SECOND HALF OF THE ARTICLE:
Summers’ Shout Out for Austerity
Summers’ subtitle warns that Trump’s tax proposals “would threaten to increase federal debt and interest rates.” In other words, Summers is banging the war drums to renew the New Democrats’ long austerity war against the working class. There are two parts to Summers argument. First, Trump’s proposed tax cuts are crafted to help the wealthiest Americans. Second, the tax cuts would increase the budget deficit. Summers’ first argument is mostly fine, indeed, it is understated. (He makes the false claim that President Reagan’s tax cuts did not favor the wealthy and represented a “bipartisan” “reform.”) Trump’s plan is to betray the 99% and rig the system to lock in the power and wealth of the one percent (indeed, the top .0001). Trump remains, as he has been for decades, a crony capitalist.
Summers’ second argument is “Austerity Forever.” He leads with another code phrase for austerity, implying that the proper standard for any tax changes is that they be “revenue-neutral
reforms.” That means no net tax cuts. Why? What we know, as even Summers agreed, was that President Obama (who told New Democrats that he was a New Democrat) proposed a stimulus program that he knew (because Summers told him) was far too small and then turned his back on stimulus and then in early 2010 in the State of the Union abandoned stimulus and proposed austerity (the code, provided by the Rubinite Jack Lew, was that the federal government should “pull in its belt” in response to the Great Recession because households were doing so).
The 2009 stimulus, though deeply inadequate, materially increased U.S. growth. The self-destructive switch by January 2010 to supporting austerity greatly extended the recovery time from the Great Recession and weakened job market reovery. The U.S. economy could benefit greatly from stimulus even now, so why should Democrats be insisting that they will fight any net tax cut? Summers’ answer, as always, is the need for austerity. He stresses that Trump’s (net) tax cuts would violate austerity.
It would also mean grave damage to federal budget projections. The envisioned Trump tax cut is about the same size relative to the economy as the 1981 Reagan tax cut. It is worth remembering that Reagan, hardly a fan of reversing course or raising taxes, found it necessary to propose significant tax increases in 1982 and 1984 (the equivalent in today’s economy of $3.5tn over a decade) due to concerns about federal debt.
So, we now have the New Democrats’ lead economist, Summers, telling us we should be in panic mode because Reagan had such a dogmatic belief in austerity that he raised taxes (though, net, Reagan actually cut taxes). Summers is seriously proposing that the Democrats should take their policy advice on austerity from Reagan! He claims that Democrats, in response to the revolt of the white working class, should embrace austerity and renew the New Democrats’ long war against the white working class even though he knows that is terrible economics and politics. Reagan knew next to nothing about macroeconomics. Let me be explicit – both the Old Republicans like Reagan and the New Democrats shared this embrace of austerity’s long war against the working class. Reagan’s embrace of austerity was a key contributor to the stagnation of working class wages and the rise of the plutocrats. This is how out of touch the New Democrats are with the American people – Summers’ sees Reagan as the role model that Democrats should emulate.
Summers goes so far as to claim that stimulus would slow growth.
Today’s budget situation is much more worrisome. The baseline involves much higher levels of debt and deficits. Then the economy was suffering from a deep recession; now it approaches full
employment. If extreme tax cuts are legislated in the next months, uncertainty about the federal budget and about further tax adjustments is likely to rise. Finally, I can find no basis in either economic history or logic for Mr Mnuchin’s claim that the proposed reforms would increase the economy’s growth rate from its current 2 per cent rate to the historical 3 to 4 per cent norm. Adult population growth has slowed by nearly a percentage point, the gains generated by more women entering the workforce have been exhausted, and it is far from clear why tax reform will hugely spur productivity growth.
Indeed, because the Trump proposal would redistribute after-tax income towards those most likely to save it, push up long-term interest rates because of debt pressures, increase uncertainty and the advantages of overseas production, it is as likely to retard growth as to accelerate it.
Summers’ second paragraph has some important truth. As with the second President Bush’s tax cuts, Trump’s proposed cuts go so heavily to the plutocrats that they will have less stimulus effect because so much of the cuts will be saved rather than spent. The reduces the stimulus of the proposed tax cuts, it does not eliminate it.
The first paragraph is mostly an opportunity for Summers’ to renew his “secular stagnation” claims that suggest that the U.S., and much of the global economy, will suffer from weak growth under austerity for many decades. If Summers is correct, then stimulus is particularly vital now. But Summers’ primary cause is austerity, so he claims that we should accept weak growth and higher unemployment. If Summers were correct about secular stagnation, however, the imperative policy response would be to end the New Democrats and the Old Republicans’ long war of austerity against the working class and ensure that the federal government provided a guarantee that it would serve as the employer of last resort. Summers, of course, claims that our current condition closely approaches “full employment” and we need not worry about the millions of Americans who have dropped out of the labor force or are unemployed or underemployed. At the insipid growth rates he believes will become the norm under austerity, the unemployment rates would grow substantially.
