A Purple Horse Heads Out the Gate – Economist Throws Hat in Americans Elect Primary http://riseofthecenter.com/2012/01/06/a-purple-horse-heads-out-the-gate/
Via Marginal Revolution, I find that BU economist Larry Kotlikoff has mounted a campaign to win the Americans Elect nomination. An excerpt: Life is not black and white, but it certainly simplifies things to presume that’s the case. There is safety in numbers, and with two opposing sides, remaining neutral provides for no protection from either group. Today we have the reds and the blues asking, it seems, but one question. Are you with us or against us? The two sides are united by one thing — their conviction that they are right and the other side is wrong. If the reds argue for X, the blues will argue for not X. What X is doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is that “We’re right and you’re wrong.” Indeed, the need to disagree is so strong among the parties that whenever one side flips its position from X to not X, the other side flips from not X to X. Thus, we’ve had Republicans over the years push for tax hikes and Democrats push for tax cuts as well as the opposite…. …In advocating solutions to our problems, I’ve been called red by the blues and blue by the reds. To both Republicans and Democrats, the notion that I or anyone else might belong to neither of their two groups — might be truly independent — appears incomprehensible. I’ve looked over substantial parts of Larry’s site. Limited Purpose Banking sounds good. I need more info to know whether I agree or disagree with some of his other ideas. But he sure seems to be on a better track than either party. I imagine most folks here who lean even a little liberal will look at some of his ideas and see red. I’m asking folks to look it over and talk about what they like. Related posts: (via Instapaper) Sent from my iPad -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
