Heading up North tomorrow to Vilas County for a 3-day family reunion....just in time for the Summer Polar Vortex to hit (strangely, this may help some tourist places up there, since hanging at the lake will get replaced by going to bars, shopping and buying stuff).
But before I go, I wanted to show this excellent New Rule from Bill Maher, especially the ender (which starts at 2:12). While Maher wrongfully tries to take credit with coining the term "zombie lies" (I've heard Krugman use this and similar phrases for years), he rightfully points out that pretty much all Republicans have these days are chanting lies that have been disproven outside of right-wing bubble world. Maher focuses on Obamacare, but it also goes into the fallacies of trickle-down economics and similar GOP faith-based garbage that should get them kicked out of any legitimate Green Room, but for some reason does not.
I had a Twitter exchange with some idiot TeaBag from the 262 today who claimed that Minnesota's surplus (noted in this previous post) was proof that they "were taxing too much" and that tax cuts were the solution to this "problem." After slamming my head on my desk, I reminded the person that this approach of blowing surpluses on tax cuts has been tried (examples include Bush 2001, Walker 2013-14), and it has failed miserably, resulting in subpar job growth and budget deficits, and that perhaps saving funds for a rainy day was a wiser choice.
But somehow these idiots keep beLIEving that if taxes get cut, somehow their lottery ticket will come in, or that they'll be chosen to become part of the "inner circle", and they'll live happily ever after. And they cling to those zombie lies and fantasies despite nearly 35 years of proof that cutting taxes on the rich and corporate just encourages hoarding of profits and productivity, and has been a main driver of the Gilded Age-levels of inequality that we see today. What a bunch of suckers.
Kansas is another example of the tax cut lie.
ReplyDeleteBut as you point out, the media have been repeating that lie so long that it has become truthy.
The reality is that tax cuts go predominantly to the people who are LEAST interested in sharing any of it by creating new demand or trickling it down. There is ONE thing the 1% want to trickle on us, and it's not green, it's yellow.