It's late:

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I'm buzzed.
Here goes:

I hate the meme "tax cuts don't cost anything" it's absurd.

It costs at the very least one thing.

It costs us the ability to fully fund social programs and keep a balanced budget. It costs us the ability to spend the non-taxed money on social welfare programs; things that make the entire country strong.

/fin

Comments

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Weird how his spelling, grammer, capitilization, and punctuation are much better than normal!?!

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

When I was drunk on irc, no one could ever tell. I just typed slower.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, this is going to end in tears.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Or rather, snores. (OP's going to bed, right?)

One person does not a meme make.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell they don't "cost" anything because the government doesn't have to physical (metaphorically) take cash out of its wallet. It only doesn't "cost" anything if your thinking purely in the space where money is coming in and out, rather than at the end result. It's a ridiculous semantic argument that does nothing but change the subject.

It's a logical fallacy known as equivocation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation) and should be given as much respect as me saying you're a doodie head (that's an ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem).

This one person "meme" usually comes with a whole barnyard of logical fallacies.

Re: One person does not a meme make.

[russj.livejournal.com]

I dislike the word "meme".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Re: One person does not a meme make.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

geh, I wish it were just one person.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

It costs us the ability to fully fund social programs and keep a balanced budget.

That assumes we need to fund social programs to begin with. That assumes we're spending 100% of our money efficiently and realistically.

As this post is really just an indirect jab at me, it's true that the "tax cuts don't cost anything" in the context of a budget, which is always when I say it. You want to talk other types of costs, let's do it, but let's do it honestly.

[reflaxion.livejournal.com]

Strictly in the context of a budget, the cost of tax cuts is the potential revenue that would have been taken in otherwise.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, I'm sorry; you are right. Poor people don't need heating; poor mothers don't need food for their kids; public schools should be shut down; the fire-dept should be privatized, and public libraries are a total disaster.


I forget, yes, social programs don't need funding.

Wait.

WHAT?

[blueduck37.livejournal.com]

I see we're still living in magical math land where tax cuts don't affect budgets or deficits.

That's why tax cuts are so beautiful and awesome... they're magic! Accio tax cuts!

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

If you're talking to *cough* certain conservatives, its very important you totally ignore the value of a healthy society and the economic returns from businesses operating in that sort of environment, or your words will go right over their heads.

Bah!!

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Sure, just blame conservatives.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

Considering you started with a false premise; "social welfare prograsms make the entire country strong". Also considering I'm the 4th mod to comment on this without anything being said, I would suggest that the next time you are "buzzed" you wait until you can fill out a post a little better....it was a good start.

By the way, How many times do you have to be told. it's not a revenue problem, it's a spending problem? ;)

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

prograsms eh? I need to enroll in those!


Also, as far as the government is concerned, a revenue problem and a spending problem have similar problems- lack of money. Fact is though, the government *does* need to spend money to exist, and social programs *do* make our lives better, and spending on infrastructure/economy/social does in fact improve business environment. There does need to be a balance, but the best times in our country, the rich payed way more in taxes then they do now and miraculously they were still rich, I think they'll survive.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Wait wait, don't delete it yet. It hasn't devolved into shit, just some nonsense. Besides I'm interested to learn more about the purpose of taxes. :D

Ps. I'd like to subscribe to those social prograsms.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Why do you hate public libraries and teachers and firemen and cops and roads and WIC?

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Ok wonderful, you have recognized the concept of opportunity cost. Now lets turn it around and look at the opportunity cost of NOT cutting the taxes? Are you going to try to argue that that has absolutely not cost?

Further what is the opportunity cost of the very existence of those social welfare programs? Again, do you really think it is nothing? This is not to say that the programs opportunity cost exceeds their value or even that their total cost (opportunity + monetary cost) exceeds their value but your argument just completely ignores that they have opportunity costs and asserts that they are things that make the entire country strong.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I'd be glad that next time you add some more substance to your buzzed posts. Please. I'm saying this as a general reader (see, no mod icon), who has somehow gotten used to quite a different stuff here. Maybe I'm spoiled. You got my point though, I assume.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Is there no value to keeping it simple (silly)?

But yeah, I'll try to make my next post better.
I have some research I'm doin, when it's done, you'll be happy, methinks.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

It's not just a meme. It's an ideological engineering tool.

Expressing the idea of a tax cut's 'cost' is to express concern for the consequences of a tax cut. Consequences = Cost. This is a simple mental association clear in the common mind and embodied in such economic terms as "opportunity cost".


Some people are trying to re-wire the culture such that the ideas of "tax cuts" and "consequences" are not so intimately connected, so that they can muster political will to implement tax cuts without awaking any reflexive resistance... any urge to study the issue and make a considered judgement.

It's just one arrow in the cowardly conservative quiver that is the "starve the beast" tactic. Cut taxes, and then moan about debt so as to cut services. Get the brownie points for a tax cut, but pass the buck on services lost, either by creating debt, or by acting like the services-cut was a necessary act of nature.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"It's just one arrow in the cowardly conservative quiver that is the "starve the beast" tactic. Cut taxes, and then moan about debt so as to cut services. Get the brownie points for a tax cut, but pass the buck on services lost, either by creating debt, or by acting like the services-cut was a necessary act of nature"

I have to warn you, you are running into some serious risk of Villain Decay (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainDecay) with your "Conservatives want to starve government mantra.

I mean...
Who expanded government spending more Bush or Clinton?
Who collected more in tax revenues even after accounting for inflation, Bush or Clinton?
Who created the largest expansion of Medicare in it's history, Bush or Clinton?


I mean can anyone find ANY instance in the last 40 years where "conservatives" have actually produced a net cut in spending, or a net reduction in tax revenues**?

** = important distinction for a certain collage history student. Before you mention a cut to marginal tax rates grab the nearest 2 x 4 and smack yourself repeatedly in the head because a cut in top level marginal tax rates <> a cut in actual taxes collected. Further do not bother with any "projected" cost documentation from the CBO, I am looking for factual documentation on what actually happened that directly ties a drop in government tax revenue collected to specific actions of tax policy.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Well done, armchair warrior.

You don't care about the issue of taxes. All you're aiming at with this post is to take a cheap shot at Jeff because of some discussion you had with him before, then make people laugh at him and then feel good about yourself.

Jeff is probably one of those very very few persons I can't find a single issue to agree on with, and I've often found myself hitting my head on the desk after participating in or witnessing conversations of his. But what you did here is low.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say you've just earned a trintillion cool points in my book.
(Blushes and runs away).

jest sayin

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

the deficit far outstrips the tax cuts.