I don’t understand, does he want job creation and business growth, or does he want monetary expansion and bubbles? I guess he never mentions that he wanted sustainable job creation, but I very much doubt that a business is going to be happy that the Fed is printing into spending the money they were going to keep saved up. I mean, he even says they don’t want to know the government is dis-saving for them, but then he advocates QE2. What is credit expansion if not dis-saving?
He is Keynesian. Supporting things like QE is obligatory like breating air.
He’s certainly not evil. But nobody (economist or otherwise) these days ever takes issue with the superstition of taxation itself. There’s obviously no decent moral justification for taxation (it is a form of tribute, see my sigline below) and all the hot-air about how much to tax, what to tax, and so on, is just smoke and mirrors to avoid talking about the only issue that really matters: the act of taxing is immoral.
Clayton -
If we concede that economics is roughly a value-free science, then no economist need argue that taxation is immoral.
He need not make policy recommendations either. Funny thing… his own textbook does that.
But you can quite easily prove removing a tax always makes everyone better off from their own point of view.
This is a point I’ve tried to make to the neoclassical’s on this fora. They continuously stress the fact that economics is value free (which is true, of course), and yet, at the same time, the major mainstream neoclassical textbooks have entire sections devoted solely to “policy recommendations.”
On another note, I think it’s absolutely hysterical that the left despises Mankiw and considers him to be a “right-wing extremist.” This is a guy that support deficit spending, enormous entitlement programs, a carbon tax and is an inflationist (a big fan of Ben Bernanke). People place him right next to Mises and Hayek on the ideological spectrum.
But you can quite easily prove removing a tax always makes everyone better off from their own point of view.
What about statist masochists who want to be robbed by a coercive government?
“I believe the debate about the correct business cycle theory is not merely an academic one. Rather, the decision to intervene in the economy by a select few is a matter of life and death for millions of people who are impacted by this decision.” - Chloe732.
I don’t understand how interventionist economists can be value free.
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Neoclassical / StrangeLoop,
I watched the Mankiw video, he says it is not beneficial to raise taxes. Big deal. What does that have to do with being evil or not? Please explain the point you are trying to make.
He likes a carbon tax to “deal with climate change”. I don’t think anyone in the forum would agree with that (I’m being civil here).
Keynes is quoted. He leans on Keynes, animal spirits again. He mentions the business cycle as if if is come kind of natural thing, like the tides.
He’s a fan of Bernanke, QE2 is a good idea. Don’t have much experience with QE, but we’ll screw around with it anyway. It probably won’t be enough, he says.
He’s an interventionist (a respected one, though).
Again, what is your point?
What does this video prove?
And recipients of the tax?
Yes, people who have no problem with seeing others robbed on their behalf might be unhappy too. I didn’t think of them at first because it’s even harder for me to feel sorry for them than for the abovementioned hypothetical statist masochists.