The economy isn't a big tank of water, arguing for "pumping billions into the economy" makes no sense.
The economy isn't a big tank of water, arguing for "pumping billions into the economy" makes no sense.
That's some pretty circular logic. The economy is doing good, which proves tax cuts were a good idea. How do you prove that? Well obviously tax cuts are good for the economy, and since the economy is doing better lately, they must be working!
The economy is nothing more than a .com with a massive amount of VC capital pumped into it, just waiting for the moment of insolvency. Anybody who doesn't believe that has their head in the sand.
Bowfinger
Lifer
- Nov 17, 2002
- 15,776
- 392
- 126
Yay for us! We're still digging ourselves into a hole, but only half as fast as before.
I guess that's the magic of lowered expectations.
I assume this is a new BushCo propaganda point?. This is the third thread in the last two weeks where I've seen that misdirection floated.
The plain, simple, inarguable fact is that federal revenues reach record levels almost every year. In fact, the only notable exception over the last 50 years has been the first four years of the Bush administration. From 1955-2000, federal revenue hit new record highs 91% of the time -- 41 out of 45 years -- through good economies and bad, after tax increases and tax cuts alike. Your favorite villain Clinton had eight straight years of record revenues, in spite your whining about his "big tax increases". In 2000, the economy weakened ... and then Bush cut taxes. The result? An unprecedented four-year string of lower revenues, finally ending in 2005.
So, once and for all, there is no objective data supporting the free lunch tax cuts myth. It is a claim of religious faith, not a statement of sound economic analysis. If anything, the data from GWB's term tends to suggest exactly the opposite, that cutting taxes reduces revenue.
You know what's sad, John, is that our democracy may be at a point where you pretty much have to 'feed numbers' to win elections.
I wonder if we are at a point that the issues are just so complicated, that the majority of voters are going to make their decisions based on some simplified mythical set of beliefs.
They'll certainly have some truth mixed in, but it may be between right-wingers who believe "Bush is a good man who is trying to do the right thing", "you have to basically trust the government", "if they say we have to fight the war there so they don't come kill Americans here, then they're right", "the liberals just want to take our money and give it to poor people so the can sit on their butts and they hate America", and so on; or you may have many voters on the other side who see the republicans as just evil, who need to be scared too, whether it's predictions of $5 gas (assuming they're groundless predictions), or who rush to conclusions that Hastert knew full well Foley was trying to seduce minors and did not do anything about it, or who don't recognize the idealistic portion of the neocon agenda, however misguided, where they *think* they're trying to spread democracy around the world for the good of mankind.
Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that the truth and facts are a small factor in election results. Rather, it becomes a competition like an advertising campaign. The dangers and power of this were portrayed in Orwell's 1984, by trying to show how words can dominate people's thinking even when completely false - 'War is Peace' etc.
There is no shortage you can see in this very forum of people who post, with good intentions, things that argue why their side is right where the argument has flaws - driven by ideological loyalties people are often unaware they even have. Opinions are usually not formed largely by any objective analysis, it seems.
I think that 'thought experiments are helpful in understanding this; imagine yourself talking in 1961 to a mob of perfectly nice American people in the south who just happen to be screaming against letting a black student attend their college. Imagine you pulled one of the mob ot the side for a chat. In theory, you could reason with them, try to explain to them the principles of equality and the wrongs of racism, and persuade them that they were in the wrong, actually fighting for evil, not for states' rights in its legitimate form, not for whatever other misguided 'principle' they thought they were fighting for, but you would likely get nowhere however good you were at explaining the issue. Even though that person a few years later, after integration were forced, might change their mind and have a hard time understanding why they had believed as they had previously. And it's rare people are forced to deal with challenged to those beliefs that way.
Why is that? It's because of the way beliefs have components which are not rational. In fact, most arguments I see consist of two sides arguing different things at each other, with unstated beliefs determining their opinions which are not part of the debate.
