Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Krugman: Dooh Nibor
Dooh Nibor
Lots of justified talk today about a new Tax Policy Center report on the distributional implications of the Romney tax plan, showing it to be very much a Dooh Nibor – that is, reverse Robin Hood – thing. Obama is talking it up; Romney, predictably, is dismissing the report as the work of a “liberal group”.
The question one might ask is, did TPC – which is actually painstakingly and painfully nonpartisan – make questionable assumptions to get its results, so that some other set of assumptions might portray Romneynomics in a more favorable light? And the answer is no: TPC actually bent over backwards to literally give Romney every possible benefit of the doubt.
Here’s what they did. They took Romney at his word that he plans to offset his cuts in income tax rates by broadening the base, that is, limiting exemptions and other loopholes...So which loopholes are closed? TPC made the most Romney-friendly assumption they could – namely, that base broadening is concentrated on top incomes as much as possible. First you eliminate all deductions that benefit those with more than $1 million in income; then all that benefit those with between $500,000 and $1 million; and so on.
<...>
I’ll be curious to see how all this gets reported. The TPC results are ironclad; there is no valid Romney counterargument except to say that he doesn’t really mean all that stuff about actually making up for lost revenue. My guess is that the stories will nonetheless be he said/she said, but maybe I’ll be favorably surprised.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/dooh-nibor/
Lots of justified talk today about a new Tax Policy Center report on the distributional implications of the Romney tax plan, showing it to be very much a Dooh Nibor – that is, reverse Robin Hood – thing. Obama is talking it up; Romney, predictably, is dismissing the report as the work of a “liberal group”.
The question one might ask is, did TPC – which is actually painstakingly and painfully nonpartisan – make questionable assumptions to get its results, so that some other set of assumptions might portray Romneynomics in a more favorable light? And the answer is no: TPC actually bent over backwards to literally give Romney every possible benefit of the doubt.
Here’s what they did. They took Romney at his word that he plans to offset his cuts in income tax rates by broadening the base, that is, limiting exemptions and other loopholes...So which loopholes are closed? TPC made the most Romney-friendly assumption they could – namely, that base broadening is concentrated on top incomes as much as possible. First you eliminate all deductions that benefit those with more than $1 million in income; then all that benefit those with between $500,000 and $1 million; and so on.
<...>
I’ll be curious to see how all this gets reported. The TPC results are ironclad; there is no valid Romney counterargument except to say that he doesn’t really mean all that stuff about actually making up for lost revenue. My guess is that the stories will nonetheless be he said/she said, but maybe I’ll be favorably surprised.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/dooh-nibor/
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read