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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Tue May 23, 2017, 12:50 PM May 2017

Larry Summers: Trump's budget is simply ludicrous

By Lawrence H. Summers May 23 at 5:00 AM

Details of President Trump’s first budget have now been released. Much can and will be said about the dire social consequences of what is in it and the ludicrously optimistic economic assumptions it embodies. My observation is that there appears to be a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course.

Apparently, the budget forecasts that U.S. economic growth will rise to 3.0 percent because of the administration’s policies — largely its tax cuts and perhaps also its regulatory policies. Fair enough if you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.

Then the administration asserts that it will propose revenue neutral tax cuts with the revenue neutrality coming in part because the tax cuts stimulate growth! This is an elementary double count. You can’t use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue. At least you cannot do so in a world of logic.

The Trump team prides itself on its business background. This error is akin to buying a company assuming that you can make investments that will raise profits, but then, in calculating the increased profits, counting the higher revenue while failing to account for the fact that the investments would actually cost some money to make. The revenue generated by the investments might exceed their cost (though the same is almost never true of tax cuts), but that doesn’t change the fact that the investment has a cost that must be included in the accounting.

This is a mistake no serious business person would make. It appears to be the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/05/23/larry-summers-trumps-budget-is-simply-ludicrous/

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Larry Summers: Trump's budget is simply ludicrous (Original Post) DonViejo May 2017 OP
This is an elementary double count. underpants May 2017 #1
They're trying to use the Big Lie technique dalton99a May 2017 #2
It is not ludicrous . . . it is even more than startling, ambitious, and dramatic! It is EVIL! NotMyFuhrer May 2017 #3

underpants

(182,285 posts)
1. This is an elementary double count.
Tue May 23, 2017, 12:56 PM
May 2017

There is another thread where in someone else points out the same thing.

 

NotMyFuhrer

(58 posts)
3. It is not ludicrous . . . it is even more than startling, ambitious, and dramatic! It is EVIL!
Tue May 23, 2017, 02:09 PM
May 2017

The budget, now that it is in black and white ... is not "ludicrous" . . . it is not ambitious or just dramatic! It is clearly:

EVIL, VILE, criminal, malicious, despicable, abhorrent, dreadful, revolting, repulsive, disgusting, AND heartless, coldblooded, and callous.

Lets call a spade a spade!!


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