Doctor Mankiw and Professor Hyde

Gregory Mankiw has some good weekend posts and a superb article in the NYTimes. The good professor is 50 and realizes "My welfare now falls within the mission statement of AARP."

My birthday wish is for all of us to stop asking what the government can do for us today. Instead, we should focus on what we can do together to prepare the economy for our children and grandchildren. That means getting ready to care more for ourselves in old age, perhaps by retiring later, perhaps by saving more. I hope that when I celebrate my 100th birthday in 2058, my descendants won’t look upon Grandpa and his generation as the biggest economic problem of their time.

It's well worth a read in full. Happy Birthday.

Sadly, the dark side of Mankiw rears its ugly head in the previous post, "Welcome to the Club, Jay." Jay is Astronaut-Physician Jay Buckey, who is running for the US Senate in New Hampshire in 2008. Jay wants to levy a tax on Oil and emailed Mankiw asking to be in his damned "Pigou Club."

The professor's heart swoons. If you want to tax oil, you've got the Mankiw Vote! (He can sneak across the border and vote in Nashua.) It doesn't seem to matter what else you believe -- as long as you believe the government has a duty to change our behavior through capricious taxation. I look at Buckey's Web Site, and I fear for the party and the Republic. The party, because this Democrat has a compelling biography, the pretty political, photogenic family, the works -- anybody running against this guy will look like Nixon after a four day bender.

And fear for the Republic because his ideas are conventional, Democratic Party boilerplate. He opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, though he served in the Air Force (thank you, Jay); global trade is swell and all "But the risks involved in global trade (outsourcing, closed businesses, wage competition) are hitting our middle class hard and the benefits are not reaching everyone;" "Despite the enormous wealth of our nation and the highest quality healthcare available anywhere, many of our citizens are not receiving any care and many more are not receiving good care."

These are not my ideas -- nor are they Mankiw's but wait! He wants a National Security Levy on Oil. <ericcartman voice>He's the most awesomest candidate ever!</ericcartman voice> And he has a declaration of energy independence:

Over the course of the last century, we have lost the freedom to choose our energy supply. Today we depend critically on petroleum. This dependency means we are no longer free to make choices. Instead we have no choice but to do whatever is necessary to maintain the flow of oil. If we don’t, our economy will suffer greatly.

We, the undersigned New Hampshire voters, are deeply concerned about our freedom and the future of our planet. To fight global warming, protect our economy, and preserve our freedom we are resolved to:

[insert Democratic party Boilerplate here...]

Does he believe for one minute that a Senator Bucky, mellifluous as the name sounds, would contribute one thing to his birthday wish? I do not.

111th Congress Election Posted by jk at February 4, 2008 12:04 PM