James Galbraith is providing a useful antidote to some of the less interesting discussion over at TPMCafe's econ week. I think one simple point that emerges from his post is that people spend a hell of a lot of time obsesssing about tweaking the tax code for greater economic efficiency and/or to help lower income people. The point is not that these are always necessarily bad ideas, but in terms of impact they're just drops in the bucket compared to some other relatively straightforward ideas. We spend a lot of time talking about trade and tax code tweaks when there are some big, easy, and dare I say it, popular, ideas just sitting there being largely ignored.
Some of those ideas are probably even supported by Sperling and Furman and others. But they tend not to get as much attention and discussion as exciting things like "flat tax incentive."
Refundable tax credits are great. Universal 401K? great. But compared to universal health care, increasing the minimum wage, greater worker/union rights, they're not that important and certainly not election winners.
There's a strange tendency in Left Wonkistan to obsess about policies which are "good for people whether they know it or not!" instead of obsessing about policies which people understand are good for them, or at the very least policies which have benefits which people can understand whether or not they support them.
