Thomas wrote:georgeob1 wrote:In short my preferences are much closer to McCain's proposals than they are to those of the other candidates.
Again, fair enough. You prefer unfunded tax cuts to an unfunded expansion of government services. Can we agree that both suck? I'm not a horse race guy myself, so when I look at a shoddy economic plan like McCain's, I don't consider it as a valid defense that the competition's plans are just as shoddy. (That's assuming that they actually are just as shoddy. Whether that's the case is a separate discussion.)
You may at last have touched on a point from which we can get some mutual understanding.
I don't perceive that any of the candidates have offered a complete plan or even outline of how, in their spending and tax proposals, they will achieve a tolerable Federal budget/income position in the short term or how any of it might contribute to an improvement of our government debt & deficit positions on a longer time scale. Moreover, I doubt that any of them will ever do so. This, unfortunately, is no longer a prominently discussed issue in our national politics. That is most unfortunate. As a result, of it all of us are left with the chore of interpreting how the candidates might, in their future behavior, contribute to an improvement or worsening of the situation, and doing so based on extrapolations of hints they deliberately or inadvertantly provide in the subjects they do choose to address. Interestingly this does lead us to some potentially useful speculation.
Obama (and the other Democrats) appear to be motivated by a desire to use tax and economic policy to correct what they see as a problem of income inequality that they apparently believe has harmed our economic development and the economic interests of a large majority of Americans.
While I agree that income spreads have grown, I don't agree that the truly significant remedies for our overall economic growth or the improvement of the situations of people at the low end of the income can be found in direct government actions to transfer wealth from the few at the top to the many at the bottom. Firstly the numbers don't work out, and more importantly, much more can be gained from working to increasing the size of the pie than engaging government in adjustments of relative shares. Moreover, the side effects of such policies have been repeatedly shown to discourage growth and, in the worst cases, to lead only to uniform poverty.
I believe that the increases in the income tax rates & tax rates for corporations and the reduction or elimination of reduced rates for capital gains & some dividends - all advocated by the Democrats - would be immediately harmful to our economy in its present condition. Instead I would look to reductions in Federal spending as a means of correcting current excess deficits and candidates who might be interested in doing this.
Unfortunately none of this is to be found among Democrats, who vaguely promise to significantly increase social welfare spending and spending for infrastructure programs, and pay for it all with cuts in Defense spending (that for unrelated reasons, I doubt they will be able to accomplish). As you correctly note, Mccain has provided only a vague and incomplete description of how he might reduce federal spending. However, unlike his opponents, he has at least voiced a priority for doing so. Moreover he has also put his tax proposals in the context of stimulating broad economic growth that might benefit all.
This situation, though not providing voters a complete outline of how the candidates' might deal with these intertwined issues does at least provide enough basis for discriminating between the two. For me that difference suggests that McCain is more likely to contribute to economic growth for all and fiscal stability than will his Democrat opponents. I can't prove the case either way: unfortunately all of us must choose based on the incomplete information we have.
