Douthat vs. Klein on Chait's The Big Con

Having plugged the TNR excerpt from Jon Chait's The Big Con, I want to recommend the discussion about the book that has started on the TPM Book Club, which currently features excellent contributions from Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein, two of the best young pundits out there. Both of them make important points.

Douthat:

I should start out by saying something nice about Jonathan Chait's book, so I'll say this: It's a book that every conservative should read. It demolishes a theory that too many right-wingers take seriously - namely, the notion that cutting taxes raises government revenue in the short run - and it demonstrates that by embracing this theory the small-government movement has enmeshed itself in contradiction. The contemporary Right simultaneously believes that cutting taxes will shrink government by "starving the beast," and that cutting taxes will produce more government revenue, not less.

In fact, neither seems to be the case... Too often, as Chait's analysis makes clear, supply-side theory has been a way for conservatives to downplay the difficult side of their "lower taxes, less government" message - the side that requires, well, actually cutting spending - and pretend that there's such a thing as a free lunch. There isn't...

Now I'll say something rather more negative: The most attention-catching aspect of Chait's thesis - his argument, restated in his first post, that the best way to understand the contemporary conservative movement is by treating it as a conspiracy to practice class warfare on behalf of the rich - strikes me as little better than name-calling...

There are good points on both sides of this debate, but the point is that it's a debate... And this is what I find so unfortunate about Chait's argument: Having zeroed in, justly, on a bogus conservative talking point and torn it to shreds, he feels comfortable glossing over every other argument to his right, all the while imputing the worst of motives to his opponents...

Klein:

Ross is correct that there are more cautious, subtle arguments supporting certain types of tax cuts. But Jon's laser-like focus on the Supply-Siders serves an actual purpose: Their claims are useful not because they're empirically true, but because they're politically attractive. Whatever the beliefs of more thoughtful conservatives, Republicans have, as Chait shows, continually sold these policies based on the idea that they will pay for themselves...

Indeed, I took Jon's argument as more of an attack on the general lies that are used to sell tax cuts... There may, as Ross says, be smart and nuanced arguments in favor of lower taxes. But that's not what we're hearing. We're not even getting pure supply-siderism. Instead, we're getting tax cuts in every situation, as the answer to any problem, and at any cost. It's hard, given the wobbliness and mendacity of these rationales, to not conclude that the point of the cuts is their singular constant: a preference for upward redistribution...

So here's a possible deal: I will only take issue with the strongest arguments for the tax cuts when they are the ones proponents use... We can have a policy debate or we can have a political argument, and that decision is made by those who start the conversation. And that ain't Jon.

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