First of all thanks a lot Miles! Appreciate your posting and linking to my post about your previous post about Wallace Neutrality-LOL. There have been a number of milestones for Diary of a Republican Hater in it's short year of existence-actually I think we just celebrated our first anniversary in June though I didn't notice it at the time.
The first piece was an attack on Andrew Breitbart's attack on Anthony Weiner and we've never looked back since. Here are Miles' comments:
"It is always interesting to read reviews. Google Analytics helped me find Mike Sax’s very interesting review as a significant source of referrals. I thought I would share this with you. Let me give a disclaimer: the opinions about other blogs are Mike’s, not mine. Consider my level of endorsement the same as if I had approved it as a comment. Also, the title of Mike’s blog, “Diary of a Republican Hater” does not apply to me. I like Republicans very much and I like Democrats very much. I hope that each side feels I agree with them on those views that they think can most clearly be defended by rational argument. Thanks to Mike for permission to reprint this review."
http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/26033839073/mike-sax-review-of-some-economics-blogs
Yeah, about the name... Actually today my buddy and loyal reader Nanute suggested I change the name to garner more credibility. For a number of reasons I disagree. For one thing I've already built up a huge niche following around the Net. If you doubt this google Diary of a Republican Hater and you'll see. To come up with a new name now would be suicidal from a marketing standpoint.
Quiet honestly I like the name and I would argue that if anything I probably get more interest from the name than losing those put off by "partisanship." I think that it's very effective in garnering interest for it. As far as credibility who are the credible readers I would have gotten if only I had a more "serious" name?
In the short time I've written Diary of a Republican Hater I've been put on Brad Delong's Twitterstorm, I have gotten regular readers like Marcus Nunes and Nick Rowe, George Selgin has dropped in, I've had a post about me at Lars Christensen and now one at Miles. So I've already managed to snag some credible readers.
Indeed it pleases me to know that Miles found me via a Google Analytics search which shows that I have plenty of credibility.
So there are very good marketing reasons to keep the name and why it actually drives traffic up rather than down. Listen, I've gotten as far as I have by being myself which means never being afraid to engage in a little levity here. The Very Serious People can eat their hearts out.
It's meant to be fun as well. In fact while I'm a frank partisan I've had my worst experiences at liberal blogs like Firedoglake, Daily Kos, and even Democratic Underground. Indeed all
UPDATE: 10:20 AM I got to take a break-Obama's mandate is constitutional! I've got to party! I'm serious!
Ok, we're back a week later. Told you I had to party. That ACA thing is one of the best things I've seen in politics in a long time. It's really the culmination finally of FDR's New Deal. However this post is not about that. I got plenty of posts around here about that if it's what you're after that's for sure.
My name then is meant to be sort of the anti David Brooks. To me this is a false view where everything is just about "both sides of the story." I kind of think that David Brooks thinks there's something inherently wise about splitting the difference. So if someone denies the Holocaust and someone else criticizes this, the David Brooks answer is "Listen can't we just be reasonable and agree that while the Holocaust denier is wrong to claim no Jews were gassed, the liberal is just as wrong. Why can't he just say 1.5 million Jews were killed and call it a day."
For me I kind of see Centrism in the US context at least as a canard. The Right never compromises and the Left compromises endlessly and at the end David Brooks tell them to both stop the partisanship. My name and personal is kind of breaking out of all that. It's about fighting fire with fire. I'm not here to plead with anyone to listen to my point of view I'm here to win. We know that they will accept nothing but the destruction of the President. I'm not going to respond by channeling David Brooks.
I do think though to switch gears that Miles Davis is a welcome addition to the Marcro conversation as his own unique perspective as coming from an apolitical background enables him to maybe see these problems in a different way.
"Also, the title of Mike’s blog, “Diary of a Republican Hater” does not apply to me. I like Republicans very much and I like Democrats very much. I hope that each side feels I agree with them on those views that they think can most clearly be defended by rational argument."
Ok. I mean of course, that's true and it is true for me too-not that I like Republicans-LOL
The idea that they'd rather have poor people starve than pay an extra few nickels in taxes is something else I've yet to hear a rational argument for. Even Romney is in the wholly irrational position of promising to "repeal and replace" a law he himself invented a few years ago and there's been no rational explanation for this-not buying it's ok in Massachusetts but not nationally and neither did he when he wrote an op-ed in 2009 advising the President to adopt his state bill for the country.
Too often they have positions that no rational argument can rescue. Still I take it where I can get it and hardly find the logic employed on many liberal sites as very impressive either-Firedoglake, Daily KOS, even Democratic Underground.
What I do like about Miles is an openness to really discuss issues in a way that lowers the temperature. Look, I like Sumner, I honestly do-though I often don't think he is much of a fan of mine. I remember the time I got pissy with me because I said that in my mind a progressive consumption tax is a contradiction in terms.
While he usually does a pretty good job of answering all comments and self-control-as opposed to someone like Stephen Williamson who is very up and down-he came back in a quite unfriendly way:
"I don’t recall names (I studied public finance 35 years ago), but the progressive consumption tax is quite popular among public finance types. It’s also a popular idea in Europe, where taxes are more aimed at consumption than in the US."
