Mike the Mad Biologist and Medicare-for-All

Now Would Be A Good Time For A Democratic Healthcare Plan Proposal

DeLong - Republic of the Central Banker

Republic of the Central Banker by Brad DeLong

Krugman on DBCFT

A Party Not Ready to Govern by Krugman

Then there’s corporate tax reform — an issue where the plan being advanced by Paul Ryan, the House speaker, is actually not too bad, at least in principle. Even someDemocratic-leaning economistssupport a shift to a “destination-based cash flow tax,” which is best thought of as a sales tax plus a payroll subsidy. (Trust me.)

But Mr. Ryan has failed spectacularly to make his case either to colleagues or to powerful interest groups. Why? As best I can tell, it’s because he himself doesn’t understand the point of the reform.

The case for the cash flow tax is quite technical; among other things, it would remove the incentives the current tax system creates for corporations to load up on debt and to engage in certain kinds of tax avoidance. But that’s not the kind of thing Republicans talk about — if anything, they’re in favor of tax avoidance, hence the Trump proposal to slash funding for the I.R.S.

No, in G.O.P. world, tax ideas always have to be presented as ways to remove the shackles from oppressed job creators. So Mr. Ryan has framed his proposal, basically falsely, as a measure to make American industry more competitive, focusing on the “border tax adjustment” which is part of the sales-tax component of the reform.

This misrepresentation seems, however, to be backfiring: it sounds like a Trumpist tariff, and has both conservatives and retailers like WalMart up in arms.

DNC chair Perez

Progressives Slam Tom Perez’s New DNC Transition Team

center-left and Zack Beauchamp

Any answer to right-wing populism requires left-wing economics

by eshhou

Why Zack Beauchamp’s piece arguing otherwise is wrong

Zack Beauchamp of Vox has written an article entitled “No easy answers: why left-wing economics is not the answer to right-wing populism.” In this piece, he argues that “tacking to the left on economics won’t give Democrats a silver bullet to use against the racial resentment powering Trump’s success [and] could actually wind up [making] Trump [stronger.]” Matt Bruenighas written about the piece’s odd moral implications; I want to discuss some of the evidence Beauchamp provides, and why I don’t find it all that convincing.

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Bottom line

Assuming the Democratic party does not totally abandon redistributive politics, racism will always pose a problem. The question then is: what redistributive programs and policies are most capable of overcoming this and generating cross-racial coalitions? There is little reason to believe that the means-tested programs favored by the Democratic mainstream are more capable of doing this than the more universal programs favored by those on the Left.