can’t resist jumping into the ongoing debate between New York Times economic columnists David Leonhardt and Paul Krugman. David worries that there are troubling similarities between the current Greek debt crisis and huge ongoing deficits in the U.S. “Nonsense,” replies Paul, who argues that the two nations have about as much in common as souvlaki and cheeseburgers. My take: The U.S. is not Greece. But this does not mean we cannot learn lessons from a nation that is marked by both great beauty and regular bouts of fiscal madness.

In 1983, Ronald Reagan proposed eliminating the federal corporate income tax. Last week, Michael Boskin took up the charge. I have another idea: Get rid of the state corporate income tax. State corporate income taxes are lineal descendents of the federal version and share many of its flaws. They doubly tax income at the firm and individual level, penalize businesses that organize as corporations, and reward debt versus equity finance. They also are very sensitive to the business cycle, and tend to plunge when the economy sags.

Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) introduced a climate bill yesterday that, among other things, establishes a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases. The virtue of a cap-and-trade program is that it establishes a market price for a pollutant and allows flexibility within and across regulated entities in how to reduce emissions. But any cap-and-trade program must decide whether to allocate the pollution allowances for free or through a government auction, as well as how to distribute both the allowances and any auction revenue.