Economic consensus
I saw this article in the New York Times and wanted to pass it on. The author, Gregory Mankiw, is a Harvard professor who was part of the Bush economics team. He lists eight ideas that are generally accepted by economists but which aren’t quite so popular among voters at the moment.
I definitely don’t agree with him on a lot of his less-universally-accepted views. Nevertheless, these are pretty solid. Any one of them could be a full post in itself, so I won’t get into the details here. I will say, though, that I could get behind the policies of free trade, taxing energy and/or carbon dioxide, phasing out farm subsidies, and allowing a lot of skilled workers to immigrate. Add undoing the Bush tax cuts and I’d be much happier. As far as I’m concerned, the big strike against Obama isn’t free trade, which I believe he supports. (He’s never said otherwise, though he definitely did play up the caveats a lot in Ohio.) The big strike is support for ethanol, which is to be expected from an Illinois senator, but which is idiotic.
At any rate, the article makes for good reading. I hope to write about some of these specific issues here in the near future.
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