The answer to your questions is contained in my post to Phoenix Woman. The effect of the actions you describe, with the exception of raising the cap on FICA earnings would be salutary for the economy because it would effect a transfer of wealth from the very well-to-do to the poor and middle class. (The government would take tax money from the wealthy and redistribute it via govenrment spending to workers in defense industries, government bureaucracies, etc.) That would enhance our ability to consume what we produce which would boost wages and lower inventories. In other words, instead of relying on foreign investors to finance our economic activity, we'd do more of it ourselves and be able to cut the deficit at the same time.

As to raising the FICA earnings cap, I'm all for it. The Economic Policy Institute has studies showing that, if the cap were raised to $140,000, we would make Social Security solvent until 2075 with no cut in benefits. Given that, if we raised the ceiling even further, it would allow us to cut taxes on everyone earning under the current cap while still making the system solvent until 2075 with no cut in benefits. It would be easy and politicians could rightly claim to have both cut taxes and saved Social Security. What's not to like?

You're right that the current administration is not the first to deficit spend. Reagan slashed taxes the way Bush did and produced, like Bush, unprecedented deficits. The difference between the two of course is that Reagan learned from his mistake and raised taxes later in his presidency.

We've always known that massive deficit spending could bring about some form of economic prosperity. When the government hires people and buys goods on credit, it can make things look pretty good for a short time. That's what we did in WWII, and the economy boomed. But no serious economist of any political hue argues that it's any way to run an economy. Bush economics relies on foreign investors to finance our lifestyles. The more debt we run up, the less valuable it becomes and pretty soon, creditors start wanting more and more interest to continue buying our bonds, which means higher interest rates and a depressed economy. There's no way around it - long term, Bush economics is a fool's game, which is no surprise given who the president is.

There was a time when conservatives generally and Republicans specifically knew this stuff.

What's truly remarkable about the Chicago School of Economics is not that it ignores decades of well-established economic knowledge and public policy, but that that knowledge and policy is what makes capitalism work. So their attack on Keynes is also an attack on capitalism itself. Strange but true.

Marx taught us that capitalism's big problem is overproduction, i.e. the inability of a capitalist economy to consume what it produces. This results in rising inventories, falling prices and falling wages. Falling wages mean less consumption and further rising inventories, falling prices and wages in a continuing spiral downward. That's precisely what happened in the Great Depression which not surprisingly followed the decade of the greatest productivity increases in U.S. history. The New Deal brought government into the equation. By taxing income (particularly progressively) and by both direct and indirect government employment, New Deal economics transfers wealth from the few wealthy to the many poor and middle class. Because the wealthy tend to save and the poor and middle class tend to consume, the system ameliorates the problem Marx pointed out. It enhances consumption.

Therefore, tax cuts for the wealthy are not only unconscionable as gifts to those who don't need them, but they're bad economics. They result in greater income disparity between rich and poor which is also bad economics.

So what we're seeing over the last 30 years or so is an attack by the wealthy on the system that made them wealthy. That's not only morally wrong, it's sick.

to say that politics matter in the nation's economic affairs, but that doesn't necessarily mean party politics. For over 100 years, southern racism was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, but it was a southern Democrat, Lyndon Johnson who signed two Civil Rights Acts and fair housing legislation. Likewise, graduated taxation and big-government spending policies are a fundamental part of the Democratic Party's New Deal, but Republican administrations since 1980 have overseen huge increases in the size of the federal government.

So yes, politics matter, but it's not the party that's important, it's what they do.

of course I didn't say you should agree with her on everything. You can't possibly read my post to have said that. What I did say is what I meant - that to reject her views out of hand is arrogant, and it is.

But since we're on the subject, what do you think of what Lessing said about feminism's "rubbishing" men? Have you seen any evidence of that? Do you think Lessing was just making that stuff up out of thin air? Do you think feminist writing has generally been respectful of men? I'd be fascinated to know.

to compare Lessing to Ann Coulter, as Lloyd does, is just dumb, a truly desperate bid to deflect Lessing's criticism of the misandry Broadsheet engages in so frequently.

that Doris Lessing, using a pseudonym, posted to some Broadsheet piece, and said exactly what she said at the Edinburgh Book Fest in 2001. How many people would call her "troll" or "misogynist" or whatever? The answer is, "a lot." It's just astonishing how utterly incapable of self-criticism so many feminists are. Whatever you think of Lessing's books, she's smart enough and insightful enough to be considered for and win the Nobel Prize for Literature. To reject her views out of hand is unspeakable arrogance.