Ideology doesn't seem to be so important during the pandemic

[laughing dog]

The day libertarians stop using public roads for their commute, or indeed any kind of technology even partially based on publicly funded research, and the employers among them start employing exclusively home schooled folks (and provide a private plane for the commuters among their workforce - if *they* use public roads it's still cheating), will be the day libertarians can rightly talk of "my money you stole".

Muh ROADS! My gods you actually went there.

View attachment 26751
View attachment 26752

Rational discussion ends when the "taxes are paid at the point of a gun" arrives.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The day libertarians stop using public roads for their commute, or indeed any kind of technology even partially based on publicly funded research, and the employers among them start employing exclusively home schooled folks (and provide a private plane for the commuters among their workforce - if *they* use public roads it's still cheating), will be the day libertarians can rightly talk of "my money you stole".

Muh ROADS! My gods you actually went there.

View attachment 26751
View attachment 26752

Rational discussion ends when the "taxes are paid at the point of a gun" arrives.

Your comprehension problems are not my problem.

 

[Elixir]

Government agencies are suspending regulation.
Police aren't arresting people for victimless crimes.

Seems like a lot of politicians are becoming more libertarian because of the panICdemic.

Panicdemic? That's fucking hilarious Jason.
Did FOX Nooz give it to you, or did a bunch of libbertards pool their neurons so they could think it up?

(US cases have doubled since you posted that idiocy - must be 'cuz pannick)

 

[laughing dog]

Rational discussion ends when the "taxes are paid at the point of a gun" arrives.

Your comprehension problems are not my problem.

Thank you, but there was no need to prove my point.

 

[bilby]

The day libertarians stop using public roads for their commute, or indeed any kind of technology even partially based on publicly funded research, and the employers among them start employing exclusively home schooled folks (and provide a private plane for the commuters among their workforce - if *they* use public roads it's still cheating), will be the day libertarians can rightly talk of "my money you stole".

Muh ROADS! My gods you actually went there.

View attachment 26751
View attachment 26752

Rational discussion ends when the "taxes are paid at the point of a gun" arrives.

Rational discussion is impossible with a corespondent who thinks cartoons are a substitute for words.

Reality isn't sufficiently simple to be accurately described in a cartoon, and although a vast number of people really, really want it to be that simple, their deep desires somehow manage not to reduce the complexity of reality one iota. It's almost as though wishing didn't make it so.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Nahum: "Alms for the poor, alms for the poor..."

Lazar: "Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopek."

Nahum: "One kopek? Last week you gave me two kopeks."

Lazar: "I had a bad week."

Nahum: "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?"

And?

- fiscal consolidation in a downturn would, if anything, hinder recovery anyway

- austerity was thus a political choice motivated by ideology, not economic necessity

And?

And what? I can't tell what you're asking.

The Tories therefore needed to justify their attack on the public sector by arguing that excessive public spending had caused the crash and was hindering recovery.

"Therefore ... and ..."?!? They therefore needed to argue it was hindering recovery, which of course they'd have done regardless since that's the whole point of austerity.

Not if fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery.

But why on earth would they have needed to argue it caused the crash?

To justify austerity.

What, to counter the "unfair to punish them" argument? It takes all of a two second Fiddler on the Roof quote to dispose of that, er, argument.

I've no idea what what you're on about.

The UK Conservative Party and right wing press argued relentlessly that the GFC and subsequent great recession were caused by excessive public spending.

Well, it's possible they argued this. If so, you should have no difficulty finding a citation.

No doubt, if I could be bothered.

But maybe you don't need to quote them, because we can safely rely on your word to verify that you didn't hear arguments that excessive public spending was hindering recovery and merely imagine you were hearing arguments that it was Wolverhampton and not Lehman Brothers et al. who caused the crash, because you're such an expert at remembering and correctly reproducing opponents' arguments, even after ten-odd years...

I can't tell what exactly you're saying here either. The Wolverhampton libraries thing was a subsequent satire on the argument that it was caused by excessive public spending.

In fact you appear to be making the latter claim yourself.

... even though you can't remember and correctly reproduce an opponent's argument after ten seconds. No, in point of fact I do not appear to be claiming excessive public spending was hindering recovery. You might want to consider working on your reading comprehension problem.

You apparently agree about that having been proffered as a justification for austerity, not that you necessarily agree with said justification.

 

[Bomb#20]

Nahum: "Alms for the poor, alms for the poor..."

Lazar: "Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopek."

