Thursday, September 4, 2008

When does fiscal issues become a tipping point in elections?

Holtz-Eakin Says Obama Will Lead to Larger Deficit

R. Glenn Hubbard Sees `Massive' Deficit Growth Under Obama

John McCain Has a Tax Plan To Create Jobs

By MARTIN FELDSTEIN and JOHN B. TAYLOR

McCain site on the economy


Maconomics

Related;
Obama's acceptance speech;

As I listened to the speech by Barack Obama accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party for the U.S. presidency, I felt I was listening to a very gifted orator. I also thought I heard a cash register go ca-ching every time he finished a sentence...

As the list of things Obama promised to do grew ever longer, I found myself increasingly wondering, What is the underlying understanding of how the economy works that would motivate such a list? All these steps require a commitment of resources. If we are to have more of these things, we must be planning to divert the resources to pay for them from somewhere else. Evidently there is a notion of some kind of existing inefficiency or misallocation of resources-- money is currently being spent on things it shouldn't be, and should instead be devoted to objectives on the above list. But how is the bill for all these nice things supposed to be paid?

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