Tuesday, April 27, 2010

The Fundamental Theorem of Politics

fundamental_theorem_politics

(HT Greg Mankiw)

3 comments:

Billy Oblivion said...

The B'Livion conjecture:

All politicians are to the left of their constituency. If they are not, their replacement will be.

thinking said...

One funny example of just how off the "people" can be...was when a "tea partier" said, as a protest to the health care reform legislation, to keep the government hands of off my medicare!

With all of the misinformation that goes around, especially these days from the far right, it can get pretty comical. However, what keeps it sad is that so many people really believe the lies.

W.E. Heasley said...

thinking said...

"One funny example of just how off the "people" can be...was when a "tea partier" said, as a protest to the health care reform legislation, to keep the government hands of off my medicare!

With all of the misinformation that goes around, especially these days from the far right, it can get pretty comical. However, what keeps it sad is that so many people really believe the lies."

Hmmm. Lets see, the wonderful world of making the opponents argument unworthy, the unworthiness assumed axiomatic, hence no substantive argument against their argument becomes unneccessary. That's very nice thinking.

The impossible becomes possible: the 100% tax bracket for everyone.

Progressives over the last 100 years solve every possible problem with more and more government intervention in the form of regulation, government programs leading to addition bureaucrats, and unfunded entitlements.

To understand this perpetual phenomena more fully, you have to understand the political class (democrats and/or republicans). The political class is the anointed/intelligentsia that know what is best for the common man/woman. The political class wants to paint the world in their own self image. They paint the world with "notions" that are not based on empirical evidence. These notions (the way things ought to be) are then argued through verbal virtuosity of moral obligation. Basically the political class argues that the producer class has a moral obligation to the recipient class. This moral obligation takes the form of transfer payments from the producer class to the recipient class.

Along the way, the political class learned that they could build a constituency group, a voting block if you will, based upon the recipient class. The conduit of power is the "transfer payment" from the producer class to the recipient class. The power of the political class is the transfer payment.

However, with any good scheme comes overreach or what some refer to as going a bridge too far. You see, the political class made a major error in painting the world in their own self image through notions of the way things ought to be. The error is that the way things out to be, in the long run, exceed the summation of all possible transfer payments. Opps!

In other words, the accumulation of all the political class actors over time and the accumulation of all their notions leading to all the schemes over time, go bust when the transfer payment from the producer class equals 100% to the recipient class.

No way! Transfer payments could never equal 100%. A 100% tax bracket for every single producer could never happen. Think again weed hopper! And exactly what kind of incentive would a 100% tax rate be for the producer class? Will the producer class be going to work Monday morning? Where is John Galt?

Try this math on for size. Remember, the math is the math:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ljZea6YSE&feature=player_embedded

When the 100% tax rate comes, then the worn out class warfare argument goes right down the commode as everyone, lower middle income right up to the ultra rich have a 100% tax rate. Makes us all unwelcomingly equal. And for that moral argument? It was really a cruel immoral argument.