Nahum: "One kopek? Last week you gave me two kopeks."

Lazar: "I had a bad week."

Nahum: "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?"

And?

And normal human audiences will instantly grasp that Nahum is a dick.

Of course, to normal humans, *-wingers often come off as space-aliens with respect to human morality. When you say "And?", do you mean you need me to explain, as to a Martian, why Nahum is a dick? Or do you mean you need me to explain why "the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" is akin to "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?"?

And what? I can't tell what you're asking.

"And?" is something listeners typically say when a speaker makes claims that do not appear to support his or her contentions. So I was inviting you to explain how your claims

"anti-austerian arguments were widely put that

- the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them

- fiscal consolidation in a downturn would, if anything, hinder recovery anyway

- austerity was thus a political choice motivated by ideology, not economic necessity",​

provide any support for your contention that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton, or by excessive public spending in general, (such contention being implied by your disputing that Sayle was using a strawman.)

They likewise provide no support for your disputing that the austerity meme is future-oriented, not past-oriented. Nor do they logically support your claim that "The UK Conservative Party and right wing press argued relentlessly that the GFC and subsequent great recession were caused by excessive public spending.", a claim which warrants a high degree of skepticism. The fact that the Global Financial Crisis originated in the United States was so universally known that it would have been absurd on its face for British politicians to have been blaming the British government for it.

They therefore needed to argue it was hindering recovery, which of course they'd have done regardless since that's the whole point of austerity.

Not if fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery.

Huh? That's a hypothesis about reality, which is to say, an expression of your (and my) opinion. The UK Conservative Party and right wing press do not premise their arguments on our opinions. Whether fiscal consolidation in a downturn in fact hinders recovery is simply irrelevant to an analysis of their psychology -- what's relevant is whether they believed fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery. They appear not to have believed so.

But why on earth would they have needed to argue it caused the crash?

To justify austerity.

But they didn't need that argument to justify austerity. All they needed was the very popular intuition that when times are tough you hunker down and cut out nonessentials. Their economic policy appears to have been based on thinking of a nation as a big household. People do that. Macroeconomics is hard.

Well, it's possible they argued this. If so, you should have no difficulty finding a citation.

No doubt, if I could be bothered.

Please yourself.

In fact you appear to be making the latter claim yourself.

... even though you can't remember and correctly reproduce an opponent's argument after ten seconds. No, in point of fact I do not appear to be claiming excessive public spending was hindering recovery. You might want to consider working on your reading comprehension problem.

You apparently agree about that having been proffered as a justification for austerity, not that you necessarily agree with said justification.

Bingo. But what you wrote was "The Tories therefore needed to justify their attack on the public sector by arguing that excessive public spending had caused the crash and was hindering recovery. Which they did. Relentlessy. In fact you appear to be making the latter claim yourself.", which is a claim that I appear to agree with said latter justification. But I haven't expressed agreement with it, because I don't agree with it. I'm a Keynesian. And you and I have been through this cycle before. You keep trying to paint me as some sort of supply-sider. Please stop doing that.

 

[Canard DuJour]

And normal human audiences will instantly grasp that Nahum is a dick.

Unlike nurses, firemen, teachers, police etc and the people who rely on them, whom normal human audiences do not consider to be dicks.

Of course, to normal humans, *-wingers often come off as space-aliens with respect to human morality. When you say "And?", do you mean you need me to explain, as to a Martian, why Nahum is a dick? Or do you mean you need me to explain why "the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" is akin to "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?"?

No, I don't get why the public sector is analagous to some offensive beggar.

And what? I can't tell what you're asking.

"And?" is something listeners typically say when a speaker makes claims that do not appear to support his or her contentions. So I was inviting you to explain how your claims

"anti-austerian arguments were widely put that

- the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them

- fiscal consolidation in a downturn would, if anything, hinder recovery anyway

- austerity was thus a political choice motivated by ideology, not economic necessity",​

provide any support for your contention {strawman alert!} that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton,

But that isn't my contention. That's just taking satire literally. Don't be daft.

or by excessive public spending in general, (such contention being implied by your disputing that Sayle was using a strawman.)

It doesn't need to "support" the contention re public spending; it's repudiation of it (and the strawman would be to take Sayle's satire literally).

They likewise provide no support for your disputing that the austerity meme is future-oriented, not past-oriented.

The claim that excessive public spending caused the GFC is past-oriented - not that I disputed any such thing, or care.

