Megan McArdle Queefs On Archimedes: Blames Calculator For “Truncating” Her Retarded Misunderestimate Of Bush Tax Cuts For Rich…McArdle, Atlantic Monthly’s Business Blogger And Reputed M.B.A., Failed To Push Calculator Buttons Properly, Thereby Underreporting By 90 Percent How Much We Americans Would Gain By Repealing Bush Tax Cuts…Even So, McArdle Concludes: “My Point Still Stands”…A Friendly Word Of Advice To Messrs. Koch And The Rest Of The Free-Market Billionaires: Guys, Seriously, It’s Time To Ditch Your Lackey McArdle And Trade Up For A Competent Shill Who At Least Knows How To Push Calculator Buttons…Like, Say, A Chimpanzee… [HT: Hajime] - By

What You Should Know / July 21, 2010

Megan McArdle Queefs On Archimedes: Blames Calculator For “Truncating” Her Retarded Misunderestimate Of Bush Tax Cuts For Rich…McArdle, Atlantic Monthly’s Business Blogger And Reputed M.B.A., Failed To Push Calculator Buttons Properly, Thereby Underreporting By 90 Percent How Much We Americans Would Gain By Repealing Bush Tax Cuts…Even So, McArdle Concludes: “My Point Still Stands”…A Friendly Word Of Advice To Messrs. Koch And The Rest Of The Free-Market Billionaires: Guys, Seriously, It’s Time To Ditch Your Lackey McArdle And Trade Up For A Competent Shill Who At Least Knows How To Push Calculator Buttons…Like, Say, A Chimpanzee… [HT: Hajime]

www.theatlantic.com -- Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post has asked what we might be able to do for the economy if we repealed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and spent the money on something else. The result is a nice post full of graphs, but the answer seems to be "not much"--the very best estimate is that we get about $75 billion in added economic activity, or about $25 $250* for every person in the country.That, mind you, requires some pretty big assumptions.For starters, it assumes that the rather optimistic estimates of Mark Zandi about the size of the stimulus multiplier are correct.