Ezra Klein and I are doing a dialogue this week at the New York Times on the campaign. The first installment, on McCain and Obama, is here.
Update Yes, I am an idiot. LA Times. It's so easy to get the two cities confused . . .
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Are they trying to have a liberal/conservative counterpoint? Seems odd since you both support Obama.
NY Times?
uh... sorry to burst your bubbles sweeties, but that's the LA Times. You and Ezra got punked.
Fastest error spot yet. Don't even need to click on to point out that the Los Angeles Times is not, technically speaking, the New York times.
Time to fire that agent.
"Obama is not only personally inspiring, but he also seems to have a deep understanding of the value of markets and transparency; he aims to fix outcomes, not tinker with the process"
I'm genuinely flummoxed by this statement. Nowhere have I seen Obama put his faith in markets.
He's against free trade, for Employment Free Choice Act, his economic plans are essentially a list of subsidies and tax breaks for this or that... Reading through his policy ideas is definitively not a list of market driven concepts.
Many of these are good ideas - but I fail to see any evidence of 'a deep understanding of the value of markets'.
Can someone point out the specific policies and ideas that evidence this?
I really enjoyed that exchange, the only thing that raised my eyebrow was your closing line about finding the political support for raising taxes to provide health care coverage. It's very possible that my immediate circle of friends and acquaintances is more supportive of universal health care than the population at large. However, given the near desperation around this issue for a lot of folks, I actually wouldn't be too surprised if some degree of modest tax increase, earmarked specifically for health care, would be acceptable to most people.
My goodness. I saw this Klein's site first and read the comments there without reading the article.
If you just read the comments at Ezra's site and based your impression on that, you'd think that what you wrote at the LAT was very different. Such angry, angry people. I mean really, you weren't even taking McCain's side!
I have to object to the statement that Obama has "a deep understanding of the value of markets..."
For example, he cosponsored the Fair Pay Act of 2007, which would codify the principle of "comparable worth," which is about as far from market principles as you can get.
Also, observe this proposal from his website:
"Obama supports the right of workers to bargain collectively and strike if necessary. He will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers, so workers can stand up for themselves without worrying about losing their livelihoods." --http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/
Nobody objects to the right of workers to strike, but banning employers from firing workers who aren't doing there jobs would create tremendous inflexibility in the economy. Market principles would dictate the striking workers compete in the marketplace like everyone else: if someone comes along willing to offer a better deal, that person should be allowed to freely exchange his labor for wages.
McCain is by far the better candidate for free trade, and he doesn't support raising capital gains taxes just because he thinks it's unfair for rich people to have so much money.
Like others, I'm totally puzzled about where Obama's "deep understanding of the markets" has been demonstrated.
In any event, in a couple years I'm expecting a MM post, similar to the one on the Iraq war, detailing how her analysis of Obama went wrong.
Megan, you wrote "By the time our next president submits his first budget, Medicare taxes will no longer cover the program's spending, meaning Congress will have to allocate money from the general fund to make up the deficit."
Perhaps I'm misreading the Appendix to the President's Budget, but it appears from page 448, under 'Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund', that Congress already allocates quite a bit of money from the general fund to make up the deficit in Medicare financing.
I'm not sure how this should affect anyone's feeling about the program, though. Is it a terrible, expensive program? Or, since we're already paying for it out of the general fund, does that mean it's OK that we'll have to pay more later?
Or, of course, neither of these.
Sure. Here it is:
Megan likes Obama.
Megan values markets and transparency.
Therefore, Obama has a "deep understanding of the value of markets and transparency."
QED.
If you can't follow the proof, you must have left out the reality distortion tensor from the Obama field equations.
I guess she thinks Obama has a deep understanding of markets because he hangs out with a few smart economists and told CNBC today "I love the market. I think it is the best invention to allocate resources and produce enormous prosperity for America or the world that's ever been designed." Kind of a headscratcher though - since when was the market an 'invention' that was 'designed'? And then he goes on to say that we should "make sure that the burdens and benefits of globalization are fairly distributed." So yeah, I don't think he gets it at all.
It's been demonstrated in statement after statement, where he's used the word "markets" in well-constructed sentences intoned with passion and conviction. Plus, he markets himself well, doesn't he? He doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk.
What's next, are you going to question his grasp of Hope®, Change®, or Unity®?
You, my friend, are clearly not one of the "ones we've been waiting for."
"Megan likes Obama.
Megan values markets and transparency.
Therefore, Obama has a "deep understanding of the value of markets and transparency."
QED."
This is what I have come to believe as well. There are reasons to like Obama (particularly if you are a liberal) but his faith in markets is not one of them.
Megan seems to have decided she is for Obama, theretore he must like what she likes.
MCain is far from perfect on trusting markets, but in most cases Obama agrees with the anti market positions, and goes further than McCain by being for the Farm Bill and Ethanol and against NAFTA and CAFTA.
I’d go a step further and say that McCain is generally “pro-market” even though he occasionally supports regulations to deal with certain specific practices (e.g. accounting firms that sell investment services to companies that they’re also supposed to be auditing) that he and others regard as corrupt or abusive. Personally if I had to pick, I’d rather have someone who is just concerned about making sure that the rules of the game are “fair” (meaning no one is allowed to cheat other people) and then lets the chips fall where they may rather than someone who thinks that the rules have to be constantly changed to ensure whatever they think the outcome should be.