Rebutted by a really angry Jonathan Chait: Mankiw's Misleading Defense Of Paul Ryan:
Former Bush economic advisor Greg Mankiw, writing in the New York Times, picks up the GOP talking point that Paul Ryan's plan to radically alter Medicare is really a pretty familiar bipartisan idea being blown out of proportion.... [L]iberals, who couldn't pass universal single payer health care, prefer giving people medical coverage through regulated private insurance subsidies than letting them go without coverage at all. That's why liberals support the Affordable Care Act vis a vis the status quo. But that is not the same thing as liberals agreeing that private insurance is better than single payer health care. Thus Mankiw's claim that the ACA demonstrates "agreement about the value of private competition" is clearly false.... Even if liberals did prefer to turn Medicare into a private insurance voucher, they would strongly object to his plan to make the vouchers grossly and increasingly inadequate to the cost of a plan. Likewise, conservatives agree that the rich should pay some taxes, but they would object to making them pay a 98% tax rate. Mankiw's logic would present this objection as hysterical partisanship -- we all agree the rich should pay taxes, so what's the problem?... Mankiw may share Ryan's ideological values and thus have reasons to wish to discredit critics of his program, but he should refrain from misleading people about the criticism.
Rebuttals to talking-points misinformation that I want to have at the forefront of my brain--for when I am surprised, as I will be, by an unexpected question from an unexpected direction while talking to reporters, phone callers, passers-by, radio interviewers, cable TV interviewers, etc....
