rates offered to bond holders, and if it were reasonable to expect that to happen, nobody would buy the bonds in the first place. So in the end, the taxpayer is on the hook for more money after the "tax cut" than he would have been had there been no "tax cut". And maybe it's just me, but knowing I'm on the hook for the government's debt doesn't make me feel any richer.

(My Republican pals often offer the explanation that tax cuts will be offset by spending cuts, so in the end the tax burden doesn't have to rise, but Republicans have controlled at least one of the three elected branches of the federal government for all but two of the last 26 years, and in that time the only constant has been that the more federal institutions Republicans control, the faster federal spending has grown. So "we'll cut spending" is not an answer either, at least not for Republicans proposing tax cuts. The last generation of Republican government has actually made me start to reconsider the balanced-budget amendment. At some point, surely the anti-Keynesian effect of a balanced-budget amendment is preferable to the Republican Party's drive to do to America's fiscal position what Louis XVI did to France's.)

- rhubarbs

November 27, 2007 at 2:55pm

Let's not let Bush et al continue to get away with calling them tax cuts. They're tax deferments. Not such a good political sell

- bsemple

November 27, 2007 at 4:15pm

You could time your watch by them, couldn't you?

A recession is looming so govt revenue must be redistributed to the wealthest people in society and it must be payed for by cutting social provision for the poor.

Republicans, you gotta love em.

- The Ignorant Populist

November 27, 2007 at 4:19pm

Scottlooper, you're joking, right?

South Korea: The United States played basically no overt role in that country's internal security or political development, which took nearly 50 years to achieve something like democracy and the rule of law. The United States joined a war against North Korea, and maintained troops on the front line following an armistice, but did not occupy South Korea.

Germany: West Germany had a fully functioning, democratic civil administration with effective internal policing and a meaningful rule of law by September 1949 after a nearly violence-free occupation of 52 months. The equivalent date in Iraq would have been August 2007.

Japan: Though the formal occupation continued for seven years, Japan held national elections in

April 1946, giving the country a fully functioning, democratic civil administration with effective internal policing and a meaningful rule of law. The occupation was almost free of violence. The corresponding date in Iraq would have been December 2004.

There were good reasons to expect Germany and Japan to be reformed and rehabilitated swiftly and peaceably. There have never been any such reasons to expect the same from Iraq. We've been "turning the corner" in Iraq, with former regime elements/insurgents/al-Qaeda in its "final throes" and the people ready to try something new for 55 months now. (And why would we expect that Iraqis are more likely to "try" living in peace and freedom with one another now, rather than, say, to "try" inflicting a new Gandamak on America's overstretched forces in their country?)

The list of useful American historical comparisons to Iraq starts, and probably ends, with the Philippines occupation. Any argument that lists Germany or Japan as useful analogues to Iraq just isn't serious.

- rhubarbs

November 27, 2007 at 4:39pm

Rhubarbs

you beat me to the punch.  Anyone who thinks that there are historical comparisons to post WWII Germany and Japan is just completely ignorant of the post war realities of those countries.  Funny, I don't recall reading about German cities ruled by unrepentant Nazis, or Japanese cities wreaked by bombs blowing up in populated areas.  I have heard some stories, proabably apocryphal, of fomer Japanese solidiers holed up in Okinawa caves in the 1950's and 60's but even if this was true, they hardly presented a pressing problem for the rebuilding of post war Japan.

And as for Korea, there really is no comparison.  This scottlooper post just demonstrates how unbelievably elastic and permutable reality can be in the hands of war apologists...

- thejauntyboulevardier

November 27, 2007 at 5:15pm

Rhubarbs nails it: "How is it a "tax cut" if the government cuts my taxes this year by $1 but promises to repay bond buyers with $1 plus interest in future taxes? Eventually, the government pays every expenditure with cash raised from taxes. The only question is whether it pays the price in cash now, or pays the price plus interest in cash later"

The answer, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars or even in ourselves, but in the investment preferences of our Chinese overlords. No need to ask any living American to pay now. Just put it on our tab and pray you're out of office when the Chinese cash the check.

- teplukhin2you

November 27, 2007 at 8:52pm

yeah, but Tep, if you invested that one dollar in Microsoft in 1986, or in Google a few years ago you would have had a lot better return then any bondholder ever got. I think the main Republican idea is if you free up enough money a Google here or a Microsoft there will pop up. Too much taxation crimps the entreprenurial spirit. How much in taxes did the newly rich from the high tech field pay these past few years and where did their seed money come from?

Don't get me wrong, I am a deficit hawk, but I do recognize they have an argument.

- blackton

November 27, 2007 at 9:16pm

To Rhubarbs:

I'm not sure you understood my post: Japan began fighting its war in 1937; Germany began fighting its war in 1939.  When the US entered in 1941, it spent the next four years fire-bombing Japan and Germany.  By 1945, both countries were on the brink of disaster -- and the US came to their aid with money, law and order.  

By your own numbers, in Iraq war terms, Germany would be holding elections in March 2013 (or 2011, if you only consider American participation in the war); and Japan would be holding elections in December 2012 (or 2008, if you only consider American participation on the war).  

I never said "occupation."  I only said "American military presence," and that was only in line with helping provide stability and law and order.   Regarding South Korea, if you want to maintain that US presence on its border with North Korea did nothing with regard to providing an atmosphere by which to develop and grow democracy, then so be it.

Further, your final argument only supports my post: for those of us who bought into the bologna that war could be delivered on the cheap and democracy developed in a few years' time without a prior period of total war and destruction, we were seriously misled.  To compare the 55 months-post Iraq "victory" with the 52 months post-V-Day is specious; but to compare the period during which these countries' nationalists rose up, fought, and lost, and the period thereafter when they succumbed to American military presence and acquiesced to US-style democracy, the comparison to Iraq is apt.

And To thejauntyboulevardier, to term one a war apologist because he draws a distinction between short term economic policy initiatives and long term foreign policy initiatives is to yank a page out of the partisan's handbook.

- scottlooper

November 27, 2007 at 11:51pm

What's nice is that no right-winger can ever lecture me again about 'responsibility' from the poor and how we shouldn't help the poor and downtrodden.

Why? Because Helicopter Ben went ahead and flooded the market with 'liquidity,' driving down the dollar and most noticeably, costing me a point of interest on my fancy savings account.

That's right, over the next year or so, I will essentially send Wall St. a few hundred smackeroos to help them 'unwind' their assets.

Next time, I'd rather just have my tax dollars redistributed to those less fortunate.

Moral hazard indeed.

- mmathog

November 28, 2007 at 3:22am