georgeob1 wrote:I'm a bit weary of this debate, replete as it is with non sequitors, evasive restatements, confusion of necessary and sufficient criteria, and artful confusion of various affirmations & negations..
This one is also ironic.
Let's spin the discussion back to
this post for a second. The liberal author in the copy/paste noted a specific speciment of idiocy currently prevailing among Republicans:
Quote:Keep in mind, most of the GOP field, including Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, are on record believing in the Tax Fairy -- tax cuts can pay for themselves with increased revenue. It's transparent nonsense, but it helps explain why the Republican field doesn't even pretend to care about fiscal sanity.
The notion that not just are tax cuts good,
they will earn themselves back in increased revenues has practically become a litmus test, which any presidential candidate wanting to win must subscribe to. Giuliani went on record saying only Democrats dont believe in it.
That's a porky, of course, since economists overwhelmingly agree that, at the level of taxes you have in the US these days, this is nonsense. Tax cuts might encourage business activity, but no way do they earn themselves back in increased revenue. Even the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru admits as much.
George responded to Blatham's copy/paste with one of those broad-brush sketches of the nature of things globally. There are
some levels of taxes where the theory would hold true (just not, he omitted to mention, the current ones in the US); and besides, generally tax cutting is good and government spending should be curbed; and therefore, basically - I paraphrase - conservatives good, liberals bad.
Non sequitors, check; evasive restatements of the assertion at hand, check (no, the liberal author's assertion was
not that not that "tax cuts don't spur economic development," period); artful confusion of the specific assertion at hand, in which the Republican leaders are universally deemed to be wrong among economists, with some broader, more harmless thematic perspective, check.
I laid out the main straw man George used
in this post, but the thread moved on.
This does get my gander up [err, no, thats not the expression - but you know what I mean]. Basically, there is a repeating dynamic here.
On the one hand, you have Blatham, arguing the case that the Republican conservatives of today are fundamentally different - that is to say, more extreme and more detached from the "reality-based community" - than the Republicans/conservatives have traditionally been. Ergo, that there is something
specifically pernicious about the current, Bush/post-Bush era crop.
In response, you'll have Georgeob1 arguing that there is nothing new under the sun. Blatham's alarmism is of a somewhat hyperventilating kind, which is primarily explained by the fact that as a liberal, most any real conservative idea will seem alarming to him. In reality, what you have is the same regular conservative/liberal opposition as always, and as such, the conservatives' position is overall the wiser one, much as it always was. There is nothing specifically.. well,
specific about the current situation, so rest assured.
This is all fine and dandy and makes for an enjoyable enough to and fro to read, in which I often find myself somewhere in the middle, if leaning more towards Blatham than George. But the proof is in the pudding. Here is a concrete example of something that the Republican frontrunners are practically forced to sign up to, and that goes beyond what standard conservative fare has been. It is arguably evidence for the Republicans having become extremist or fundamentalist, detaching themselves from mainstream economic science.
One could bring other examples: for instance, the way it is considered suicide for a Republican now (ever since "read my lips" and Bush Sr's subsequent defeat, I suppose) to propose or ever have implemented tax hikes. See how Huckabee's slammed for having raised taxes as Governor to pay for roads and the like. Never mind that Ronald Reagan, the ideological patron saint invoked by these conservatives, did much the same thing as Governor. He followed major tax cuts with partial tax increases as President as well, when proposing the equivalent now would be political suicide for a Republican. But the illustration for Blatham's case that the Republicans are specifically nuttier now, which George apparead to duck, was the belief in the self-financing tax cut.
The embrace of the idea that implementing tax cuts - in this era, in America - simply pays for itself in increased revenues is not just a technical detail; there's a reason why those politicians are pushing it so hard. It implies that tax cuts are not just good as a question of principle, no matter what spending cuts they might necessitate - as George would typically argue - but that they don't even actually constitute any kind of such trade-off dilemma in the first place, because you
can have it both: tax cuts AND increased revenues. As a result, the embrace of this bogus idea has played a key role in creating what the author of that original copy/paste called the current "fiscal insanity" of the Republicans.
