Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

Who Built That?

Posted on September 10, 2012 by | 25 comments

By Simon Johnson

Perhaps the biggest issue of this presidential election is the relationship between government and private business. President Obama recently offended some people by appearing to imply that private entrepreneurs did not build their companies without the help of others (although there is some debate about what he was really saying).

Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul D. Ryan as vice presidential running mate is widely interpreted as signaling the further rise of the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party – with the implication that the private sector may soon be pushing back even more against the role of government.

For most of the last 200 years, national economic prosperity has been about creating and sustaining a symbiotic relationship between government and private business, including entrepreneurs who build businesses from scratch. This symbiosis was long a great strength of the United States, something it got right while other nations failed to do so, in various ways.

Is the partnership between government and business now really on the rocks? What would be the implications for longer-run economic growth of any such traumatic divorce? Continue reading →

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Mitt Romney And Extreme Fiscal Policy

Posted on August 22, 2012 by | 21 comments

By Simon Johnson

As the presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and his plans for the federal budget are drawing increasing interest. Mr. Ryan has been chairman of the House Budget Committee since the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterm elections and has articulated a vision for federal public finances that is quite different from what other prominent Republicans have been advocating – including Mitt Romney.

The contrast between Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan tells us a great deal about the competition among fiscal ideas within the Republican Party. It also highlights the challenge Mr. Romney will face in November, if he is shifting rightward toward Mr. Ryan’s approach to budget policy, away from independents in the center of the political spectrum. Continue reading →

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Small Government or Smallish-Sort-of-Mediumish-Nicer-Better Government

Posted on August 13, 2012 by | 74 comments

By James Kwak

The conventional wisdom about Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate is that it sets the stage for a debate about the role of government in society, between Romney and Ryan as champions of small government and Obama and Biden as supporters of big government. Indeed, that’s the thrust of the lead story in the Wall Street Journal this morning. And it’s pretty clear why Mitt Romney wants to have this debate.

First, the politics: The choice of Ryan should be slightly encouraging to Democrats for one reason—it confirms what the polls and Nate Silver have been saying for months: President Obama is winning, though not by much. One of Romney’s options was to simply run against the incumbent, pointing to the bad economy and making a bland case for himself as some kind of business guru. Apparently that wasn’t working, so he decided to double down on the Tea Party and the idea of radically reforming government—something that he’s been distinctly bad at throughout the election so far.

In the longer term, Democrats should be worried, because Romney and Ryan have the better debating position. Their position is simple and superficially compelling: Government is bad. (Cf. the DMV—it’s state, not federal, and the one in Massachusetts works very well, but whatever; BATF; EPA; IRS; whatever agency your audience happens to dislike. Compare to Apple as if all private sector businesses were like Apple.) Government infringes on individual liberty. Cut down the government and we will have (a) more liberty, (b) more economic growth, and (c) lower taxes.

Continue reading →

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Mitt Romney And Paul Ryan’s Budget

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | 24 comments

By Simon Johnson

The conventional wisdom in American presidential politics is that once a candidate has secured a party’s nomination, he tends to move away from articulating the views of the party faithful toward the political center. This makes sense as a way to win votes in the general election, and there has been a presumption that Mitt Romney will head in that direction.

However, in a panel discussion on Tuesday, Vin Weber, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, indicated that the campaign may be moving toward positions on fiscal policy that are close to those proposed by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and his Republican colleagues on the House Budget Committee. Continue reading →

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Someone Is Wrong In The Times*

Posted on April 6, 2012 by | 20 comments

By James Kwak

James Stewart has doubled down on his infatuation with Paul Ryan. Ryan’s budget, he says, is a viable centrist starting point for budget negotiations, and attacks from “left and right” are mere “partisan rhetoric.”

This is several different kinds of crazy. First, Stewart repeats his belief that Ryan’s plan would increase taxes on investment income. But that belief has no basis other than Stewart’s own belief that it would be a good idea. As I pointed out before, Ryan’s own budget argues against raising taxes on capital gains and dividends. The only thing Stewart can find is Ryan’s apple-pie platitudes about the need for tax reform. But Ryan’s own vision of tax reform, as evidenced by his budget’s own words, doesn’t include higher capital gains taxes. (In addition, as a signatory to the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, Ryan is sworn to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business.” That sounds to me like it includes the capital gains tax rate, which is a marginal income rate.) This is further evidence of columnists’ ability to project their own fantasies onto Paul Ryan’s handsome face.

Continue reading →

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Why Do New York Times Columnists Keep Swooning for Paul Ryan?

Posted on March 24, 2012 by | 28 comments

By James Kwak

After David Brooks last year, now it’s James Stewart who has fallen for Paul Ryan’s rugged good looks. He attempts to defend Ryan’s tax proposals against charges that they favor the rich:

“To me it sounds like a proposal to raise [the wealthy’s] taxes by depriving them of cherished ‘loopholes,’ to use the proposal’s word. . . .

“There’s no getting around the fact that a 25 percent rate on the top earners would nearly double Mr. Romney’s effective rate and more than double it for the 101 of the top 400 taxpayers who pay less than 10 percent, assuming the loopholes are indeed closed.”

Continue reading →

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Who Wants a Voucher?

Posted on April 12, 2011 by | 59 comments

By James Kwak

In yesterday’s post, I compared two ways of solving the long-term Medicare deficit: (a) increasing payroll taxes and keeping Medicare’s current structure or (b) keeping payroll taxes where they are and converting Medicare into a voucher program. As a person who will need health insurance in retirement, I prefer (a), but others could differ.

Today I want to ask a different question. Let’s say Medicare does become a voucher program along the lines proposed by Paul Ryan. So workers pay 2.9 percent of their wages and in retirement they get a voucher. According to the CBO, if you turn 65 in 2030, that voucher will pay for 32 percent of your total health care costs, including private insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses (see pp. 22-23). Would you rather have that deal or nothing at all?

Continue reading →

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