why worry about "surpluses that dont pan out"? who cares about ten years down
the road now? of course they wont pan out when the economy goes into recession,
incomes fall and tax revenues fall. the question is whether the surpluses will
disappear from "automatic stabilizers", i.e. due to rising
Broder's a dork.
It would be much simpler to have a tax cut
that automatically expires in five years,
well within the horizon where present
surplus projections could accommodate
a tax cut.
Tuning the fiscal system to be more
counter-cyclical is more of a project.
I wish some worthy
At 11:03 AM 2/2/01 -0500, you wrote:
Tuning the fiscal system to be more
counter-cyclical is more of a project.
it seems that the folks in Washington, D.C. (Max excluded) have been
working to make the tax transfer system _less_ counter-cyclical during
the last 20 years or so.
Is there a
The nice thing about the rebate check idea, of course, is that it ends up
being very progressive - a per person check that would give much less
proportionately to the wealthy. I wonder if the progressive Dems are smart
enough to grab onto the idea and push it hard. It seems like one that could
Yes. Prof. B. DeLong.
mbs
Is there a source where I can find estimates of changes in the degree to
which the Federal budget acts as an automatic stabilizer?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
This would be a wonderful opportunity for demagogues. A politician who
votes to spend money, say for the homeless, would be accused of taking
checks directly away from individuals.
On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 04:28:18PM -0800, Jim Devine wrote:
here's an economic proposal, reprinted from SLATE:
A
it's also progressive (in the sense that each permanent resident gets an
equal amount) while reinforcing macroeconomic fluctuations at the same
time. (A recession would cause the surplus to fall, and thus the stimulus
to the economy from the distributions of the surplus.) That's not a very
