USA Today reports on a

USA Today reports on a survey of 58 “top economists”; the headline–“Economists Cautiously Optimistic”–sums up the data pretty accurately. The consensus was that unemployment will drop from 6% to 5.7% by the end of 2003 and the Dow will be at 9550, up 12%, by then. Well, I hope so. But the most interesting result to me was that 85% of the economists polled advocated cutting taxes. That seems like a rather stunning consensus, highlighting the fact that tax-raising liberals are a fringe group, outside the mainstream of economic opinion. You shouldn’t expect to read this in your local newspaper any time soon, however.