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What Government Run Healthcare Looks Like
We keep having these moments, and the young people in my life keep assuring me I’m just a paranoid old fool.
Published in General
I think he would agree with you.
Indeed, the key to understanding the Laffer Curve is that it represents the long-term stable situation after policies have been in place for some years. This is best reflected by the collapse in revenue in “blue model” cities and states with very high state and local taxes. Decades in some cases, a dozen years or so in others. Individuals and businesses don’t even have to consciously choose to make adjustments — economic conditions will push the changes on them over time. (Or drive them into bankruptcy and replacement in the market.)
My, my, such snide remarks. Such strawmen you’ve knocked down!
It seems it was just the right amount of simplification to make it difficult for people to continue to pretend not to understand the obvious.
It’s not obvious. It’s misleading.
It’s always misleading when it leads you in a direction the ruling class doesn’t want to go.
What is the difference? Viruscop thinks he’ll be working for a kindly ol’ massah, that’s all.
Trump’s supporters are the ruling class right now, so I don’t see how the above applies.
I hope it applies to more than a stable situation. Years ago, in the field of ecology, the main reference point was a stable ecosystem, such as a mature, climax forest. There were perturbations of the stable system, or processes of succession that led to the stable ecosystem, but the stable system was central to ecological thinking. You had phrases such as “balance of nature” or “harmonious balance of nature” that were popular expressions of this norm. However, ecologists have in more recent decades come to think that it’s not such a useful concept, because everything is always in flux and out of balance. Disruptive change is the norm.
I think the same is true in economics. The economy is always out of balance. There is no stable norm. People have often thought that a certain way of life was the norm. In agriculture, people once pushed for government policies to return to “parity,” which they supposed was the stable, normal set of prices for agricultural products. But their reference was just a point in time when prices were good and the way of life for many people was good. It wasn’t always that way. Conservatives like stable norms, but even Burkean conservatives don’t say one set of social, political, and economic circumstances is the norm forever and ever.
Back to the Laffer Curve: The ruling class has trouble with it not because it isn’t a useful way to think about maximizing government revenue. The thing is, rulers don’t want to maximize revenue so much as they want to maximize control, which throughout history has usually not been the same thing. The Spanish and French governments in 18th century America could have adopted different policies that would have maximized national and governmental wealth. They would have liked that, except that it was even more important for them to maximize their hold on power. The same is true for today’s ruling class. Which takes us back to why it was so important for them to kill Charlie Gard.
Trump’s supporters are obviously not the ruling class. They are impostors who the permanent ruling class is trying to drive out in a temple-cleansing exercise.
I guess that you are not aware that Obama’s supporters are still the civil servants and doing their darnest to keep Trump’s supporters from doing their jobs. They haven’t even begun to start “ruling.”
They are the ruling class. They are just terrible at ruling.
I don’t think you know what a ruling class is.
Nicely stated. And exactly correct.
It is important, too, to realize that highly dynamic changes could also be subject to the simple Laffer curve — but, they are extremely difficult to prove. Your approach to explaining things here is the best way to see it in “action.”
I don’t think you want to admit that you are now part of the ruling class.
If he ever gets his wish he will find out – good and hard.
Tell you what. When in your hearing I call for the overthrow of the ruling class (which probably will happen since I use the term about 50 times a day) you just apply your own private definition of the term. It’ll be our own little secret, OK?