Here come the inevitable smears from the Left for my Wall Street Journal op-ed on Friday. Leading the charge is the anonymous coward who blogs at Angry Bear under the pseudonym "PGL." His comments are long on attack -- the word "stupid" appears several times, and I'm compared to Ann Coulter -- and short on substance. He claims I'm cherry-picking my quotations from various economists whose work supports my view, and distorting what they actually said. His proof? Extensive quotations and analysis from an economist whom I never even mentioned (actually, only from the abstract of one of his papers -- PGL probably didn't have access to the text, and wouldn't understand it if he did). So there's some quibbling about how quickly the effects I talk about would take place (I never talked about the timing one way or the other), and some quibbling about changes to taxes other than capital taxes (I never said there would be none).  But no evidence that I misrepresented my Larry Summers quote -- in fact, PGL simply repeats it. No mention whatsoever of my Treynor or Lucas quotes.

The reality is that there is a broad consensus among economists that taxation of capital is inefficient. Sure, you can find some who don't agree. But so what? As far as the center of gravity in thought among serious economists is concerned, the inefficiency of capital taxation is settled science.

PGL is way over his head on this one, and is rather amusingly making quite a fool of himself. Life lesson for PGL -- why do you think Mark Thoma suggested this particular topic to you, instead of taking it on himself?