Anderson Derek

There's a curious but robust feature of US presidential elections: when the economy isn't doing well, the incumbent party usually loses.It doesn't matter which party is in power, they usually lose. You can see that now in the online odds for McCain, which have dropped a lot as bad news comes out about the economy. You can talk all you want about other things, but the economy is likely the primary driver here.

The reason I say "curious" is that there's very little evidence that presidents (or the government more generally) have much impact on the current state of the economy. They can influence long-term performance, but in the short term, the US economy, and others, go through periodic ups and downs that we call business cycles. That was true 200 years ago and remains true today. There's some debate about where business cycles come from, but the president's actions are rarely on the list. Nevertheless, it's become good strategy to claim credit for good news and blame the other guys for bad news -- even though neither is likely  

Fundamentalists have an unswerving faith in models. Policies should always be derived from the best available model. Data should be filtered through a model. If an observation does not fit within the context of a model, it should be excluded from consideration.

Realists are more conscious of the limits of models and more comfortable with a division of labor between the researcher who improves the models and the clinician who makes policy decisions. They recognize that the power of models comes precisely from a commitment to abstraction that filters out potentially important complexity. They believe that useful evidence can accumulate with direct experience as well as through the research process of testing and refining models. They believe that researchers should consider the possibility that the fault lies with the model when its predictions diverge from clinical judgment and that policies should draw on both sources of evidence.

Many times, the confidence wow gold fundamentalists have had in abstract models turned out to be well founded and the objections raised by realists who were more focused on details were misplaced. The fundamentalists were right that an airline industry could still function even if airlines could set their own fares; that people could still talk to each other even if they purchased phone service from different companies. The realists pointed to all the complicated details that arise in such markets, details that simple models could not capture. Fundamentalists, correctly, ignored the detail and pushed prescriptions based on the textbook model of competition.   

There are many historical precedents of bad policies following crises. The worst case was after the stock-market crash in October 1929, which produced a truly perfect storm of bad policies. Tax rates rose, tariffs rose (reflecting special interest groups attempting to insulate domestic producers from foreign competition), and both Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt strongly promoted industry-labor cartels that were designed to stifle domestic competition.

In the absence of these policies, the Great Depression would almost certainly have been like every other U.S. recession -- short-lived and relatively mild. Normal recovery didn't begin until the most onerous of these policies were reversed, a process that didn't begin until the end of the 1930s when antitrust activity was resumed, and during World War II when the National War Labor Board reduced union bargaining power by limiting negotiated wage increases to cost-of-living adjustments only....

I am particularly concerned about bad policies because significantly higher taxes have been proposed by Barack Obama. His plan would raise the marginal tax rate on the most productive workers more than 10 percentage points -- an increase that would bring us near Western European levels. His plan would also raise capital income taxes, taxing capital gains and dividends at 20%, compared to a 15% rate under Sen. John McCain's plan. A five percentage-point difference might strike you as small, but it is not. I have calculated that a five percentage-point difference in overall capital income taxation over the long haul is equal to a difference in the nation's capital stock of about 18%. This means a 6% difference in GDP and a 6% difference in the average wage rate. This means that real GDP and the average wage would fall, gradually but persistently declining about 6% after 25 years. That's not quite a Great Depression, but a significant step towards one.

What should be done? We should encourage the immigration of prime-age individuals. Beginning in 2007, net immigration fell to half of its level over the previous five years. Increasing immigration would increase the demand for housing and raise home prices. And note that the benefit would be immediate. Home prices -- and the value of subprime obligations -- would rise in anticipation of a higher population base. The U.S. particularly needs highly skilled workers. These workers not only would purchase homes, but would generate higher living standards for all Americans.