Nor do they logically support your claim that "The UK Conservative Party and right wing press argued relentlessly that the GFC and subsequent great recession were caused by excessive public spending.", a claim which warrants a high degree of skepticism. The fact that the Global Financial Crisis originated in the United States was so universally known that it would have been absurd on its face for British politicians to have been blaming the British government for it.

They weren't proffered as support for the claim but as context. That the Tories argued thus isn't even controversial. And plenty of Daily Mail conservatives bought it. Said absurdity is precisely why Sayle's satire elicits amusement among those who didn't.

They therefore needed to argue it was hindering recovery, which of course they'd have done regardless since that's the whole point of austerity.

Not if fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery.

Huh? That's a hypothesis about reality, which is to say, an expression of your (and my) opinion. The UK Conservative Party and right wing press do not premise their arguments on our opinions. Whether fiscal consolidation in a downturn in fact hinders recovery is simply irrelevant to an analysis of their psychology -- what's relevant is whether they believed fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery. They appear not to have believed so.

They premise their arguments on what they can sell to electorates. And it is easier to sell the idea that the economy is like a household with a household budget than to explain why fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery. Macroeconomics is hard.

But why on earth would they have needed to argue it caused the crash?

To justify austerity.

But they didn't need that argument to justify austerity. All they needed was the very popular intuition that when times are tough you hunker down and cut out nonessentials. Their economic policy appears to have been based on thinking of a nation as a big household. People do that. Macroeconomics is hard.

I disagree with first sentence. People would otherwise consider it unfair on nurses, teachers, firemen etc whom they very much do not consider to be "dicks".

Well, it's possible they argued this. If so, you should have no difficulty finding a citation.

No doubt, if I could be bothered.

Please yourself.

In fact you appear to be making the latter claim yourself.

... even though you can't remember and correctly reproduce an opponent's argument after ten seconds. No, in point of fact I do not appear to be claiming excessive public spending was hindering recovery. You might want to consider working on your reading comprehension problem.

You apparently agree about that having been proffered as a justification for austerity, not that you necessarily agree with said justification.

Bingo. But what you wrote was "The Tories therefore needed to justify their attack on the public sector by arguing that excessive public spending had caused the crash and was hindering recovery. Which they did. Relentlessy. In fact you appear to be making the latter claim yourself.", which is a claim that I appear to agree with said latter justification. But I haven't expressed agreement with it, because I don't agree with it. I'm a Keynesian. And you and I have been through this cycle before. You keep trying to paint me as some sort of supply-sider. Please stop doing that.

Well now that we've both clarified it, you needn't worry.

 

[Bomb#20]

And normal human audiences will instantly grasp that Nahum is a dick.

Unlike nurses, firemen, teachers, police etc and the people who rely on them, whom normal human audiences do not consider to be dicks.

Who said they are?

Of course, to normal humans, *-wingers often come off as space-aliens with respect to human morality. When you say "And?", do you mean you need me to explain, as to a Martian, why Nahum is a dick? Or do you mean you need me to explain why "the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" is akin to "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?"?

No, I don't get why the public sector is analagous to some offensive beggar.

Who said it is? Your reading comprehension problem is really getting out of hand. You went to the effort of quoting my words back to me; the least you could do is read them and assume they mean what they say rather than whatever asinine thing you'd prefer for me to have said.

I didn't analogize the public sector to an offensive beggar; I analogized the "the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" argument to Nahum's argument. That was right there in plain view and yet somehow it flew straight over your head -- so apparently you actually do need me to explain, as to a Martian, why Nahum is a dick. Being a beggar isn't why he's offensive -- begging is a perfectly reasonable thing for a person in need to do. Nahum is an offensive beggar because he made the "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?" argument. Likewise, it is not the people who provide and rely on public services who I'm saying are dicks like Nahum. It is the left-wing jackasses who argue "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" who I'm saying are dicks like Nahum. It's a dick argument; only a dick would make it.

So apparently you actually need me to explain why "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?" is a dick argument. Why do you think Lazar gives kopeks to Nahum in the first place? Why doesn't their conversation instead go like this?

Nahum: "Alms for the poor, alms for the poor..."

Lazar: "So if you are poor, why should I suffer?"​

Their conversation doesn't go that way because they aren't in an every-man-for-himself society. They're in a we're-all-in-this-together society. Nahum benefits from that relationship; he shares in Lazar's good weeks. But we're-all-in-this-together is a two-way street. Society as a whole shares someone's good weeks; society as a whole likewise shares someone's bad weeks. Nahum has bad week after bad week, and by giving Nahum kopeks, Lazar shares those bad weeks. But as soon as Lazar has a bad week Nahum switches to every-man-for-himself thinking. In this asymmetry lies Nahum's dickishness. He is treating Lazar not as a fellow member of the we're-all-in-this-together society but as a mere means to an end -- as a beast of burden.

