Greg Mankiw employs a parable about ten men dividing a bar tab to illustrate the absurdity of the poor complaining about “tax cuts for the rich.”
In response, Matt Yglesias chastises right-of-center economic pundits for relying on generalized anecdotes, while conceding that we shouldn’t go so far as Sweden in soaking the rich. This, in return, unleashes a groundswell of comments asking variants of, “What’s so bad about Sweden, anyhow?”
Ross Douthat responds to Matt’s main point and argues that conservatives rely on anecdote about these things because “when it comes to tax policy, conservatives have long been selling what is, I think, a fundamentally counterintuitive idea,” albeit a logical one when explained properly. Thus far, he has not been harangued by other bloggers or the commentariat.
