CalPundit has a few thoughts on Martin Feldstein’s tax proposals:
I often read articles where the author says “We need to do X” and then gives an example of how to accomplish this Â- an example that’s frequently very clever indeed. Unfortunately, it often turns out that the example given is the only one the author knows about, and it’s obviously not enough to solve the entire problem.
Why can’t I help but think of Robert Reich’s proposal (subsequently lifted wholesale by Mitt Romney) that budget holes can be saved by combining the State Highway Department and the Mass Turnpike Authority or by giving seniors care in their own homes when possible? Whether the issue is tax policy or government efficiency, the impetus for arguing by well-selected example is the same: to avoid the necessary trade-offs that plague federal and state budgets. It’s not that imaginative policy or streamlining bureaucracy doesn’t have a place, but politicians are under pressure to present it as the solution that it’s not.
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