Oh, good Lord! Herbert Hoover here we come.

"and as a result government spending has grown much more slowly during the long era of GOP dominance than during the decades previously (indeed, it's barely grown at all as a percentage of GDP)."

Government spending has slowed, but so has average wage growth. They are both results of the upwardly redistributionist policies of Republicans. Concertrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands is immoral politics and bad for the overall health of the national economy, no matter what Milton Friedman says.

Have I slipped into the "Twilight Zone"? The GOP has done more harm with their tax cuts for the rich than could have been imagined. They've made an art out of convincing blue collar, middle income Americans that cutting taxes for the very wealthy was in their best interests. That has been the con job of the century. To say that the GOP strategy has been good for the country is stunning. Look around and tell me the country is in good shape. Trickle-down has been a boon to the very rich and a catastrophy for everyone else. I don't believe a "Balanced Budget" is such a good thing, either.

Lets not forget people, that government spending creates jobs. Not government jobs, private sector jobs. Thats Americans working and paying taxes that eventually help us all. I'll bet NOLA wishes we had a surplus. I'll bet Minneapolis wishes we had a surplus. I'll bet every school in the country {you know, where most of our kids are suppost to be getting an education} wishes we had a surplus. I'll bet those blue collar, middle income workers wish we had a surplus. Especially since many of them are no longer middle income.

It's time we started living in the real world again people!

at some point in the maturing process doesn't one, even libertarians and paleo-conservatives, ever move beyond the text-book models that work so well in the classroom and not so well (not at all well) out here? we have been inundated and governed by people schooled like Douthat, who never move beyond their fatuous prescriptions (cut taxes, shrink government, vouchers for public schools, privatize social security, unleash the creativity and innovation of American capitalism by reducing taxes, reward our "productive" members of society). The reality is that George Bush had his father's friends bail out his corporate failures repeatedly, then market himself as a champion of the capitalist system where the cream rises to the top. But Mr.Douthat, in capitalism (and every other system) despite the few slogans you merrily sell to us all, shit rises as well as cream. And slogans gleaned from Ayn Rand or Uncle Miltie have the same hollow sound and insipidity as sloganeering from the sources you dislike.

In the last decade of his life Wanniski wrote some good antiwar columns. He was the first (to me anyway) to point out the disaster that was John Bolton. He was definitely an eccentric.

Heavy taxes? Are you kidding me? What planet are you living on?

When they realize the schools their kids are going to can't teach and the bridges they're driving over could collapse or the tunnels. When the roads they drive on are so bad that their cars need more repair work or tire replaced. When a tornado hits and there's no help available. When their fire departments are undermanned. When their police departments don't have the resourses to deal with crime. When federal agencies that many Americans count on to keep from going under are gone and they are forced into crime just to support their families. When 2% of the nation have 98% of the wealth and the rest of us are nothing but a servant class I think they will.

This IS the real world we live in, not some GOP fantasy land.

Okay, now that's just mean. Look at the picture. Look at this guy. Look at the pissant beard that tells us how proud he is of finally being able to shave. He's probably 22 maybe 23, given to feeling his whiskers, experimenting with trims of beard. Look at his face round with baby fat. Here he is, he's read a few books, gone to a few keggers, maybe drunk too much once or twice. He's sat there polishing off a six pack with some buddies at the beach, looking up at the sky and a bright future ahead.

Has he ever held a job? A real job, you know, something that demanded actual work, physical labour, committment. Something that mattered because he needed it to pay for a home, for a family. Probably not. From the way he writes, from the way he looks, he's slid through life, as if it's been lubricated for him, never challenged, never confronted, never actually having to think, to live. He's lived a sheltered existence of existential comfort, and this has fooled him into thinking he knows something about anything.

And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with being a pudgy doughboy, living off his parents, getting by by brown nosing, feeding the vulgar buffoonish ideas of his naive ignorance to well healed infinitely more cynical, infinitely more vicious, benefactors who infect him with their cruelty. But he himself is not cruel, merely shallow and mindless an untouched by life.

