The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party?

Well maybe. But I'm not sure I agree with the logic. Tis Dana Nuccitelli, in the Graun. Specificailly, DN is comparing the scientific consensus on GW ("97%") with economists attitudes to the GOP tax plan. And look! Among the experts who took a position either way, there was a 96% consensus that the plan would not substantially grow the economy more than the status quo, and a 100% consensus that it would substantially increase the national debt. See; there's the number 96%, that's almost 97%, so it is practically the same thing! Well, no.

The 97% for GW is the consensus on the underlying science. If you asked instead for consensus on policy responses to GW, you'd get a much lower degree of agreement. An appropriate concept to try to compare 97% to would be "are protectionist tariffs a bad idea?" To which "all" economists would agree; but of course no significant politicians are prepared to sign up to, much less any political party. On those grounds, I could just as well compare the Democrats¹ to denialists. But please don't think that I'm defending the GOP tax plan; as I've said elsewhere it isn't good.

But "not good" isn't the standard; to make DN correct it has to be "economic denialism", and I don't think he gets close to that. Increasing the national debt is one of those things that everyone decries, perhaps the GOP most vigourously, but time after time pols cave in order to buy whatever trinkets their current electorate demand²; at the moment, that's tax cuts. So if that's denialism, practically all pols are guilty. As to "would not substantially grow the economy more than the status quo", by many standards, that's a success; at least it won't shrink the economy. Or would it? We don't know, because the survey doesn't tell us. But again, a tax plan that simply doesn't make anything better is hardly a failure; plenty do worse.

Why do I care: there are lots of wrong things in the world, why pick this one to write about? Pfft, maybe I shouldn't. But it is a part of my long doomed campaign to help people get out more.

[Update: this (from George Will! Boo hiss!) more directly addresses the plan itself (or, in a sense, any plan):  The top 1 percent of earners supply 39 percent of income tax revenue, the top 10 percent supply 70 percent, the bottom 50 percent supply 3 percent, 60 percent of households pay either no income taxes (45 percent) or less than 5 percent of their income, and 62 percent of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. So, any tax cut significant to macroeconomic policy — any that might change incentives sufficiently to substantially change businesses’ and individuals’ behaviors — must be primarily a cut for the affluent.]

Notes

1. Or, I strongly suspect, a fair fraction of my commentators. Nothing new there, then:-)
2. Tell me I'm wrong. Point to Hillary campaigning for tax rises to reduce the national debt.

Refs

* Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors via mt.
* Is the GOP tax plan an unprecedented windfall for the wealthy? We look at 50 years of data to find out - WaPo
* Utopias in the Anthropocene - mt criticises progressives and Historicism, but doesn't reach the obvious conclusion.
* Observing for the long haul
* The Economist isn't keen on the budget, but even more on the manner of its passing.
* American Democracy Is in Crisis - Hillary Clinton in The Atlantic. Her analysis can be faulted.
* If the Popular Vote Had Been What Mattered, Would Hillary Have Won? by David Henderson