Straddling, spanning, or sitting...

So Rush Limbaugh makes an appearance at CPAC and he is celebrated for his ardent stance against the current administration's tax policies. I am not so concerned about his stance. What I am concerned with is the thinking, as evidenced by the constant cheering through his CPAC speech, thinking that is not limited to the right but heavily present on the left as well, that the best policies are the result of either/or logic. Ok, simply put I am saying: good policy prescriptions are not the result of either/or thinking that is encouraged and championed by ideological adherents, rather they are the result of logical and informed thinking through extremely complicated problems.

So it is with taxes. Rush's speech, aside from the ad hominem attacks; aside from the questioning of Democrats moral intentions; and aside from the questioning of Democrats capacity to offer and execute good tax policy brings to the fore the complicated nature of taxes. How? By his very presentation of his (aka the Rights') solution to the current economic meltdown as a simple adherence to conservative principles. Summed up: don't punish the wealthy or small business owners with higher taxes because the wealthy or small business owners create jobs. In fact, to augment the position, if the government rewards the wealthy and small business owners with smaller tax burdens then those entities will continue to create jobs. My first question is: What is Rush's proof. What is the evidence? I am not saying he is wrong but I am demanding evidence. I require the same proof for the Obama economic strategy too. What is the evidence the spending trillions results in sustainable economic growth. I am not saying it doesn't but I am demanding evidence.

Ok, so I have a graduate degree and I have taken more than one graduate level econ course and still this stuff is hard to figure out. What in the world happens to voters who lack the formal or even informal education to parse the mathematical models but wish to take sides on policy? How do they decide which direction to go? I hope they don't depend on ad hominem attacks, questions about either party's' moral intentions; questions about either party's' intellectual capacity; or questions about either party's' ability to execute good governance to provide data. It won't.

The fact is that economist disagree, scientists disagree, and technocrats disagree. That is why policymakers disagree. Not (on the whole) because they wish to do harm, are morally disordered, or are stupid and incompentant. Well, at least this is where the tax policy discussion should begin- above the fray. For that reason I am ok straddling, spanning, or sitting on the fence. It's complicated.