Pollin responds

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Oct 21 09:30:32 PDT 2000


[Someone forwarded Max Sawicky's comments on Louis Uchitelle's NYT budget piece, which concluded with a swipe at Bob Pollin. Bob responds...]


>The quote that Uchitelle took from me couldn't be more
>straightforward: it says that if you don't increase spending in
>dollar terms, and if capital gains and incomes rise, and if the tax
>rates on these stay constant, then it follows mathematically that
>you get more revenues than expenditures--and thus a surplus.
>
>Of course, I wasn't suggesting that military spending be increased.
>But I did argue strongly for increases in other discretionary
>areas--educaation, income support, etc. I also didn't say that
>surpluses were good; indeed, that was the reason I was saying
>spending caps on things like education and income support should
>rise instead of crowing about a surplus. I think that point comes
>through a bit, though Lou could have made this point much more
>clearly.
>
>The rest of my "insights" to this article came straight out of my
>New Left Review article; indeed I sent Lou the whole article, with
>more detailed budget figures.



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