And here you come along, Jalmari, and you take this lumpen unformed clay with his pseudo intellectual self satisfaction, and you WHACK HIM WITH FEMA. Jesus H. Christ, that's cruel. That's mean. He's not qualified, he doesn't have the tools to understand FEMA or Katrina, or the corpses floating in the water. He doesn't know from corpses, all he knows is video games, and subconsciously, he doesn't understand why there's no reset button.

There's nothing wrong with this boy-child that growing older and growing wiser can't cure. He may remain ignorant and buffoonish all his life, his choice. But we can't force him to become a man. He will come to maturity, to an awareness of the implacability of real life on his own, or he won't come to it at all.

To throw the reality of corpses and consequences into his uncomprehending, unformed face smacks of the simple cruelty of brutally whipping a dog hours after its peed on the carpet. He just doesn't have the equipment to appreciate what you are saying.

Maybe someday he will. But then he'll not be this pseudo-clever young flabby lump we see.

Or maybe, someday he'll just harden and dessicate into those withered hateful nobodies. In which case, he'll have earned scorn and contempt.

But right now? He's a nonentity.

So have a care with how ugly and intense the reality you rub his nose in.

sort of like the heavy taxes Boehner and the boys willingly pay for the occupation of Iraq and then patriotically proclaim it is a "small price to pay" for freedom; the boys do sacrifice soo much: heavy taxes and then sending their children to defend freedom. Seldom have so few given so much to so many.

Well, I was wondering just what the distinction was between Reagan and Norquist. Reagan did raise taxes somewhat in 1986, in response to large deficits. And the federal government stayed at about the same size during his 8 years in power. Norquist would have been more radical.

But it's a difference in degree, I think, not in kind. Ross kind of elides this point. Reagan was concerned with funnelling tax savings to the rich, and encouraged the idea that all government spending is wasteful.

I'd like to see Ross Douthat address the fact that the economy did very well from 1945 to 1974, with tax rates that look awfully high today.

Hey, I have every hope of his being able to grow up and become a man. I'm rooting for him.

Axiom
Simply put, a robust, healthy economy is measured by the exchange of capital among it's members. The more money exchanges, the more growth occurs. For this reason, the concentration of wealth to a small group stifles economic growth, and this can be illustrated many times in history.
Corollary
Tax cuts of $100 to each citizen would do far more for economic growth than $10000 tax cuts to 1% of the citizenry.
Corollary
Because of the stifling effect of the concentration of wealth, tax cuts aimed at the rich will ultimately be less advantageous to this group than tax cuts aimed at a larger group. It is better to have 30% of a $100000 income taken in taxes than 20% of $75000.

dc

I'm being substantial in another way, Kozmik. You've read him the same as I have.

Obviously, his vapid, barely constructed arguments are nothing new. The unexamined premises, the facile strings of cliches, the utter lack of interest in actually engaging the issue. We've both seen this before. Douthat's response is the same typical second rate generic right wing spiel we've seen pumped out a hundred times, with its lack of substance and unwieldy flaws. There's nothing here that's special to Douthat. It could have been churned out by any Wurlitzer clone.

You've demolished this kind of thing effectively a dozen times. So have I. Does it make a difference. Nah, some self absorbed Douthat or equivalent clone always marches out proudly to dump it on us again and stand back beaming proudly, like a five year old who has taken a shit on the rug in front of his parents company and thinks its an accomplishment.

So what's the option here. I go through, I deconstruct the empty shells of his arguments, and then what?

This time, I chose to go a different root. I chose not to ignore the smirking condescension in his writing, I chose not to overlook the dumb misrepresentation, the facile but unconscious dishonesty. And I chose to deal with that.

I could have carefully deconstructed his language to expose him as an empty sack of wind, a bovine prick, a sneering man child. I could have laid bare, not just the text, but the infantile subtext of his writings. It would have been cruel, but there would have been a certain amount of fun to it.

