Obama's progressive economics: An NY Times interview

[fiorello]

I posted this in "Editorials", but it is so important I want to bring it to people's attention here.

From Saturday's NY Times: a discussion of Obama's economic plan. I read this with great interest because Paul Krugman keeps referring to Obama's economics as "centrist" and "tilted to the right".

Not so, according to today's story: Obama's first priority is to {b}"close the income gap" between rich and poor.{/b}

This changed my attitude from "Obama-supporter-but-with doubts" to "wildly enthusiastic".

Quotes:

In an hourlong interview outlining his economic views, Mr. Obama praised the Clinton administration for reducing the deficit and setting the stage for the ’90s boom. But he said Mr. Clinton had failed to halt a long-term increase in income inequality that had left the middle class feeling squeezed.

If elected, Mr. Obama said he would to try to forge a popular mandate for policy changes that could reverse a generation of slow wage growth and outlast any one administration. At the top of his list would be shifting the tax burden more toward the wealthy and making investments — in health care, alternative-energy research and education — that would cost a significant amount of money but could ultimately lift economic growth.
...
Although Mr. Obama’s economic approach comes wrapped in his conciliatory rhetoric, it is in some ways more aggressive than that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination..... His approach puts him somewhat to the left of the Clinton administration but broadly in line with the Democratic Party now.

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton hold similar or identical positions on a host of economic issues, and Democratic economists not aligned with either campaign often speak positively about both.

(Don't forget this last point! Maybe it took Johh Edwards to teach them, but both remaining candidates are on the record as economic progressives. Yeah!)

Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/us/politics/02obama.html

[hedda_foil]

1. Finally! A candidagte ready, willing and able to take back the tax argument!

But he would start, he said, by trying to turn the discussion about taxes into an advantage for the Democrats during the general election campaign this year.

“We have to disaggregate tax policy between the wealthy and the working class or middle class,” he said. “We have to be able to say that we are going to at once raise taxes on some people and lower taxes on others.”

He added: “This has been one of the greatest rhetorical sleights of hand of the Republican Party, and it has been a great weakness of the Democratic Party.”

[neutron]

2. Krugman Tore Obama's propsals apart

both his economic and health proposals.
We're rewriting history?

[jackson_dem]

3. Good info