Every time I hear McCain talk about how he wants to cut “everyone’s” taxes (although, like a good Republican, a big majority of his cuts go to the very wealthy), I keep imagining him as Matthew Lesko, running a cheesy informercial about “Free Money!!!!!!” and how if you vote for him you can “get money for your invennnnnntion!!”
Essentially, this is “Trickle Down” Economics: Yell and holler about how everyone’s gonna get money, how the government can lower taxes (and therefore its available funds) and still spend more on wars and giveaways to corporations and everyone will be swimming in money as soon as it trickles down. And somehow we’re supposed to believe this won’t bankrupt our government.
You’d think after years of the GOP pushing this theory onto us under Reagan/Bush I and now 8 years of Bush II trickle down, we might have learned. Especially compared to the balanced budgets under Clinton who raised taxes only on the very wealthy (the same budgets that Conservatives swore when they were passed would cause economic collapse. Economics: You Fail It.)
I would pay good money to see John McCain wear a suit like this, though.
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Aside from the theoretical problems with supply-side economics, there’s an insurmountable empirical problem: if it actually worked to promote prosperity for everyone, we should have the most equitable distribution of income and property in the Western world, having lived under it for 19 of the last 27 years; but instead we have the most _unequal_ distribution. But consies never let facts stand in the way of their ideology.
I told you I met Lesko at Borders when I worked there, right?
NUT. JOB.
DON’T YOU WANT FREE MONEY TO PAY YER BILLLLLLLLLLLLLLZ!!??
If supply-side econ actually promoted prosperity for everyone, having lived under it for 19 of the last 27 years, we should have the most equitable distribution of property and income in the Western world; but instead we have the most _unequal_ distribution. But consies never let facts stand in the way of ideology. Supply-side is like a religion: it rejects the scientific method that other economists use and substitutes a pre-scientific approach that shuns empirical data and is based entirely on esoteric logical assumptions. Supply-side continues to exist only because the think-tanks that promote it are funded by the right; no real economist takes the shit seriously.
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