Balanced Approach: The Tax Hikes That Democrats Should Propose

By: Francis Cianfrocca (Diary)  |  August 9th at 09:10 AM  | 

So this year’s fiscal-policy code word is “balanced approach.” This means nothing more or less than higher taxes on high earners, business income, and capital gains. Congressman Eric Cantor remarked at one point in the debt-ceiling debate that the Democrats (including Obama) were totally stuck on the idea of raising taxes. But Cantor stressed that they never presented an economic rationale for higher taxes. It | Read More »

What About The Payroll-Tax Holiday Idea?

By: Francis Cianfrocca (Diary)  |  January 15th at 07:41 AM  | 

It’s interesting that tax cuts have taken a central role in the fiscal-stimulus debate. (We really should be debating whether a massive fiscal stimulus is even the correct approach to the current economic, housing and financial crises. But since conventional wisdom has already hardened around that, forget about it.) In orthodox Keynesianism (perhaps last seen during the Kennedy Administration), tax cuts were the accepted way | Read More »