Paul Krugman writes:
Job creation? - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog: Dean Baker is upset at a news report suggesting that John McCain — unlike Barack Obama! — is concerned with job creation. I feel his pain. If there’s one thing that stands out above all over the economic record of the past 16 years, it’s the contrast between stellar employment performance under Clinton and dismal performance under Bush. You can offer various excuses and explanations, but how anyone can suggest that Republicans are more committed to and/or credible about job creation is a mystery...
And so sends me on a pass through the internet that ruins what was a nice, peaceful Saturday afternoon.
The reporter is Perry Bacon Jr., of (surprise! surprise!) the Washington Post, whose death spiral thus continues:
McCain, Obama Clash on Economy: On Tuesday, both candidates discussed their plans to reduce health-care costs, an issue that provides one of the starker contrasts between McCain's emphasis on job creation and reducing regulation and Obama's focus on immediately easing financial problems.
McCain has proposed tax credits of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families. They would have a limited impact on reducing the number of uninsured, but would reshape how Americans receive health care by encouraging more to get it on their own rather than through employers. Obama aims to reduce health-care costs and make health care affordable for every American, in part through greater regulation of insurance companies....
McCain aides said that, despite Obama's rhetoric about bringing people together, he has little record of doing so and that his ideas on the economy are those of a typical liberal Democrat. "We're not for increasing spending; that's the other campaign," Holtz-Eakin said...
To establish tax credits for health insurance requires the creation of a bureaucracy to assess and monitor health insurance plans--somebody has to decide purchase of which health insurance plans qualifies one for the tax credit, and which does not. Regulation via tax expenditures and a bureaucracy to define and monitor them is regulation--a point that eludes Perry Bacon Jr. His example of how McCain is for reducing regulation--well, that dog just won't hunt. And as for job creation--covering the uninsured definitely creates health-care jobs; tax credits to persuade people who almost all already receive employer-sponsored insurance to switch to catastrophic-only coverage is not and is not intended to be a job-creation measure. But Perry Bacon doesn't seem to realize this.
Nor does Bacon appear to realize that a government that spends through tax expenditures creates as many potential distortions as a government that spends through, well, spending--that is why they are called tax expenditures, after all.
We find this so often: reporters who have made no effort to get up to speed on issues so that they can have a chance of covering them in a way that informs their audience. This is no anomaly: remember: Perry Bacon Jr. is already known as the reporter who wrote the worst story fo the 2008 presidential campaign, and it is no accident that he works for the Washington Post.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
Dean Baker has already done the heavy lifting on this:
Beat the Press Archive | The American Prospect: [Perry Bacon Jr. of t]he Washington Post contrasted the economic policies of Senators McCain and Obama by telling readers that "one of the starker contrasts between McCain's emphasis on job creation and reducing regulation and Obama's focus on immediately easing financial problems." While Obama has certainly made a point of crafting policies that are intended to ease the financial problems of low and moderate income families, most notably providing universal health care, it would be difficult to characterize Senator McCain's agenda as focusing on job creation.
Senator McCain's economic proposals center on maintaining the tax cuts put in place under the Bush administration. The economy has sustained the slowest pace of job creation on record during the Bush years, creating jobs at annual rate of just over 700,000 a year (0.5 percent). By contrast, it created jobs at almost a 3 million annual rate during the Clinton years. It would be wrong to attribute the entire falloff in the pace of job creation between the Clinton and Bush administrations to President Bush's tax cuts, but it would be difficult to argue that an economic policy that centers on maintaining these tax cuts has a "emphasis on job creation" as the Post told readers.
This article has 18 comments:
Go to Canada or England. See if their health care is half as good as ours. You will find out you would rather take your chances in the charity part of any of our medical facilities.
You gotta be kidding , right?
How desperate can you get to find a negative in McCain's tax credit plan?
First , there is some degree of regulation in everything , so this is where you figger it's the place to "draw the line"?
Second , deductions for health care expenses are already a deductible entity , and must be be "qualified" to deduct , so a theoretical standard for deducting health expense already exists , which can be tweaked to be applicable to credits as well.
