JEB's and Trump's Economic Plans - Disasters in the Making

[Cheerful Charlie]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Krugman examines the analysis of their plans made by the Tax Policy Center.

"[In what follows, I make comparable debt estimates for W by using projected revenue over the first decade relative to actual GDP; and I use the Center’s analysis of what would have happened if the W cuts had been allowed to expire for distributional impacts.] So, first, both Jeb! and Trump are proposing cuts that would do more fiscal damage than anything W enacted, with the following estimates of the 10-year increase in debt as a percentage of GDP:

W: 18.2
Jeb: 28.2
Trump: 39.2"



One wonders if there will be any real world reality check from the media on this important issue front and center. Polls seem to suggest that today's American voters think they like the GOP's economic policies which suggests they don't know what the policies will do to us if Trump wins and gets his way.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Republican economic "plans" are always major budget-busters.

Anyway, it's obvious Obama is Nike!

 

[laughing dog]

Once you realize that most Republican budget plans are not based on promoting general economic growth and well-being, but are specifically designed to reward the rich, these plans make more sense.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

A Republican presidential candidate's potential economic plan is about as relevant as my potential economic plan. Neither of us is going to be President, so it doesn't matter.

 

[barbos]

A Republican presidential candidate's potential economic plan is about as relevant as my potential economic plan. Neither of us is going to be President, so it doesn't matter.

So does Hillary plan to reduce debt or at least keep it constant?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A Republican presidential candidate's potential economic plan is about as relevant as my potential economic plan. Neither of us is going to be President, so it doesn't matter.

But then a lot of people thought for sure Bush wouldn't get re-elected, and look what happened.. I hope that the fact that Trump's stated plans would Brownback the US economy gets the coverage that fact deserves. Despite the crap that has happened under every Republican president since Nixon, the polls show that most US voters think the GOP would give us the best economic plans. And it has been polling this way for years despite GOP economic failures. Apparently, many US voters can't learn from sad experience.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Once you realize that most Republican budget plans are not based on promoting general economic growth and well-being, but are specifically designed to reward the rich, these plans make more sense.

I really sort of doubt this. It seems to be that the supply-side economic ideas have become so embedded in Republican thinking that it has simply become a sort of economic ideology despite repeated failure. The peculiar problem is, why despite repeat failure of supply-side type economics doesn't the GOP learn from experience? And despite repeat GOP failures, why don't GOP voters learn from experience? Brownback's Kansas seems to be another example of this sort of failure, but Trump et al seem to have learned nothing from it all.

 

[Sarpedon]

The republicans have made their rich-rewarding economics part of their ideology. They are either too dumb and indoctrinated, or too ambitious and uncaring to see its failure as a problem.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

A Republican presidential candidate's potential economic plan is about as relevant as my potential economic plan. Neither of us is going to be President, so it doesn't matter.

So does Hillary plan to reduce debt or at least keep it constant?

I have yet to see any analysis of any plans by Clinton or Sanders in any great depth by non-partisan experts. Cruz apparently has made claims about return to the gold standard which some economists have stated is a hare-brained idea. Carson's ideas were panned but not given, as far as I can see quite the scrutiny of Bush and Trump's policies. Nor for that matter have I seen any in depth analysis of Rubio's stated positions. All others are pretty much ignorable.

 

[laughing dog]

Once you realize that most Republican budget plans are not based on promoting general economic growth and well-being, but are specifically designed to reward the rich, these plans make more sense.

I really sort of doubt this. It seems to be that the supply-side economic ideas have become so embedded in Republican thinking that it has simply become a sort of economic ideology despite repeated failure. The peculiar problem is, why despite repeat failure of supply-side type economics doesn't the GOP learn from experience? And despite repeat GOP failures, why don't GOP voters learn from experience? Brownback's Kansas seems to be another example of this sort of failure, but Trump et al seem to have learned nothing from it all.

And why do you think the Republican party seems immune from learning from these failures? Could it be that the ideology of deep and extensive cuts in tax rates (which directly affect the wealthy the most) prevents them from noticing these failures? BTW, there is nothing inherent in supply side economics which requires concentrating tax cuts and subsidies on the wealthy.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I really sort of doubt this. It seems to be that the supply-side economic ideas have become so embedded in Republican thinking that it has simply become a sort of economic ideology despite repeated failure. The peculiar problem is, why despite repeat failure of supply-side type economics doesn't the GOP learn from experience? And despite repeat GOP failures, why don't GOP voters learn from experience? Brownback's Kansas seems to be another example of this sort of failure, but Trump et al seem to have learned nothing from it all.

And why do you think the Republican party seems immune from learning from these failures? Could it be that the ideology of deep and extensive cuts in tax rates (which directly affect the wealthy the most) prevents them from noticing these failures? BTW, there is nothing inherent in supply side economics which requires concentrating tax cuts and subsidies on the wealthy.

FWIW, supply-side always was about tax cuts for the wealthy. Remember David Stockman admitting this truth to William Grieder? And the subsequent "trip to the woodshed" from Reagan and crew? What they cover story is and reality have been two differing things since the beginning. Not only was Reaganomics incompetent, it was duplicitous.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/

"The hard part of the supply-side tax cut is dropping the top rate from 70 to 50 percent—the rest of it is a secondary matter," Stockman explained. "The original argument was that the top bracket was too high, and that's having the most devastating effect on the economy. Then, the general argument was that, in order to make this palatable as a political matter, you had to bring down all the brackets. But, I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate."

 

[arkirk]

The Repugs have been a party of do abolutely nothings now for eight years. Before that, they were the party of mistaken invasions and sub prime mortages and rich folks getting huge tax cuts. They simply cannot hear what Krugman is saying. Part of their brain has been removed by over-reliance on fossil fuels and fossil politicians. They do go together well and can indeed make a perfect storm...if you like storms.

 

[untermensche]

Once you realize that most Republican budget plans are not based on promoting general economic growth and well-being, but are specifically designed to reward the rich, these plans make more sense.

This is very true.

But we have a major media that presents the Republicans as serious economic planners.

As you say, they have no plans, they have schemes.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Part of all of this is "starve the beast". The idea that deep deficits will force us to cut programs the far right has hated since the New Deal, and will force deep cuts in social programs. As Grover Norquist put it,

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.
Grover Norquist

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/grover_norquist.html#z7JhOQyWM1aC4Qla.99

Large numbers of GOP politicians have officially signed on to Norquist's tax plans that do just that. Again, Stockman in his book "The Triumph of Politics" admits he thought the massive Reagan deficits would be useful to achieve just this goal, admitting he was a right winged radical at the time. This sort of plan has been a GOP goal of many for years, and has been a popular trope for the right for decades.

Thus for many, the idea that the GOP creates deficits is a positive development, not a problem to be solved. Small government is something that must be forced on us all. This isn't just ignorance of what GOP economic policies do to us.

 

[ksen]

Yeah, big deficits are a feature, not a bug, of republican fiscal policy.