More Than a Grain Of Truth Here

The Onion has some fake (albeit sadly largely true) new coverage of the more protectionist candidate in the election:

Obama Promises To Stop America's Shitty Jobs From Going Overseas

Free-Market Loving, Big Spending, Fiscally Conservative Wealth Redistributionist

That is the title (the browser title, at least) of a forthcoming New York Times Magazine story actually titled How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on the Economy. It's a pretty long piece (I've linked to the single page version) and tries to tell an interesting tale of Obama's economic evolution from his teaching days to the present day.

It's worth reading. The weak point: the author's barely veiled adulation for his subject. The critical statements he makes are about as aggressive as a Larry King interview (made worse yet by omitting large swathes of well-known policy critiques made by others).

Straight Dope On Candidates' Tax Proposals

I saw a post over at Capital Gains and Games that listed something I'd long wondered about: what actual dollar values the McCain and Obama tax policies translated to. It's pretty easy to get the impression that McCain's proposals would equate to a sizable cut above and beyond what Bush already did (given that he's proposing eliminating the AMT and reducing corporate tax rates (albeit phased)), and that Obama's must be expensive (since every speech is laden with tons of new programs and bolstering of various existing programs...all of which has additional cost).

Here is are the numbers, from a new Brookings/Urban Institute study:

...compared to current policy, Senator McCain would cut taxes by $628 b. over the next 10 years and that Senator Obama would raise them by $734 b. over the same period. Most of Senator McCains cuts go to middle and high income individuals, while most of Senator Obama's cuts would go to low and middle income individuals.

It goes on to say that Obama's tax raise may be markedly higher than the 734, since he has repeatedly proposed completely eliminating the current $250k income limit cap on payroll taxes (which would amount to a huge hike for high earners). He's also denied this at various points...so the study worked up his numbers without this change. The full post referenced at Capital Gains and Games is here.

Obamanomics Commentary in Today's WSJ

While the article was meant to summarize the economic content of a speech he just gave, it was the sidebar graphic that was the most interesting:


While Obama has the most worrisome voting record, the first two bullet points in Hillary's list should scare anyone (well, anyone who isn't currently the holder of an inflating interest-only mortgage).

Economic Madness

If anyone doubts how far left Hillary and Obama can be on some things, check out this crazy tidbit from the WSJ (emphasis added):

There are actually two versions of comparable worth legislation, the Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. The former is co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama; the principal sponsor of the latter is Sen. Hillary Clinton (Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor). Both would push companies to set wages based not on supply and demand -- that is the free market -- but on some notion of social utility. The goal is to ensure that jobs performed mostly by men (say, truck drivers) are not paid more than those performed mostly by women (paralegals, perhaps).

And I thought the 'living wage' people were pushing clueless economics!

Premature Celebration In Hillary Camp?

When Jen and I were watching the NH results at the gym yesterday, the Hillary camp was effusively ecstatic over their upset (at least versus the polling predictions of the leading 2-3 days). Sure, they were supposed to lose (potentially double digit, even accompanied by rumors of exit strategies), and so they do have something to cheer about.

However, she only won by 2 points. The issue is that the polls (taken with a grain of salt, given their failure to foresee her win last night) show that Edwards voters would overwhelmingly end up in the Obama camp if Edwards were to drop out. Edwards had 17 points last night. Had it been a pure Hillary/Obama head to head, this would suggest that Obama would have walloped her.

Iowa showed that not all women are blindly lining up behind Hillary (Obama beat her among women in Iowa). Absent that giant guaranteed block, Hillary would be in deep trouble if Edwards realizes the futility of his populist crusade (however inauthentic).