"With all due respect, instead of asking me to name names don’t you think it might make more sense for you to actually study public finance before blogging about it? Or do you think that actual knowledge is not important, just free floating opinions."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/05/should-i-take-back-every-nice-thing-i.html
I think in this case, Sumner's answer showed a certain smallness on his part. Is there some kind of test people must take before they write about this? The idea of a consumption tax being progressive is not a fact-it's an opinion. Some people think it could work-in a progressive way, some don't.
For him to act like I'm somehow "not qualified" to discuss macro issues is really the worst example of superciliousness on the part of ivory tower professors who think they're some great authority on something based on what school they got their many lettered degree at. My guess is that the wide audience I do get here at Diary of a Republican Hater belies his uncharitable jibe.
I have since read a little about a progressive consumption tax and while I haven't been won over, I have seen a few proposals that seem at least plausible. The key is that sales taxes and flat taxes are non-starters from the standpoint of tax progressivity. However, there are some proposals where the consumption tax would be taxed at the end of the year on tax day and be levied against whatever of your income was not saved-there'd be a sizable deduction of say $30,000 and then the tax would be at a graduating amount of between about 10% to 50%-hitting the highest incomes.
The devil here is clearly in the details. If this is done wrong it would be a mess. There are the logistical questions like how does the government keep any record of this-surely you want more than word of mouth as to what people have in their bank accounts on April 15?
On the other hand I'm very skeptical about the idea that all other federal taxes can be done away with as some proponents think-individual income, capital income, etc. and that this would be anywhere near revenue neutral.
Remember-if it's not revenue neutral then in reality the loss in revenues will be the excuse for a cut in services which is in reality a tax hike. And since it's the poor or middle income Americans who most are in need of social spending, they get hit much harder, so that's a very regressive tax hike at that. On the other hand what I find very attractive is that the payroll tax would also be done away with which is the U.S.' most regressive tax by far with the low cap at $105,000.
Most Americans pay most of their taxes on their wages-ie, the payroll tax. So this would be a major shot in the arm-note though for me the appeal is that it's not a supply side, but a demand side tax cut.
This turns me back to a question I'd like to poise to Miles. As he calls himself a Supply Side Liberal how does he explain the supply side position? For me "supply side" often sounds more or less like "regressive." Basically supply side tax cuts are basically tax cuts for the rich. After all, the kinds of taxes supply siders usually want to chop are top marginal rates, corporate rates, and especially the capital gains tax which they see as particularly an anathema.
They seem very sure that there is this terrible disincentive if you ever raise supply side taxes-if the top rate right now goes up from 35% to 39.6% they warn us, Atlas will shrug so hard there will never be another job created every again. Sumner too was recently caviling about how the top rate is higher than 35%-what about state sales taxes?
I agree but what about all the other Americans who pay the same sales taxes? Why does he think they only hurt those with the marginal top rates? This is something that really does get on my nerves about conservatives a lot of the time. What can be more disingenuous than the oft repeated Cato talking point that "50% of Americans don't pay any tax" with the implication that they need to start in a real jippy.
In truth no one pays zero taxes and saying otherwise is a miserable lie. So maybe Miles as a guy who's good at getting at the real rational kernel in an argument can parse out what's the real advantage of the supply side position.
I know he's spoken of it some and it looks like he wrote a recent post on if we should tax capital gains-I just noticed it though I will read it later.
But Miles if you could elaborate on this it would be very helpful. No matter what, speaking for myself at least, I'm always willing to be persuaded-too many people though don't try to persuade but just have an answer for the sake of an answer out of embarrassment that they don't have one.
In particular Miles what I wonder is why are supply side tax cuts preferable to demand side tax cuts-the payroll tax or some of the sales taxes paid at the state level, etc. I never hear supply siders talk about any taxes accept the top MTR, the corporate rate, and the capital gains rate.
Herman Cain was the nadir of this approach as he cut all of these and paid for it by a massive new national sales tax that would hit the nonrich very hard. For me it seems that supply side problems don't happen much in the U.S. In the old Soviet Union it was different-they always had a problem with perpetual shortages, etc. In socialist countries I've seen Daniel Kuehn and others argue that there the supplier is king but in a country like the U.S. the customer is king.
As this seems right to me-again why supply side? Didn't the 60s the age of a 70% top MTR prove that even that is not much of a disincentive? To be sure I think that you have to apply the Law of Division by 2 for the top MTR, the corporate rate, and the top capital gains rate.
Isn't the reality that if you divide these rates by 2 then you get the effective rates? Like today the top MTR is 35-and so the real rate is only about 17.3. Back when we taxed the top rate at 70% the real rate was only about 35. This is why I get so tired of hearing all the whining about the U.S. corporate being the highest in the world. First the countries in Europe with lower rates charge higher taxes elsewhere in their code.
Second, let's compare apples to apples. I very much doubt that the effective US corporate tax rate is the highest in the world-far from it.
Ok, I guess I've touched on enough for now! LOL. Again, Miles, I apreciate it and I ask you this out of receptivity-I figure if there really is a basis for the supply side position you might be able to help me, rather than just snipe that I should leave blogging to the tenured Macro professors.
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