The people who need to rely on public services get those services, at the expense of the taxpayers, because the taxpayers do not take a "So if you need public services, why should we suffer?" view of the situation, because we're all in this together. But when there's a Great Recession, the taxpayers have a lot of bad weeks. And that means the people who rely on the taxpayers perceiving that we're all in this together will have a lot of bad weeks too, because we're all in this together, and we're-all-in-this-together is a two-way street. And the left-wing jackasses who argue "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" are a bunch of dicks. They are asymmetrically giving their favorites the benefit of we're-all-in-this-together thinking while withholding it from those they mean to exploit. Those left-wing jackasses are treating the taxpayers not as fellow members of our we're-all-in-this-together society but as mere means to an end -- as beasts of burden.

If "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" were a sound argument, then "the taxpayers did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument. What's more, both when there's a Global Financial Crash and when there isn't, "the taxpayers do not cause others to need public services and it is therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument.

Comprendes? Now stop misrepresenting your opponents' arguments. It's a dick thing to do.

And what? I can't tell what you're asking.

"And?" is something listeners typically say when a speaker makes claims that do not appear to support his or her contentions. So I was inviting you to explain how your claims <snipped> provide any support for your contention {strawman alert!} that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton,

But that isn't my contention. That's just taking satire literally. Don't be daft.

Oh for the love of god! Nobody is taking Wolverhampton literally. Sayle, you and I all used it as a metaphorical stand-in for British government spending on public services. Don't be daft.

or by excessive public spending in general, (such contention being implied by your disputing that Sayle was using a strawman.)

It doesn't need to "support" the contention re public spending; it's repudiation of it (and the strawman would be to take Sayle's satire literally).

You're using "it" for too many things to skip the disambiguation of your antecedents. But please yourself -- your word salad is on you.

If you aren't contending that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, then what the heck is your point in this whole exchange? Why are you defending Sayle from my "strawman alert!".

They likewise provide no support for your disputing that the austerity meme is future-oriented, not past-oriented.

The claim that excessive public spending caused the GFC is past-oriented - not that I disputed any such thing, or care.

But you have produced no evidence that austerity supporters made any such claim.

Nor do they logically support your claim that "The UK Conservative Party and right wing press argued relentlessly that the GFC and subsequent great recession were caused by excessive public spending.", a claim which warrants a high degree of skepticism. The fact that the Global Financial Crisis originated in the United States was so universally known that it would have been absurd on its face for British politicians to have been blaming the British government for it.

They weren't proffered as support for the claim but as context. That the Tories argued thus isn't even controversial.

The Guardian? That's your evidence? Seriously?!? It's a notorious left-wing rag. Yes, I can well believe that "the Tories argued thus" isn't even controversial among the inhabitants of the left-wing echo chamber. Religious zealots live and breathe misrepresentations of their opponents' views. Such people seldom regard their opponents as entitled even to truthfulness, let alone the effort of actually trying to understand their arguments. It's the same reason you just repeatedly insinuated that I consider nurses, teachers, firemen etc. to be dicks.

But there's a hint in your link as to what may have happened.

"His remarks emerged after Ed Miliband came under pressure on the leader’s Question Time on BBC1 on Thursday, facing accusations that Labour government had overspent, a view strengthened by the now notorious letter left by the former Treasury chief secretary Liam Byrne to his successor in 2010 that there was “no money left”.
...
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility, in its main assessment of the causes of the crisis written in September last year, has taken a more nuanced view. It argues overspending did not cause the deficit or the banking crisis, but that the UK government was less well prepared for the crisis due to a consistently over optimistic view of the revenues the Treasury was likely to receive from 2003 onwards."​

Perhaps the Tories argued, not that excessive British public spending had caused the GFC, but that excessive British public spending had prevented the government from being in any financial position to deal effectively with the fallout from the GFC. That hypothesis has the ring of truth -- such an accusation is intuitively plausible, unlike an accusation that Britain made American financial institutions fail -- and it's fully in line with typical pro-austerity economic thinking. Moreover, it sounds just barely enough like blaming the GFC on overspending for an echo chamber of careless self-congratulatory religious twits to seize on, start telling one another the Tories said overspending caused the GFC, and repeat it to one another so often they come to believe their own slander.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Who said they are?

