Comments on: An Obvious Distinction

By: Jama Adam

Jama Adam — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 15:47:53 +0000

can you explain the concept of "faithful representation" and "economic substance" and comment as to their importance.

By: Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 12:46:47 +0000

I'm confused ... why is this good? Seems like a lot of
envy and a lot of confusion about causality and a lot
of ideas for adding yet more distortions to an already
crazily complicated and distorting tax system.

Jeff Smith
Dept. of Economics
U. of Maryland

By: KB

KB — Sun, 06 Jul 2003 23:11:38 +0000

Edwards is the strongest candidate among the Dems now running to match up against Bush in a televised debate. Both his skill at framing the issues and his extaordinary ability to sell it to a television audience make him the only candidate to really concern Bush/Rove.

By: Michael Koenecke

Michael Koenecke — Sun, 06 Jul 2003 20:02:49 +0000

Nice speech, but typical Republican bashing. Frankly, it is idiotic demagoguery to credit Bill Clinton with the Nineties boom while claiming the corporate corruption is Bush's fault. Just as it is foolish to claim the Eighties economy was all due to Ronald Reagan. A case could be made for Alan Greenspan, but no other individual had significant influence. It is also idiot partisan demagoguery to claim our economic troubles are exclusively the fault of the current administration. Evidently Senator Edwards has forgotten that the downturn was well under way by the time Bush was elected, that Enron was quite cozy with the Clinton administration, or that little incident that occurred on 9/11/2001.

When you get right down to it, the only "positive" part of the speech is this: raise taxes. One simply *cannot* reduce the income tax burden of the poor in this country, since they're not paying any income tax to begin with. If he wants to address the taxes they *do* pay (i.e., Social Security and Medicare), he could do so, but that involves owning up to the fact that they are really wealth transfer mechanisms, not piggy banks we pay into and then withdraw from.

Further, Senator Edwards appears to be blissfully ignorant of the value of investment.

I admit that my knowledge of intellectual property law will never even approach that of Professor Lessig's, but if he thinks that is a realistic and insightful approach to tax policy he might consider consulting with your colleagues in the field.

By: Con Tendem

Con Tendem — Thu, 03 Jul 2003 17:44:00 +0000

Can you please provide a specific link to the speech you are referring to? This is the speech that is featured on his website, and unless you can write an incredibly brilliant commentary to explain how this speech is extraordinarily good I remain rather dissappointed and unpursuaded.

thanks.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Jul 2003 15:06:03 +0000

John Edwards speaks very well about the economy and I support a lot of what he says. Unfortunately, he only supports part of the constitution. Even though he says he is against socialism, his voting record does not agree with that. I want a candidate that supports people taking responsibility for themselves, not one that will make the world safe by spending more money on police.