I’m going to be on CNN’s Your $$$$$ this weekend (it airs Saturday at 1 p.m. ET and Sunday at 3 p.m.) talking with Ali Velshi and John Rutledge about the economy and the presidential campaign. Rutledge is what I’d call a legit supply-sider, a guy who believes fervently that low taxes on capital are crucial to economic growth, but doesn’t claim that tax cuts magically pay for themselves.
Anyway, we taped the chat this morning, so I already know what happened. I thought it went pretty well, although nobody was ever entirely clear on whether I ought to be looking at Ali, who was sitting next to me, or straight into the camera, so I probably come across as a bit shifty eyed (Rutledge was looking into a camera out in California). As for the content of the conversation, the main memory I have is that it all seemed reasonable and substantive except that Rutledge kept using the phrase “class war” every time I talked about income inequality. I finally kinda blew up at that. It’s not “class war” to discuss the fact that income increases have been skewing toward the very very top of the income distribution. And dismissing it as such–while it has worked for a couple of decades–is now starting to feel like a really bad political move.