{"id":401,"date":"2007-06-10T09:02:27","date_gmt":"2007-06-10T13:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=401"},"modified":"2007-06-10T09:04:29","modified_gmt":"2007-06-10T13:04:29","slug":"post-tax-cuts-ergo-propter-tax-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=401","title":{"rendered":"Post tax cuts ergo propter tax cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has become tiresome again to point out the numbskullery of George Will’s<\/a> arguments. As he often<\/a> does, today he misrepresents the positions of Bush’s tax cut objectors and asserts that the tax cuts in precisely the way Bush (and Reagan, of course) envision them have made the economy grow.<\/p>\n

The first:<\/p>\n

>Last Sunday, eight Democratic presidential candidates debated for two hours, saying about the economy . . . next to nothing. You must slog to Page 43 in the 51-page transcript before Barack Obama laments that “the burdens and benefits of this new global economy are not being spread evenly across the board” and promises to “institute some fairness in the system.”<\/p>\n

>Well. When in the long human story have economic burdens and benefits been “spread evenly”? Does Obama think they should be, even though talents never are? What relationship of “fairness” does he envision between the value received by individuals and the value added by them? Does he disagree — if so, on what evidence? — with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that “the influence of globalization on inequality has been moderate and almost surely less important than the effects of skill-biased technological change”?<\/p>\n

Someone with madder internet skillz than me ought to do a Nexis search for how many times Will writes “Well period” after quoting someone ought of context. I suppose Obama has only those sound bites to offer–no explanation behind them or anything. Just for the record, the complaint about the tax cuts consisted in their uneven distribution<\/a>. Critics argued that they would have been more effective had people who could spend the money gotten more, and people who don’t spend or don’t need gotten less. That’s the argument–I’m not having it now, so don’t comment on it–so Will ought to deal with that claim. Instead he makes it sound like the Democrats were against any tax cuts or endorsed only the most Robin Hood of tax schemes. Aside from that, he makes it sound like the avoided the topic of the economy at the debate. Well. At the debate, they’re not the ones asking the questions. Besides, the one who did most of the talking was Wolf Blitzer<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The second:<\/p>\n

>In the 102 quarters since Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts went into effect more than 25 years ago, there have been 96 quarters of growth. Since the Bush tax cuts and the current expansion began, the economy’s growth has averaged 3 percent per quarter, and more than 8 million jobs have been created. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product is below the post-World War II average.<\/p>\n

Post tax cuts ergo propter tax cuts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has become tiresome again to point out the numbskullery of George Will’s arguments. As he often does, today he misrepresents the positions of Bush’s tax cut objectors and asserts that the tax cuts in precisely the way Bush (and Reagan, of course) envision them have made the economy grow. The first: >Last Sunday, eight … Continue reading Post tax cuts ergo propter tax cuts<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,32,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-will","category-post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc","category-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}