Monday, January 21, 2008

Hillary's economic philosophy: bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation

The bigger the government, the stronger the economy, right? From the New York Times:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration.

In one of her most extensive interviews about how she would approach the economy, Mrs. Clinton laid out a view of economic policy that differed in some ways from that of her husband, Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton campaigned on his centrist views, and as president, he championed deficit reduction and trade agreements.
She isn't really to the left of her husband. Conditions are just different today.
Reflecting what her aides said were very different conditions today, Mrs. Clinton put her emphasis on issues like inequality and the role of institutions like government, rather than market forces, in addressing them.
You just can't address inequality with market forces.
She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she characterized as often "offensive" and "wrong" and a tax code that had become "so far out of whack" in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class living standards.
It's so important to figure out who isn't getting taxed enough.
Interviewed between campaign appearances in Los Angeles on Thursday, she said those problems were also keeping the United States economy from growing as quickly as it could.

"If you go back and look at our history, we were most successful when we had that balance between an effective, vigorous government and a dynamic, appropriately regulated market," Mrs. Clinton said.
"Dynamic" and "appropriately regulated"--isn't that the same thing?
"And we have systematically diminished the role and the responsibility of our government, and we have watched our market become imbalanced."

She added: "I want to get back to the appropriate balance of power between government and the market." [...]

Mrs. Clinton’s approach to the economy would have three main components. She would roll back the Bush tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000 while creating more tax breaks below that threshold; impose closer scrutiny on financial markets, including the investments being made by foreign governments in the United States; and raise spending on job-creating projects like the development of alternative energy. [...]
Yes, take people's money, create a government program that will have employees, and you've created jobs! (Hat Tip: Protein Wisdom)

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