For example, each side seems convinced the other is guilty of spending too much. You would think that'd be easy to determine; it's not. For example, one factor that affects both sides are different spendind priorities; the democrats think the republicans have an infinite appetite for wasteful military spending (as much as the rest of the world combined!) trying to replace their defective abilities in diplomacy with guns to get their way, and the republicans think the democrats have an infinite appetite for social spending which is both impossible for eliminating the poverty they want to, and even destructive at causing reduced producticity which enriches society; they need look no further than the US's relative wealth and relatively low social spending to confirm their view that social spending would destroy the wealth of the US. But put those aside - there's more.
Let's take a republican. He has a mantra given to him by his side, 'tax and spend democrats', which just by his side saying it to him shows that they are opposed ot that sort of thing. The idea that it could be a big lie where they actually favor high spending is hard to consider, and it's accetped that they favor low spending. There are plenty of examples of wasteful spending to go around, and they tend to say when they see a democratic one, "there's *another* outrage!", and when they see a republican one, they say that's too bad but they still support republicans becasue they see it as an exception to the policy of favoring low spending - an aberration. All the republicans need him to do is see them as the lesser of evils to get his vote. I don't think there's a republican out there who would say there's no wasteful spending by republicans - but most will still say that the party has a *policy*, a principle, an ideology of low spending, and that keeps them loyal for a very long time. It affects how they parse the facts.
It's why democrats can show huge spending by republicans and get frustrated when they see the facts roll off the republican like water off a duck - "but you say you want low spending, and they're spending a lot, how can you hold a contradictory view!"
Of course it's worse - the republicans also have things like "you just hate Bush", "you have BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome)" etc. to explain away the democrats' facts.
It's hard for people to reconsider long held comfortable opinions. They want a party that supports low spending, and you are trying to take it away. If they did agree the republicans are not a party of low spending, what the hell are they supposed to do then? They'd suddenly feel alienated from their own country with no party they agree with, and that's unpleasant.
So they have little interest in dealing with the facts. They want the nice easy belief that they are on the side of the party which supports low spending, and to keep it easy they don't question too much how terrible the democrats are. It's easier to just say they're wrong.
There are propagandists who understand all this and feed it, and facts don't much get in their way, because with complicated issues there are plenty of facts to go around for different arguments.
So what we really have is a contest of propaganda and advertising, funded by interests whether they're corporations or well-intentioned citizens, and the process gets so corrupt with ads of people in slow motion flag hugging with patriotic music that the people don't trust any info, but they're still influenced, especially by negative ads.
So, John, when you argue about unbelievable numbers on both sides, well, the issue is much larger. How can you get people to be willing to deal with their orientation, their party identification, being threatened? You yourself have failed to acknolwedge some pretty clear refutations of your arguments, in my view, I suspect for similar reasons.
Don't take that too badly, I see you as more open than most to some challenge.
You can make progres with people if you can spend time and go through issues, but few Americans do that, most are light consumers of the propaganda who think that as long as they vote for the party they think has their values, they've been a good citizen.
With the huge mercenary industry out there who is paid to manipulate public opinion for sponsors, no wonder things are a mess and democracy is not functioning with an informed citizenry.
Think about it - the scandal of Tom DeLay harming thousands of poor women who were in slave-like conditions in exchange for a check from the exploiters had far less impact on the voters than the Foley scandal that he had some sex chat with 16 year olds. That's not a healthy democracy. It's media-driven democracy.
There's an old saying that one person being killed is tragedy and a million killed is a statistic; it seems similar that the public is quite irrational where hundreds of billlions of dollars misused is ignored while a scandal of a small sum - say, a congressional pay raise - can cause much more voter anger.
Let's pick on you for just one example. One of the legitimate arguments made in this thread is that the Bush administration has inflated its achievment in deficit reduction by picking an absurdly high starting number which was never a real deficit figure to say it cut from.
The proper response from you, I think, is to say the argument is correct, the Bush administration is trying to distort the truth, and to agree to use a more accurate set of numbers for the discussion. Instead, not only have I not seen the frequent 'that's wrong but democrats do something too' response; I haven't seen you acknoweldge the point at all.
So, what is the discussion doing when reasonable points are not responded to? It's just people typing arguments for their side and calling it a discussion? Few people are willing to question their party identity for a discussion. Even moderates are blindly locked into a 'they hate extremists on both sides' view usually.
