Gregory Mankiw's view about Obama's proposal

Washington Post,March 8, 2009 on page A17:

President Obama's proposal to raise taxes at the top to further cut taxes at the bottom has one rationale: using the coercive power of the state to spread the wealth around. Such policy raises deep philosophical questions. It is the expansion of the public sector in case of dire need and market failures in the private sector.

Is Economics a moral science? It is the question of questions, an issue of issues with reflection of epistemology i.e. limit and validity of human knowledge.

I do remember the synthesis of the philosophy of Adam Smith with his "Theory of Moral Sentiments" and Ben Franklin's aphorism to be compared with Confucius and Mencius. Such an enormous academic pursuit would deserve the cooperation and collaboration of scholars in the West and in the East for years of research to find common ground in the name of globalization of economic philosophy between the East and the West in the 21st century.

Francis Shieh a.k.a. Xie Shihao on Sunday,March 8, 2009 at 1.38 p.m. at Bowie Public Library to share my views with readers at www.Blogger.com apropos of Sino-American Economics.