The Other Side of the Coin..

As a follow-on to the Obama post the other day (the worshipful one), I came across this Hubbard piece in the WSJ yesterday: We Can't Tax Our Way Out Of the Entitlement Crisis.  His applauds Obama for moderating the degree of some of his planned tax increases (particularly the retreat from a fully-uncapped payroll tax), but points out that the revenue that would be brought in by his current tax increase planns, when combined with his unwillingness to consider benefit cuts, leaves us only someone less screwed then our current path. 

In other words, he has not put forward any plan to address Medicare (and its less-challenging fellow traveler, SS) growth explosion.  (Then again, I don't think anyone thinks McCain has any plan where the numbers add up, either.)

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).

NewTalk

This looks like it has been running for a while, but I didn't see it until today: NewTalk. It bills itself as a site where 'experts discuss America's toughest issues.' They take one topic at a time, letting a discussion take place amongst a set of experts spanning the political spectrum as well as the vested interests for the topic at hand (an AARP spokesman on entitlements, etc.). After the discussion period has ended, the discussion closes, and they move to the next topic (and a new mix of experts).

I found it by hitting upon a discussion on addressing entitlement spending that ended in late July: 'Can we afford our entitlement promises? How close is the cliff?' It seems like a pretty worthwhile site with a good mix of participants...