To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what benefits an end to the tax on dividends might (or might not) bring to the economy. I guess if you think that what the economy needs is more immediate consumer demand, then the Democrats’ plan makes marginally more sense. But if you think we need more short and longterm investment, then the president may have the better argument. I’m not really qualified to judge economically. But politically, it seems to me that Bush has again completely outwitted his opponents. What matters is the size and boldness of his plan, its appeal to his political base, and the insipid nature of the alternative. In all three respects, Bush wins. His boldness signals to then public that he’s not his dad. And it also signals that he’s taken control. But the most stunning sign of how deeply the president has changed the political landscape is what the Democrats are saying. They want tax cuts too! The question is simply: how much and in what form? And my favorite piece of Bush smarts is that he has effectively trumped the Dems on the class issue. Take two paragraphs in Tuesday’s New York Times. Here’s our old friend Krugman, telling us what he’d do:
Right now a sensible plan would rush help to the long-term unemployed, whose benefits – in an act of incredible callousness – were allowed to lapse last month. It would provide immediate, large-scale aid to beleaguered state governments, which have been burdened with expensive homeland security mandates even as their revenues have plunged. Given our long-run budget problems, any tax relief would be temporary, and go largely to low- and middle-income families.
Well, the president just extended jobless benefits. There is some aid to the states as well, although not as much as the Dems propose (but who’s counting?), and then there’s this factoid, also from the New York Times:
What Democrats are less likely to emphasize is that Mr. Bush’s plan would provide bigger tax cuts for many people at middle-income and lower-income levels than theirs’ would.
How’s that for running rings around them? And the big ticket item – the dividend tax abolition – also has some bipartisan good government type support. Again, I’m not saying that this is the best plan anyone could come up with. I’m not really qualified to say (although in general, I prefer any plan that has the most tax cuts in it). But I am saying that it is politically very, very shrewd.
THE LOMBORG SMEAR: It seems to me that one mark of a self-confident political mind is its willingness to take opposing arguments seriously. Debate is a terrific opportunity to persuade people of the rightness of your worldview – and if you lose the debate, it’s a terrific opportunity to change your own mind. And one of the truly awful aspects of today’s liberal academic establishment (and some extremists on the right) is the preference for the personal destruction of opponents rather than engagement. This doesn’t move debate forward. It is designed to end debate. This is what is being done to Bjorn Lomborg, the iconoclastic ex-green who has dared to criticize some of the hysterical predictions of the official environment lobby. Nick Shulz provides a good overview of what has been done. No factual errors have been found in Lomborg’s book; no unethical scholarship; only provocative arguments designed to get people to think again about their assumptions about how best to protect and preserve our natural inheritance. But in leftist Europe, criticizing the Green Orthodoxy today is a little like criticizing the Curia in sixteenth century Italy. Lomborg has effectively been called to the Office of the Inquisition; and his reputation has been vilely smeared. I hope he’s holding up. Dissidence is never easy. And the left is simply brutal in the enforcement of its own doctrines. Hang in there, Bjorn. Most decent people see a vilification campaign for what it is.
‘BLOG’ ENTERS THE DICTIONARY: Great news from the American Dialect Society. The word “blog” was the group’s second favorite coinage of 2002, beaten only by “weapons of mass destruction.” “Blog” was also voted “most likely to succeed.” I’ll say. (Via Don Luskin.)
The Dish 