Why does Krugman only worry about the deficit when it's caused by taxes?

[DaShi]

Taxes are a protection racket for the rich. It's basically the poor extorting the rich by saying, "If you don't want us to burn down your house and chop off your heads, you'd better pay more in taxes that eventually goes back to us, yo."

[Hauldren Collider]

"Desert arguments"?

[KrazyHorse]

Yes.

[Hauldren Collider]

By the way, I read that a lot of small business owners (which seems to be a buzzword) fall into the $250,000 and up category because their business profits are reported as personal income. Now I'm not sure small businesses are a group we should care about as much as we do but given that congress seems to love them lots I'm wondering why the democrats are so keen to overlook this.

Disclaimer: Obviously, I could be wrong about any number of facts here, so I'm hardly closed minded about this.

KH: I have no idea what that means.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm not surprised.

[DaShi]

The Dessert Argument is that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Elok]

I'm going to guess "desert arguments" refers to the idea of whether or not party X deserves this good or that, and that KH opposes said arguments because he feels economics should be about what contributes most to growth, or something like that. Do I win anything?

[Riesstiu IV]

So let me get this straight--you think I'm racist and believe in guilt by association?

You referred to my people as goat-****ers and that is anti-semetic.

[giblets]

I'm going to guess "desert arguments" refers to the idea of whether or not party X deserves this good or that, and that KH opposes said arguments because he feels economics should be about what contributes most to growth, or something like that. Do I win anything?

HC seems to believe, for whatever reason, that the distribution of income arrived at through the market is the just distribution and that it's an injustice for the distribution after taxes and transfer payments to be any different. Krazyhorse does not seem to believe there is such a thing as just distribution and he just wants to maximize human well-being.

[Aeson]

Desert arguments are boring because people focus too much on the Sahara, which doesn't deserve all that attention. We should redistribute some of the focus to smaller deserts like the Gobi as they need it the most.

[Kuciwalker]

I'm going to guess "desert arguments" refers to the idea of whether or not party X deserves this good or that, and that KH opposes said arguments because he feels economics should be about what contributes most to growth, or something like that. Do I win anything?

More precisely, economic policy should be about maximizing the general welfare. The entire notion of 'desert' essentially originates as just a set of moral rules that happen to be conducive to that - and is therefore subordinate to any utilitarian conclusions that contradicts it.

[KrazyHorse]

HC seems to believe, for whatever reason, that the distribution of income arrived at through the market is the just distribution and that it's an injustice for the distribution after taxes and transfer payments to be any different. Krazyhorse does not seem to believe there is such a thing as just distribution and he just wants to maximize human well-being.

For those of you who want to engage in such banal arguments, you can make a relatively strong case that the market maintains the justice of the initial distribution; that if people were born with a "just distribution" of wealth then arbitrary numbers of mutually voluntary transactions cannot destroy that justness, no matter what the final state looks like.

I, of course, find that whole line of discussion laughable, no matter which side of it you fall on.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

One thing I will say is that the Bush tax cut extension is the worst possible solution regardless of which side is right.

The republicans claim that keeping the tax cuts will give businesses more funds to hire more people. The only reason that they haven't been with the current tax cuts is because they were afraid that the cuts would expire in 2011. Now, with the two year extension, they can still not hire people, arguing that they need to wait until 2013 to see if the tax cuts will expire or not.

The democrats simply say that the tax have done little and will continue to do for the job market, and are additionally harmful in a high deficit, recession economy.

For either side, this extension is just a continuation of the status quo, which has not improved the job market or reduced the deficit.

Lucidity needs to be rewarded sometimes. Dashi in this instance is correct. One time tax credits and/or short term tax policy (one to two year impacts) have little impact on employer market activity. One of the reasons the recovery is so tepid is that too much uncertainty has been created over the cost of doing business in the US in the long term. The situation needs to stabilize (and be made more attractive long term vs. global alternatives).

That being said, yay for lower taxes on 250K and above. My wife and I appreciate it.

[Kidlicious]

The multiplier on cuts has got to be a lot more than spending at this point.

It never is.

[Hauldren Collider]

You know literally nothing about anything economics.