It's No Joke What's Happened to the Laffer Curve

Perhaps there is an inverse relationship between the amount of available information and the diligence of Americans in retrieving any of it.

Even a lazy man's effort yields more fruit than he'd have any interest in tasting, but can U.S. news organizations risk alienating their dwindling readership by calling them out for it and pushing it into their face? You probably missed these:

GOP Heads Straight for the Laffer Curve
Tax Cuts Don't Boost Revenues
From the Horse's Mouth: Laffer On Laffer
For Those Who Prefer the Veracity of YouTube
A Few Laughs with the Laffer Curve
Mark Twain Weighs In On Lying... (perhaps)
or if you'd prefer, Someone Else's Non-Authoritative Personal Viewpoint

A Tea Party for Hitler, Reagan, and Ted Kennedy

What 20 years ago was a battle between Fiscal Conservatives and Tax & Spend Liberals seems to have deteriorated into a full-blown siege of rhetoric against realism.  Liars have enlisted support from the Deluded-And-Ignorant Self-Interested to redefine “Fiscal Responsibility”, suppressing prerequisite honesty and accountability by replacing it with the New McCarthyism of the hijacked Tea Party movement and its tax-cut-addicted constituency.

Having insidiously exploited wishful thinking and denial to win their election, they are now gutlessly unwilling to compromise and avoid near and long-term economic and social catastrophe.  Compromise exposes them to the same attacks they used on their election opponents, and risks backlash from the religious or self-labeled “moral” elements of their supporters who will be justified in feeling deceived and betrayed.

True fiscal conservatives, meanwhile, have been abandoned by the media, the electorate and, in turn, the Republican Party. They find themselves in the strange company of long-endangered fiscally responsible liberals (e.g. Clinton-esque Democrats), and have not yet formed a coalition. 

Historically slow learners, liberal Democrats still can't believe that factual statements are powerless against the incessant repetition of falsehoods.  The media used to impose a little bit of conscience on political combatants, providing political cover that would allow all of them to confess to "gamesmanship" without every utterance being a declaration or desecration of religion. There was room to negotiate with less risk of vilification from within their own party. Pragmatism is gone. (FOX News, please stand up? Yes, you are not the only one but you are the most blatant and consistent offender with an actual audience.)

Downplaying the importance of fact versus belief is extremely dangerous for our country. Perception is often more important than reality, and our ideals are a standard we strive toward despite knowing that we can never fully attain them. When our ideals are devalued, we also "lower the bar" for everything that falls under that ideal... or not.  (NOTE: The preceding statement is an unproven assertion.)  Politicians have long played loosely with the facts, and truth in general, so what is so different now?

The public disillusionment of the post-Vietnam/post-Watergate years was evidenced by a popular cynicism about anything our leaders say. Economics confounded everybody, economists included. Television weather forecasters were more trustworthy, if only because they didn't try to impress us with their credentials. In recent years, the introduction and rise in media power of "bloggers" has provided much anecdotal evidence of the continued effectiveness of consistent, incessant propaganda to shape popular opinions and attitudes.

Further proof of the enduring effectiveness of disinformation campaigns such as those launched by Hitler, the Soviets, and the U.S. tobacco industry is not necessary, were inevitable but are now easier than ever. Wielding the power of an expert no longer requires that one actually knows factual information. The only penalty for recklessness seems to be a 15-minute cap on the duration of a fame that shouldn't have existed in the first place, which is sort of like getting to keep the money you got despite being arrested and released for a robbery/assault.

Reagan sold the fairy tale about the "Laffer Curve", and how his proposed tax cuts would actually increase Federal revenue, because he couldn't communicate ("dumb down") how much the tax and regulatory system had bloated an inefficient government and diverted private investment into anti-productive tax shelter schemes and their defenders: lobbyists, lawyers and accountants. 

It takes too much time and too much money to gather actual data when appropriations to do so have to be approved by the very people who stand to lose their jobs. It was easier to promote an appealing fairy tale, or "theory" about the facts, using an interesting but unproven explanation of JFK's tax cut's benefits to the economy.

Up until then, it was generally assumed that buildup of the Cold War, including the Space Race and the Vietnam War, that had supposedly stimulated the economy. Republicans could gain little more than backlash by criticizing the assassinated president. President Johnson was an enhanced target for his Great Society policies. Leave it to Reagan, however, to steal JFK from the Democrats and turn him into a supply-side Republican. It even gave Reagan another weapon to blunt the attacks from the actual Kennedy who was making a powerful bid to unseat the sitting President Carter.

Ted Kennedy had already stolen the page from Reagan's political playbook where, four years earlier, Reagan had opposed the then-sitting President Ford and prepared the party for his own nomination four years later. Reagan would now promote himself as the real heir to JFK, and he had enough of Hollywood in him and with him to pull off his own fairy tale. With less legitimacy, Ted Kennedy's legacy could be held under the waters off Martha's Vineyard and, unlike the illusory legacy of "Camelot", Reagan's would include a historical purge of bloat from an entrenched bureaucracy.

If anyone really wanted to take on the hassle, for whatever reason at all, Reagan's legacy could be tainted by tarring him as the short-sighted visionary who inspired a devastating "autoimmune" national culture, based on a philosophy that tricks its citizens into turning against their collective interests, indirectly but ultimately their own. Bringing down the most powerful nation in the world, along with its economy, was not in Reagan's plans when he ran for President, but it was high on Hitler's and the Soviet Kremlin's "to-do" list. Who will be blamed if the Federal government defaults on its debt payments, or if its credit rating drops and its borrowing costs are further increased?

Let the mindless, incessant and ubiquitous repetition begin. (Suggested RSS teasers: "Reagan Legacy Taken From Hitler"; "Bloggers Like Hitler"; "Hitler, Reagan, JFK: Strange Blogfellows")

So this is what it's all been about.

What a plan.