Democracy works as well as people ask honest questions and look for the answers. We have too little of that today, when the citizens are spoon fed. Not all are, but it takes 51% (or close) to win an election.
You know my recommendation to improve things - corporate money out of the system, making the elections not dominated by multi-million dollar propaganda. Americans' belief that the propaganda can't change elections are contradicted by about every election statistic in the country showing a very high correlation between spending and winning elections.
But that's not the whole issue by any means; the 1961 mob in my earlier example did not have their views set by any propaganda campaign, but by other things. There was no fixing that problem any time soon within the state - it took the fact that most of the nation saw it differently and forced change to address it.
What happens when it's most people in the nation who hold the 'wrong' views and there's no one to force a fix?
I wonder if we are at a point that the issues are just so complicated, that the majority of voters are going to make their decisions based on some simplified mythical set of beliefs.
They'll certainly have some truth mixed in, but it may be between right-wingers who believe "Bush is a good man who is trying to do the right thing", "you have to basically trust the government", "if they say we have to fight the war there so they don't come kill Americans here, then they're right", "the liberals just want to take our money and give it to poor people so the can sit on their butts and they hate America", and so on; or you may have many voters on the other side who see the republicans as just evil, who need to be scared too, whether it's predictions of $5 gas (assuming they're groundless predictions), or who rush to conclusions that Hastert knew full well Foley was trying to seduce minors and did not do anything about it, or who don't recognize the idealistic portion of the neocon agenda, however misguided, where they *think* they're trying to spread democracy around the world for the good of mankind.
Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that the truth and facts are a small factor in election results. Rather, it becomes a competition like an advertising campaign. The dangers and power of this were portrayed in Orwell's 1984, by trying to show how words can dominate people's thinking even when completely false - 'War is Peace' etc.
There is no shortage you can see in this very forum of people who post, with good intentions, things that argue why their side is right where the argument has flaws - driven by ideological loyalties people are often unaware they even have. Opinions are usually not formed largely by any objective analysis, it seems.
I think that 'thought experiments are helpful in understanding this; imagine yourself talking in 1961 to a mob of perfectly nice American people in the south who just happen to be screaming against letting a black student attend their college. Imagine you pulled one of the mob ot the side for a chat. In theory, you could reason with them, try to explain to them the principles of equality and the wrongs of racism, and persuade them that they were in the wrong, actually fighting for evil, not for states' rights in its legitimate form, not for whatever other misguided 'principle' they thought they were fighting for, but you would likely get nowhere however good you were at explaining the issue. Even though that person a few years later, after integration were forced, might change their mind and have a hard time understanding why they had believed as they had previously. And it's rare people are forced to deal with challenged to those beliefs that way.
Why is that? It's because of the way beliefs have components which are not rational. In fact, most arguments I see consist of two sides arguing different things at each other, with unstated beliefs determining their opinions which are not part of the debate.
For example, each side seems convinced the other is guilty of spending too much. You would think that'd be easy to determine; it's not. For example, one factor that affects both sides are different spendind priorities; the democrats think the republicans have an infinite appetite for wasteful military spending (as much as the rest of the world combined!) trying to replace their defective abilities in diplomacy with guns to get their way, and the republicans think the democrats have an infinite appetite for social spending which is both impossible for eliminating the poverty they want to, and even destructive at causing reduced producticity which enriches society; they need look no further than the US's relative wealth and relatively low social spending to confirm their view that social spending would destroy the wealth of the US. But put those aside - there's more.
Let's take a republican. He has a mantra given to him by his side, 'tax and spend democrats', which just by his side saying it to him shows that they are opposed ot that sort of thing. The idea that it could be a big lie where they actually favor high spending is hard to consider, and it's accetped that they favor low spending. There are plenty of examples of wasteful spending to go around, and they tend to say when they see a democratic one, "there's *another* outrage!", and when they see a republican one, they say that's too bad but they still support republicans becasue they see it as an exception to the policy of favoring low spending - an aberration. All the republicans need him to do is see them as the lesser of evils to get his vote. I don't think there's a republican out there who would say there's no wasteful spending by republicans - but most will still say that the party has a *policy*, a principle, an ideology of low spending, and that keeps them loyal for a very long time. It affects how they parse the facts.
