Saturday, February 06, 2021

Policy trolls: the Larry Summers edition

There's one thing I really about the meanstesting neolibs, who claim to be so compassionate towards the poors that they wanna means test any relief package so it doesn't benefit the nasty riches - that is, people who make btw 80- 100 thou. Many of these means testers come from Harvard, or Yale, or Stanford, or Chicago. Schools with amazingly high endowments, to which rich peeps give and get accordingly tax deductions. Many of them even teach there, or, in the case of Larry Summers, used to be the president there -of Harvard, in his case.
Oddly, none of the means testers seem to notice that a small, poor college, Wabash College or something, and a multibillion dollar endowed university, Harvard, get - horrors! - the same tax exemption!
Surely, these neolib centrists, who know all about that there economics, should be on the forefront of trying to get their alma maters taxed, and taking away tax exemption from those rich dudes with their "philanthropy". Means testing, if it means anything, means not only testing the positive recipients of government funding, but also the recipients of what Milton Friedman called negative taxation.
But I've never yet read anything about this from the meanstestin' dudes. And I don't expect I will. It is one thing when you pretend to be all concerned that low income people receive the sole benefit from government funding, in order to block that funding at all - and quite another thing when you attack the mother ship for real. Larry Summers was booted from Harvard for being a sexist pig, but he woulda been booted much sooner if he made a big deal about shutting down Harvard's tax exempt status.
What we can conclude about this is that these neolibs form a group that thinks of itself as wonky, but in reality, they are policy trolls. And their trolling has been a disaster.

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