All these years later, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how GOP voters can be so obsessed about keeping on a budget and creating a lean and mean federal government grounded in sound business principles when Democrats are in power, yet when Republicans are in charge they cannot implement enough tax cuts to deprive even a leaner and…
All these years later, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how GOP voters can be so obsessed about keeping on a budget and creating a lean and mean federal government grounded in sound business principles when Democrats are in power, yet when Republicans are in charge they cannot implement enough tax cuts to deprive even a leaner and meaner government of necessary operating revenue and don't mind spending like drunken sailors on causes that are near and dear to their own hearts.
Exhibit A: Congressional investigations. They cost money. They expend valuable work time. And said time and money are utilized better elsewhere for the taxpayers footing the bill than on a vengeance-based agenda grounded in the flimsiest of rationales: just because we can. Bonus take: they are an embarrassment in the eyes of outsiders who still view American prestige as something earned rather than something declared, and who are not interested in seeing us air our dirty laundry for political purposes instead of being a leader in important international affairs (see Exhibit B: Ukraine).
Somebody please connect the dots for me on how and why Republican voters both support this hypocritical agenda, rather gleefully in fact, and turn a willful blind eye toward the gross and obvious amount of cognitive dissonance involved. My BS detector has broken from all of the stress and strain, and frankly I lack both the talent and the patience anymore to understand how so many adults can position themselves to be like little children trying to convince their parents that some other kid always is the one who started the playground fight.
An astonishing level of financial illiteracy has a lot to do with it. Millions of supposedly educated people have fallen for the story that the government's budget is like their household budget (it's not!) and that the Republicans will manage it they way that they (or at least the non-bankrupt ones) manage their household budgets, which they don't. Then, the voters never go back to fact-check the lies.
ironically, Republicans don't do what any businessman would do. Having done budgeting within a large corporation, I can tell you, we look at both revenues and expenses (in large corporations corporate tells the division what they can spend - derived from projected revenues). and we budget accordingly.
no businessman budgets without considering revenues. cutting expenses is very hard - in business you only do it carefully (or in panic mode - when a business is failing). I was involved in closing a very small subset of our operation. We planned to close the function in 5 years but it took 10 to redistribute the tasks.
But actually considering how to redesign government is the hard part. And Republicans don't do any of that.
It's because in politics, as in a lot of things, perception matters more than facts. And making one comment about "fixing" what the evil other side did is a whole lot quicker than talking facts, AND more likely to stick in someone's brain.
I've come to appreciate that the Republican party does not understand basic economics. I will point to Kansas when Sam Brownback was governor. The Republican party fully implemented their tax cut/trickle down theory and promised to produce quarterly reviews to show how well the economy responded to them. The theory, in fact, did not work. Kansas was not awash with unleased money for investments and they had to back track on this because of the backlash regarding school financing. The quarterly reports were not published because they would have been too complex for the public to understand.
A so-frickin-lutely. The Laffer curve should have been called the Laugher Curve. Every time it has been seriously tried, it failed horribly - Reagan had to raise taxes after his famous cut because of the big hit. Brownback. And now Liz Truss tried it in the UK, and Sent their economy for a bad ride. Reagan has a lot of terrible shit to answer for
Well… I believe that Reagan was president in 81 and 82…
“ After the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 revenues fell by 6% in real terms. This promoted a tax increase that passed the House in late 1981 and the Senate in mid-1982 called the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. This act was an agreement between Reagan and the Congress that raised revenues for the following years.
All these years later, I'm still trying to wrap my head around how GOP voters can be so obsessed about keeping on a budget and creating a lean and mean federal government grounded in sound business principles when Democrats are in power, yet when Republicans are in charge they cannot implement enough tax cuts to deprive even a leaner and meaner government of necessary operating revenue and don't mind spending like drunken sailors on causes that are near and dear to their own hearts.
Exhibit A: Congressional investigations. They cost money. They expend valuable work time. And said time and money are utilized better elsewhere for the taxpayers footing the bill than on a vengeance-based agenda grounded in the flimsiest of rationales: just because we can. Bonus take: they are an embarrassment in the eyes of outsiders who still view American prestige as something earned rather than something declared, and who are not interested in seeing us air our dirty laundry for political purposes instead of being a leader in important international affairs (see Exhibit B: Ukraine).
Somebody please connect the dots for me on how and why Republican voters both support this hypocritical agenda, rather gleefully in fact, and turn a willful blind eye toward the gross and obvious amount of cognitive dissonance involved. My BS detector has broken from all of the stress and strain, and frankly I lack both the talent and the patience anymore to understand how so many adults can position themselves to be like little children trying to convince their parents that some other kid always is the one who started the playground fight.
An astonishing level of financial illiteracy has a lot to do with it. Millions of supposedly educated people have fallen for the story that the government's budget is like their household budget (it's not!) and that the Republicans will manage it they way that they (or at least the non-bankrupt ones) manage their household budgets, which they don't. Then, the voters never go back to fact-check the lies.
Yep. Along with the nonsense that the government should be run like a business.
ironically, Republicans don't do what any businessman would do. Having done budgeting within a large corporation, I can tell you, we look at both revenues and expenses (in large corporations corporate tells the division what they can spend - derived from projected revenues). and we budget accordingly.
no businessman budgets without considering revenues. cutting expenses is very hard - in business you only do it carefully (or in panic mode - when a business is failing). I was involved in closing a very small subset of our operation. We planned to close the function in 5 years but it took 10 to redistribute the tasks.
But actually considering how to redesign government is the hard part. And Republicans don't do any of that.
It's because in politics, as in a lot of things, perception matters more than facts. And making one comment about "fixing" what the evil other side did is a whole lot quicker than talking facts, AND more likely to stick in someone's brain.
I've come to appreciate that the Republican party does not understand basic economics. I will point to Kansas when Sam Brownback was governor. The Republican party fully implemented their tax cut/trickle down theory and promised to produce quarterly reviews to show how well the economy responded to them. The theory, in fact, did not work. Kansas was not awash with unleased money for investments and they had to back track on this because of the backlash regarding school financing. The quarterly reports were not published because they would have been too complex for the public to understand.
A so-frickin-lutely. The Laffer curve should have been called the Laugher Curve. Every time it has been seriously tried, it failed horribly - Reagan had to raise taxes after his famous cut because of the big hit. Brownback. And now Liz Truss tried it in the UK, and Sent their economy for a bad ride. Reagan has a lot of terrible shit to answer for
Well… I believe that Reagan was president in 81 and 82…
“ After the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 revenues fell by 6% in real terms. This promoted a tax increase that passed the House in late 1981 and the Senate in mid-1982 called the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. This act was an agreement between Reagan and the Congress that raised revenues for the following years.
Everybody knows Republicans are better for the economy, duh! :)