Ken Nelson

Greg Mankiew has a pretty decent set of proposals for “stimulus”:

I would institute an immediate and permanent reduction in the payroll tax, financed by a gradual, permanent, and substantial increase in the gasoline tax. I would make the two tax changes equal in present value, so while the package results in a short-run budget deficit, there is no long-term budget impact. Call it the create-jobs, save-the-environment, reduce-traffic-congestion, budget-neutral tax shift.

Something in there to hate for everybody, all oxen gored, so on.

I don’t understand his increase in the gasoline tax and why he would presume that would not be counter-stimulative.  Wasn’t it the large increase in the price of gas that helped push us over the edge by taking up money that had been spent on mortgages?

I’d pay a higher gas price over the $30K to 230K the stimulus bill is going to cost me. That is a VERY fair trade.

But no matter.

The basic problem in Greg’s proposal is that the Senate and House aren’t trying to help the economy. They are trying to ensure a permanent and large growth in government and a permanent and growing Democratic / Socialist majority.

And besides, they wouldn’t stick to the deal anyway. They’d take the higher gas tax, and then in a couple years start jacking up the payroll tax.  Tax rates are set to be just below the point of stirring revolution, not to any particularly economically efficient point.

So nice try, but you aren’t aiming at the same target Senate and House Democrats are.