Last night I admitted to left wing Democratic tendencies to a couple people I knew perfectly good and well wouldn't like anything about that. This resulted in the usual stupid and false GOP/Libertarian talking points. I've certainly heard all that stuff better phrased and better presented but I went ahead and poked the bull just for giggles. It was an exercise in pointlessness because whatever fact I presented was going to be ignored in pursuit of the stupid emotional appeals crafted by their ... 'betters.'
Neither of these individuals is ever going to make enough money to matter in the scheme of wealth, taxation, or power. Not ever, not going to happen and not even in their dreams. Their concerns were all theoretical, entirely outside their experiences or possible experiences and somehow addressed 'fairness.' The mantras were familiar to anyone acquainted with Libertarianism, high marginal tax brackets/tax rates punishing success, no civilization has ever taxed its way to success, the left trusts government, and on and on.
Neither person was stupid, they were quite capable of speaking in complete sentences and being, frankly, more lucid (even with alcohol involved) than Sarah Palin. No, that is not some joke, they were. Their points were not their own, they are manufactured by people with something to gain from selling them. Much of their birth as public discourse can be tracked to the economic abortion that was the St Ronnie Administration. Trickle down economics may be one of the most stupid commonly held beliefs in currency today and then and despite all evidence to the contrary it vampirically refuses to die. It is the corner stone of all the other horse ... pucky.
The real problem with trying to rebut this 'stuff' is that there is always the excuse that the failures are the result of insufficient application - ie Democrats messed it up. (h/t Michael B) You can point out to them the nearly steady decrease in top marginal rates from St Ronnie on to this historical low and it just simply doesn't matter. The dislocation of wealth simply is not of any concern - the fact that economic improvement, as economics is presently practiced in the US, is strictly a one way street upward demonstrates nothing. Well, it does represent the theft of their money by supporting the impoverished and disabled with their SS/FICA taxes... No matter that the Capital Gains rate is effectively lower, that one applies to everyone. Not that hardly anyone is actually concerned actually paying it...
There is one hope in this kind of discussion. The hope is that the GOP will continue to overstep the bounds of sense and insult the supposedly important and informed "middle."
As though the media would collude in any such informing
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