An editorial in Saturday's Times is headlined "Jeb Bush Needs Some New Economic Advice." It is an entire article devoted to attacking the dean of Columbia Business School, Glenn Hubbard, suggesting, essentially, that Mr. Bush should not listen to Mr. Hubbard.
It's hypocritical of the Times to fault Mr. Bush for taking advice from Mr. Hubbard. If Dean Hubbard is such a beyond-the-pale nincompoop, why then has the Times itself been inflicting his views on its readers via the Times' own op-ed page, which has published not one, not two, not three, not four, but at least five pieces authored by the same economist that the newspaper is now insisting Jeb Bush ignore. It's almost enough to make one suspect that the problem the Times has is not with Mr. Hubbard or his ideas but with Mr. Bush. That at least would help explain why the Times isn't recommending that readers of its op-ed page stop listening to Mr. Hubbard's ideas, or that applicants to business school choose to avoid Columbia. It also explains why the Times didn't launch editorial attacks against Mr. Hubbard when he was an adviser to Mitt Romney. The problem the Times has seems to be narrowly targeted to Mr. Hubbard's potential influence on Jeb Bush.
What is it that has the Times so bent out of shape about Mr. Hubbard? The newspaper complains that he "was an architect of the big tax cuts in 2001, which favored the wealthy." This is the same 2001 tax cut that included a "rebate" of $300 or $600 for most taxpayers, and that created a new 10% bracket at the low end. If anything the problem with the 2001 cut was that it was insufficiently aimed at the top marginal rates and at investment income and it was phased in too slowly. So President Bush had to go back in 2003 for more tax cuts.
The Times' main complaint, though, is that Mr. Hubbard, as the editorial puts it, "argued that 'compensation didn't stagnate.' He said that wages have been stuck because of global competition but that employer-provided benefits for health and retirement have increased." Well where possibly could Mr. Hubbard have gotten that idea? Perhaps it was an August 28, 2006 article by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt, reporting, "Until the last year, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by the rising value of benefits, especially health insurance, which caused overall compensation for most Americans to continue increasing." That article appeared in a newspaper called the New York Times, where Mr. Leonhardt is still employed.
I'm not exactly the president of the Glenn Hubbard fan club, though I did favorably review his 2013 book. In 2010 he signaled support for some tax increases as part of a debt and deficit reduction compromise, writing in the Times, "It is hard to share the view that no tax increase of any sort can figure in a fiscal solution." In a Wall Street Journal op-ed that same year, he advised the president and Congress to "propose significant, broad-based tax increases." But the point here isn't that Mr. Hubbard is perfect or that one needs to agree with everything he has ever written or said. The point is simply that the Times editorial is way off the mark in calling for Jeb Bush to disregard Mr. Hubbard's advice. On the basis of the editorial, Mr. Bush would better off disregarding the Times' advice.