Nobel Prize Winner To Obama: Screw All Taxayers, Not Just The Rich

Proof positive that just because you win a Nobel Prize, doesn't necessarily mean you understand the complex waste of most government agencies. Anyone who isn't in favor of more and more tax cuts doesn't understand the stifling nature of most governmant operations . Clearly, Robert Solow doesn't get it. David Wessel at WSJ reports:

Robert Solow, the Nobel Prize winning economist who long has counseled Democrats, said Barack Obama should roll back the Bush tax cuts for the rich but shouldn’t use the proceeds to cut taxes for the middle class, as the Democratic presidential candidate has proposed.

Mr. Solow, attending a conclave of Nobel laureates in economics on Lake Constance in southern Germany, said in an interview: “While cancelling the Bush tax cuts for upper income groups is certainly the right thing to do, I would not use the proceeds to finance a tax cut for middle-class people.”

Instead, he would use the money “both for urgent needs now and for future
deficit reduction,” he said. “The government needs that money and ought not to
be using it to promote consumption [consumer spending.]”

The retired MIT professor, who has not been advising Sen. Obama, said in a weak economy a temporary tax cut would have a limited stimulative effect and a permanent tax cut would widen an already significant long-run federal budget deficit, he said.

Mr. Solow was quick to add: “I understand this” — backtracking on a promised middle-class tax cut — “is not a politically easy thing to do.” He remains an Obama backer.

In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned on a platform that included a middle-class tax cut but abandoned the proposal after the election to focus on deficit-reduction in his first term.