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obamanomics needs a one-liner: excellent nytimes article on obama’s economics views
Started by blakeborgeson · 10 months ago
10 months ago
I am as a big an Obama fan as the next intelligent American, but it bothers me when they talk about their views without saying anything and just using words that everyone agrees with.
"drove it over a cliff", "So what we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government," "the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market"
It seems to me that every politician and president would agree that we want an 'efficient' and 'responsive' goverment and one that thinks in the 'long-term'. It also seems like every president would want the market to 'operate effectively' and for people to be able to 'succeed'
The trick is when using language like that for people to think "Oh yeah, I guess I am for an efficient government...go Barack!" -- This is a common thing people do in the businessplace as well.
The real question and the real difference comes in when they begin discussing HOW the government could be more efficient or HOW to make people more able to succeed in the market place -- which I'm sure the paper that I won't read talks about =)
10 months ago
Your comments are all spot on. In retrospect, I can see that the excerpt I chose doesn't do much more to talk about what ideas Obama has about what will change. It more just describes at a high level, via references to the last few presidents, where Obama sees himself on the political spectrum economically.
As you supposed, there are lots of more specific details in the article itself, and to that point, that's really the challenge someone like Obama faces. He's really got a good handle on the economics issues in my opinion, and I think this article shows that, but how can he communicate that to Americans? Not more than 1 in 20 Americans is actually going to read anything as long as that whole article, and it's a lot less than that probably. So how does he convince the country that he's the best person to put in charge of it? He's got to break it down into terms people can understand, and that's the goal I think he's trying to work towards mentally in that excerpt.
One of the specific ideas/plans mentioned in the article, something I've been hearing about in the last couple of months as a possibility, is decreasing the payroll tax. The way it's structured, it essentially discourages businesses from investing in people. I agree that decreasing or phasing out the payroll tax, and picking up the slack with the changes he proposes to income and capital gains taxes, would likely be great for the country.
7 months ago