But in the end, what would the point have been? Douthat is a nonentity, self-absorbed, uninformed, callow, untouched by life. That's painfully obvious from his writing.

I mean Jesus H. Christ, you're doing it yourself. Film Critic For the National Review. I had to stifle a laugh. Well, there's a classic case, isn't it.

But then, what's the point of dissecting a pasty, unformed, nobody, an untrained, unlearned man-child? Seriously? It's just cruelty.

The text of his writing is not worth discussing, his subtext is not worth discussing, he isn't worth discussing. And yet, like the precocious five year old, his fresh turd is sitting in the middle of the carpet. So some response seems appropriate.

I dunno. I think I took a fair and moderate approach.

27 years old is pretty old to be coming at us with life experiences no deeper than having played a lot of Xbox. I dunno, I may have to write him off.

He looks like he's well on the way to maturing into a third tier right wing drone. You know the type? Writes books that no one reads, but that make best seller lists because right wing institutes buy bulk and then give em away. He sucks at the teat, and because it gives him what he needs, he never develops to stand on his own legs. Instead, he just kind of swirls around and around in a pool of the like minded, transmitting ideas osmotically received. He's wedded to his comfort, the same comfort that keeps him from challenging his world will keep him from making any real mark within that world.

He's never going to be an O'Reilly or a Limbaugh. He's not going to be a Norquist, or even a Ledeen, a Kagan or a Podhoretz. Sure as hell he'll never be a Perle or a Wolfowitz or a Bolton. Let's face it, he doesn't and won't ever have the depth, the drive, the fire, the intelligence and or the fierceness. He's third or fourth tier. He's the guy who gets the coffee for these other guys.

What we're talking about is a faded second-rate clone of David Frum. How underwhelming.

And this at the age of 27.

It's going to be heartbreaking to see him in his 60's. He won't be a bit different. But by that time, there'll be moments of vague disquiet, as he looks at his life and wonders that it amounts to so little, and as he ponders half formed thoughts that he might have overlooked something... like becoming a man at some point in his life.

I think this is too simplistic.

A healthy economy is measured by its ability to create goods and services at a low cost. The exchange of a large amount of capital could simply indicate that people are biding up the price of scarce goods.

If you are assuming that all tax cuts are spent, I don’t see how it makes much economic difference if a relatively small number of people spent relatively large sums of money v.s. a large number of people spending a small amount. It will affect the types of goods that are in more demand, high value goods in the case of a few people spending large lump sums.

If breaking up concentrations of wealth means dismantling some of the private capital infrastructure, that could have an effect on the economy longer term, whether it is a good or bad effect depends upon whether there is a surplus of infrastructure.

I just think the blue collar, middle American looks around and does not see an America in as dire shape as you portray it and, though they may hate their boss, they are just a little hesitant to vote people into office who promise to severely punish him since he signs their paychecks.

For all of Norquist's raving about government spending, I've been sadly amused by his campaign to have at least one thing named for Reagan in every county of the US. When I lived in Arlington, VA, and the name of National Airport was changed to Reagan National, the county didn't want to suddenly change signage since the cost (lots of big highway signs) was in 6 figures.

Norquist/Reagan supporters told the county that all federal funds going to Arlington would be cut off unless the signs were changed. Can we say "unfunded mandate", boys and girls?

Arlington, incidentally, provides such things as the fire service for the Pentagon. Obviously, it's more important to have Reagan signs.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

I agree to some extent.

It's not worth pouring too much energy into it. As you say, conservative think tanks will make more. Besides, people have gotten hip to it.

Other than Nancy would probably kill Norquist for it, he'd contract with the Lenin's Tomb staff to create an equivalent in Lafayette Park.

Seriously, I am utterly amazed that the costs of Norquist's campaign, to say nothing of where the funds will come from for this, haven't been routinely thrown back at him. There's no question that there has been a renaming of Federal facilities, and renaming -- especially if it affects printed documents, road signs, and the like -- is surprisingly expensive.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]