This week at TPMCafe’s Book Club, we have an all-star group to debate Jon Chait’s new book, The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics. Paul Krugman, Stephen Moore, Will Wilkinson, Megan McArdle, Ross Douthat, and Ezra Klein will be joining in.
Blog debate so far has focused on Chait’s history of the rise of suppy-siders, but as he explains in his first post they’re only a piece of the puzzle:
The wealthy interests who favor tax cuts, and other pro-rich items, arenât motivated by supply-side ideology. While they may believe that tax cuts help the economy, their deeper belief is that every dollar they have, including the dollars they inherited, is a reflection of their success and a measure of their virtue. So, in this sense, supply-side ideology simply plays the same role that Social Darwinism did a century ago and that economic orthodoxy did seventy years ago.
In other words, it acts as an altruistic gloss on a much more crass political project.
Some of the more right-wing participants in this week’s discussion likely won’t agree. In fact, we’ve put together a relatively more conservative group to respond to Chait’s argument, so we’re expecting fireworks. As one reader put it, it’s like “like a celebrity death match within the dismal science.”
Enjoy.
