November 12, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


HISTORY OF TAX CUTS ISN'T PRETTY


Every election season right-wing politicians, the gasbags on talk radio, and right-wingers everywhere proclaim the virtues of tax cuts, especially for the rich. According to them, tax cuts for the rich lead to investment, jobs, and prosperity for all. In fact, the opposite is true. The rich do very well. The rest of us face financial upheaval. This article by Larry Beinhart is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Even now, in the midst of the Bush disaster, I constantly see and hear tax cuts, particularly at the top, described as "pro-growth." So I went and looked at the numbers -- tax rates, tax cuts and tax hikes -- and placed them alongside job growth, the Dow Jones, growth in the GDP and median income.


The brute facts say the opposite of the myth.


The belief in tax cuts is a subset of the belief in Free Markets, with a capital F & M, which is a theological belief.


How do we distinguish a theological idea from a scientific (or rational) one?
According to Karl Popper, the great thinkers in the philosophy of science, a scientific idea has to be capable of being refuted. There has to be some theoretical test that could come out the wrong way, which would then say the theory is wrong.


On that basis, Popper rejected Marxism and Freudianism, along with religious theology, because no matter how many times they didn't work, there was always some explanation that said that the theory was right and if you just looked at the facts in some other way; you could make up some story that said your theory was still right.