The Candidates' Economic Choices-According to Dr. Ken Mayland, President , Clearview Economics
Monday, September 22, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: With the presidential election rapidly approaching, we begin a series of special commentaries looking at the candidate's economic choices and the ultimate choice facing voters: Who will be our next president? Every Monday and Tuesday leading up to the election, we will have commentaries dealing with the candidates' platforms. We begin tonight with Dr. Ken Mayland. He is president of ClearView Economics and his view of the Obama economic plan.
KEN MAYLAND, PRESIDENT, CLEARVIEW ECONOMICS: Presidential candidate Barack Obama is a self-proclaimed pro-growth and pro-market guy. The irony is that he takes issue with free market outcomes. There is a market reason why stock clerks might make $8 an hour while top corporate executives can earn more than $250,000 per year. In principle, both individuals could be working equally hard at their occupations. The core of Obama's economic policies posits there is something unbalanced and unfair in seeing such disparate market outcomes. It follows from this view that a proactive government is right to give tax cuts for families who pay no income taxes, for industries favored by free trade to compensate those industries and individuals disfavored by trade, and for the rich to fund in-kind benefits for those that cannot afford them. President Clinton sought to end welfare as we know it. I hate to seem impolite, but Obama's policies would establish welfare as we have never known it. Will folks be held personally responsible, perhaps with some incentives here and there, for their own well-being? This was the case for the first 190 years of America's existence. Or will a new president and Congress concoct large income transfer schemes to pay for college educations, to fix Medicare and Social Security, and to reverse the widening distribution of income? Will another crack at President Johnson's Great Society programs be the source of America's future prosperity? You decide. I'm Ken Mayland.