It's why democrats can show huge spending by republicans and get frustrated when they see the facts roll off the republican like water off a duck - "but you say you want low spending, and they're spending a lot, how can you hold a contradictory view!"
Of course it's worse - the republicans also have things like "you just hate Bush", "you have BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome)" etc. to explain away the democrats' facts.
It's hard for people to reconsider long held comfortable opinions. They want a party that supports low spending, and you are trying to take it away. If they did agree the republicans are not a party of low spending, what the hell are they supposed to do then? They'd suddenly feel alienated from their own country with no party they agree with, and that's unpleasant.
So they have little interest in dealing with the facts. They want the nice easy belief that they are on the side of the party which supports low spending, and to keep it easy they don't question too much how terrible the democrats are. It's easier to just say they're wrong.
There are propagandists who understand all this and feed it, and facts don't much get in their way, because with complicated issues there are plenty of facts to go around for different arguments.
So what we really have is a contest of propaganda and advertising, funded by interests whether they're corporations or well-intentioned citizens, and the process gets so corrupt with ads of people in slow motion flag hugging with patriotic music that the people don't trust any info, but they're still influenced, especially by negative ads.
So, John, when you argue about unbelievable numbers on both sides, well, the issue is much larger. How can you get people to be willing to deal with their orientation, their party identification, being threatened? You yourself have failed to acknolwedge some pretty clear refutations of your arguments, in my view, I suspect for similar reasons.
Don't take that too badly, I see you as more open than most to some challenge.
You can make progres with people if you can spend time and go through issues, but few Americans do that, most are light consumers of the propaganda who think that as long as they vote for the party they think has their values, they've been a good citizen.
With the huge mercenary industry out there who is paid to manipulate public opinion for sponsors, no wonder things are a mess and democracy is not functioning with an informed citizenry.
Think about it - the scandal of Tom DeLay harming thousands of poor women who were in slave-like conditions in exchange for a check from the exploiters had far less impact on the voters than the Foley scandal that he had some sex chat with 16 year olds. That's not a healthy democracy. It's media-driven democracy.
There's an old saying that one person being killed is tragedy and a million killed is a statistic; it seems similar that the public is quite irrational where hundreds of billlions of dollars misused is ignored while a scandal of a small sum - say, a congressional pay raise - can cause much more voter anger.
Let's pick on you for just one example. One of the legitimate arguments made in this thread is that the Bush administration has inflated its achievment in deficit reduction by picking an absurdly high starting number which was never a real deficit figure to say it cut from.
The proper response from you, I think, is to say the argument is correct, the Bush administration is trying to distort the truth, and to agree to use a more accurate set of numbers for the discussion. Instead, not only have I not seen the frequent 'that's wrong but democrats do something too' response; I haven't seen you acknoweldge the point at all.
So, what is the discussion doing when reasonable points are not responded to? It's just people typing arguments for their side and calling it a discussion? Few people are willing to question their party identity for a discussion. Even moderates are blindly locked into a 'they hate extremists on both sides' view usually.
Democracy works as well as people ask honest questions and look for the answers. We have too little of that today, when the citizens are spoon fed. Not all are, but it takes 51% (or close) to win an election.
You know my recommendation to improve things - corporate money out of the system, making the elections not dominated by multi-million dollar propaganda. Americans' belief that the propaganda can't change elections are contradicted by about every election statistic in the country showing a very high correlation between spending and winning elections.
But that's not the whole issue by any means; the 1961 mob in my earlier example did not have their views set by any propaganda campaign, but by other things. There was no fixing that problem any time soon within the state - it took the fact that most of the nation saw it differently and forced change to address it.
What happens when it's most people in the nation who hold the 'wrong' views and there's no one to force a fix?
I think we've probably been at that point for some time now. It's just that with the improvments in communications (radio, TV, bigger and bigger media conglomerates) they've gotten much better at "feeding" us the numbers/info/what have you.
So what happens over the next few years as the drug benefit ramps up, SS surpluses begin to fall, more people enter retirement, Congress adjusts the AMT . . . oh yeah and interest rates increase on that national debt that's grown by nearly $3T since Bush took office?
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