White Men Argue

Greg Mankiw writes:

Today's column by Paul Krugman is classic Paul: It takes a policy favored by the right, attributes the most vile motives to those who advance the policy, and ignores all the reasonable arguments in favor of it.
...
Note that when Barack Obama ran for President in 2008, he campaigned on only a small increase in the tax rate on dividends and capital gains. He did not suggest raising the rate on this income to the rate on ordinary income. Is this because Barack Obama also favors the oligarchy, or is it because his advisers also understood the case against high capital taxation?

My italics. No matter what you think the answer to the question is, know that it was the same for George W. Bush. And let me just say this. If it looks like an oligarchy, and acts like an oligarchy, it's actually probably capitalism in a modern representative democracy. So, in any case, we're getting what we pay for. And since I don't make much money, I probably won't get anything I want.

"Yeah, lot of pressure. You gotta rise above it. You gotta harness in the good energy, block out the bad. Harness. Energy. Block. Bad. Feel the flow, Happy. Feel it. It’s circular. It’s like a carousel. You pay the quarter, you get on the horse. It goes up and down and around. Circular. Circle. With the music. The flow… all good things."