In a must-read from The WSJ, Alan Reynolds demolishes tax increase arguments.
At Forbes, Louis Woodhill responds to Keynesian claims.
On The Kudlow Report, Dan Mitchell debates high tax rates:
At RCM, John Tamny challenges Mark Zandi’s weak dollar/tax rebate strategy for growth.
On Money News, Steve Forbes promotes the gold standard.
The WSJ Asia suggests that China raise the yuan’s exchange rate.
There are hints that a debate is ongoing in Beijing about how to alter course before these distortions grow bigger. The reformers have been hamstrung by the export lobby’s desire to keep the yuan’s value low. But the costs of intervening to do so are rising. Sustaining China’s growth will require banks to make market-oriented lending decisions, which won’t happen as long as its central bank can’t use interest rates as a tool of financial management. The sooner Beijing decides to stop sterilizing, the easier will be the transition to a better financial system.
Freedomist continues to critique NRO’s Kevin Williamson (more here).
At Bloomberg, progressive Ezra Klein calls Tim Pawlenty’s growth strategy fantasyland but acknowledges it is smart politics.
From earlier this week in The WSJ, Bill McGurn rebuts The NYT’s Thomas Friedman for Friedman’s view that the world is full. Like Friedman, McGurn overlooks the unstable and declining dollar:
All around us we see its manifestation in the revival of floppy hats, platform shoes and maxi dresses. We can, however, also detect this same retro fashion sense on the op-ed page of the New York Times. There last week Tom Friedman’s column carried one of the sentiments most in vogue in the 1970s: “The Earth Is Full.”
Mr. Friedman invokes the usual grim specters so beloved of a certain kind of intellectual: natural disasters (tornadoes, floods and droughts); rising prices (food and energy); the threat to stability; and of course the kicker—that there are just too many darn people around these days.
It’s a familiar meme, and it comes bearing the familiar scientific credentials. In this case the authority is, Mr. Friedman tells us, “an alliance of scientists” called the Global Footprint Network, “which calculates how many ‘planet Earths’ we need to sustain our growth rates.” Right now they say it is 1.5. Which can mean only one thing unless we cut way, way back: We’re doomed.
At Forbes, Jerry Bowyer continues to examine the psyche of John Maynard Keynes.
On TNR, Jonathan Chait challenges The WSJ’s critique of the President’s economic policy.
From this week’s Republican candidate debate, Newt Gingrich had a terrific answer on tax rates:
KING: Mr. Speaker, if you look at a poll in the Boston Globe just the other day, 54 percent of Republican voters in this state say they’re willing to have higher taxes on the wealthy to help bring down the deficit. Are they wrong?
GINGRICH: Well, the question is, would it, in fact, increase jobs or kill jobs? The Reagan recovery, which I participated in passing, in seven years created for this current economy the equivalent of 25 million new jobs, raised federal revenue by $800 billion a year in terms of the current economy, and clearly it worked. It’s a historic fact.
The Obama administration is an anti-jobs, anti-business, anti- American energy destructive force. And we shouldn’t talk about what we do in 2013. The Congress this year, this next week ought to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, they ought to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, they ought to start creating jobs right now, because for those 14 million Americans, this is a depression now.
The Club for Growth lists its key priorities but doesn’t mention the dollar.