Third , many employed people have some form of health care assistance through their job .
Those not employed (but not destitute) have very little options to defray health care expenses available to them.
Not only are tax credits a practical idea , but it is insane to not have them.
Employers providing health care expense assistance to employees get to deduct their cost , so it's a tax subsidized aid to the employees.
So - non employed people should not only get no break on health care taxwise , but in addition SUBSIDIZE the aid to the employed , via the general tax base "making up" the revenue lost from the employer deductions for health care to employees?
Maybe you could consider going back to the drawing board and
rewriting this article after re-evaluating your statements.
What happened during the first September of the Bush presidency?
What neither candidate seems to realize (and a startling number on here as well) is that we are burying ourselves in debt. Obama wants universal healthcare and McCain wants tax credits. Ok, where is this magical money going to come from? People want to be taxed less. Ok, then why do you continue to elect people that get us into situations like Iraq and give us more government bloat like the Department of Homeland Security?
THESE THINGS COST MONEY PEOPLE. And it's money we don't have. That $50 billion in rebate checks? Thank China, not Bush. Those tax cuts? Thank China, not Bush. Thank China because they are one of the largest loaners to the US, and without them buying we would be completely bankrupt in a matter of months.
Every time we increase spending or decrease taxes, we mortgage a little more of our kids and their kids futures way.
One of the the takeaways from a site like this should be that if you want to retire well, you have to practice fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility means keeping your debt low and keeping spending under control. Neither of which our government is doing.
McCain wants to keep the tax cuts. Great. Cut spending to pay for it then. Obama wants universal healthcare. Awesome. Cut spending and pay for it.
If spending isn't cut or taxes aren't raised (by alot) or some mixture of the two, then it doesn't matter who is elected. Our country will continue to spend it's way into oblivion.
By the way, to get us back to sanity all one needs to do is cut a half-trillion off the federal budget. The three main expenses that make up over 90% of our budget are social programs, military, and the interest payments on the debt. We can't cut the interest payments, so you've got essentially two areas you can cut from: military and social programs.
~X~
economy, medical care, education. And, quite frankly do not
think he cares that much.
The republicans are big business, big money. They, with their
unlimited spending, have gotten us into this mess and because
of their not admitting, acknowledging their horrible mistakes
proves they just don't get it.
They underestimate the American voter.
As an employer who has provided insurance to employees for 21 years I can say that the current employer based is rapidly coming apart. Why not offer the current medicare system to all and build around it with private insurance?
I earn my own living and I worked VERY hard to get educated to be able to do so, (without help from my parents or the government). This discussion about health care assumes the US government should take care of us one way or the other through tax credits or direct insurance. This is not the question we should be considering at all. the question is whether to insure or support health insurance is a federal government problem at all!
The answer to our politcal and financial troubles is to get our government out of the care business altogether. Get out of military entanglements in other countries, get out of political intrigues, get out of financing other country's welfare and wars; and at home, get out of welfare-state policies, get out of over-taxing the population (I pay over 50% in taxes when it's all added up), just STOP spending my money for everyone and everything! I can spend it much more effectively than the federal government can. Even leaving it to the states is a much better system. Let us control at home what we do with our hard-earned money.
We 'want government to be involved' because it is how a society can collectively address and solve problems which effect all of us. Government is not an abstract or shadowy 'thing', it is society acting as a group to seek common goals.
Yeah Russ , that's the ticket -
The article itself in no way trashed the opposition plan.
Are libs blind on one side of their brain and dont realize what they themselves do -
Or simply disingenuous?
I honestly dont know the answer.
Xyrus -
Good point -
No spending cuts - no solution.
I think both plans will work, but I think Obama's will put more stress on our economy. Nationalizing health care could scare potential doctors and nurses away from the profession (They fear lower pay while still having to fear all the lawsuits that are made against those in the medical profession), which is something we don't need. Therefore I see McCain's plan as an incremental and thus safer step for the country.