I appreciate the tremendous amount of responses Ive received today regarding the criticism of Paul Krugman piece in the new york times. I hope we are not bored to death with the topic because here are a couple final thoughts on why its garbage.
1) His entire premise is designed around the defense of the democrats plan to raise taxes on the countries highest earners. In its defense, he sights historical statistics on those making roughly the equivalent of 2.5 million 2012 dollars. The problem here is that the current proposal focuses on those making one tenth of that amount (250k). The only conclusion i can draw is that its omission is intentional because it severely erodes his argument.
2) Throughout the entire op-ed he never makes any mention of the multitude of additional taxes that have surfaced over the last 50 years. Real estate tax, sales tax, gas tax, state and local taxes and many more have significantly risen over this time period. Its absurd to think that anything other than total tax burden is at all relevant when gauging the economic impact of taxes. The biggest problem I have with this is that Paul Krugman know this and its omission can only be viewed as an attempt to lead people to a predetermined conclusion with disregard for truth.
3) At the end of the article he makes some absurd comments about how conservatives are anti gay rights and woman's rights. Its hard for me to even comment on something this ridiculous. I was pretty sure the discussion was on the economic impact of tax policy. He has to understand the mindset of the "business conservative" and understand that we argue for the most stimulative tax policy. Im pretty sure accusing us of hating gays is counter productive. In truth, if i had an argument that was this flimsy i may try to steer it in another direction as well.
Please someone tell me where and why i'm wrong on this.