Of course, to normal humans, *-wingers often come off as space-aliens with respect to human morality. When you say "And?", do you mean you need me to explain, as to a Martian, why Nahum is a dick? Or do you mean you need me to explain why "the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" is akin to "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?"?

No, I don't get why the public sector is analagous to some offensive beggar.

Who said it is? Your reading comprehension problem is really getting out of hand. You went to the effort of quoting my words back to me; the least you could do is read them and assume they mean what they say rather than whatever asinine thing you'd prefer for me to have said.

I didn't analogize the public sector to an offensive beggar; I analogized the "the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" argument to Nahum's argument. That was right there in plain view and yet somehow it flew straight over your head -- so apparently you actually do need me to explain, as to a Martian, why Nahum is a dick. Being a beggar isn't why he's offensive -- begging is a perfectly reasonable thing for a person in need to do. Nahum is an offensive beggar because he made the "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?" argument. Likewise, it is not the people who provide and rely on public services who I'm saying are dicks like Nahum. It is the left-wing jackasses who argue "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" who I'm saying are dicks like Nahum. It's a dick argument; only a dick would make it.

So apparently you actually need me to explain why "So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?" is a dick argument. Why do you think Lazar gives kopeks to Nahum in the first place? Why doesn't their conversation instead go like this?

Nahum: "Alms for the poor, alms for the poor..."

Lazar: "So if you are poor, why should I suffer?"​

Their conversation doesn't go that way because they aren't in an every-man-for-himself society. They're in a we're-all-in-this-together society. Nahum benefits from that relationship; he shares in Lazar's good weeks. But we're-all-in-this-together is a two-way street. Society as a whole shares someone's good weeks; society as a whole likewise shares someone's bad weeks. Nahum has bad week after bad week, and by giving Nahum kopeks, Lazar shares those bad weeks. But as soon as Lazar has a bad week Nahum switches to every-man-for-himself thinking. In this asymmetry lies Nahum's dickishness. He is treating Lazar not as a fellow member of the we're-all-in-this-together society but as a mere means to an end -- as a beast of burden.

The people who need to rely on public services get those services, at the expense of the taxpayers, because the taxpayers do not take a "So if you need public services, why should we suffer?" view of the situation, because we're all in this together. But when there's a Great Recession, the taxpayers have a lot of bad weeks. And that means the people who rely on the taxpayers perceiving that we're all in this together will have a lot of bad weeks too, because we're all in this together, and we're-all-in-this-together is a two-way street. And the left-wing jackasses who argue "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" are a bunch of dicks. They are asymmetrically giving their favorites the benefit of we're-all-in-this-together thinking while withholding it from those they mean to exploit. Those left-wing jackasses are treating the taxpayers not as fellow members of our we're-all-in-this-together society but as mere means to an end -- as beasts of burden.

Then it is evidently you who doesn't understand what you're reading. Fiscal consolidation means policies intended to reduce govt deficits , i.e. cutting public spending and/or raising taxes. The "left wing jackass" - actually Keynesian - argument opposes both ("fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery" - remember?). The argument was not that recession-hit tax payers should stump up for the public sector, but that govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts. Your 'Nahum' thing and reams of tedious nitpicking have basically nothing to do with anything.

If "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" were a sound argument, then "the taxpayers did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument.

It IS an equally sound argument. Neither tax payers nor people who provide/rely on public services (who aren't separate groups anyway) caused the crash and resulting deficit, so it was unfair to punish either. And punishing either, i.e. by cutting public spending or taxing squeezed incomes in a downturn, is likely to hinder recovery. Deficit reduction, OTOH, could equally have meant raising taxes, but that would have been counter to the Tories' small state, low tax ideology. Hence they had to sell the idea that the deficit was caused by Labour's public spending. Hence, for example the Tory election slogan "Don't give the keys back to the people who crashed the car".

What's more, both when there's a Global Financial Crash and when there isn't, "the taxpayers do not cause others to need public services and it is therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument.

Comprendes? Now stop misrepresenting your opponents' arguments. It's a dick thing to do.

"And?" is something listeners typically say when a speaker makes claims that do not appear to support his or her contentions. So I was inviting you to explain how your claims <snipped> provide any support for your contention {strawman alert!} that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton,

Oh for the love of god! Nobody is taking Wolverhampton literally. Sayle, you and I all used it as a metaphorical stand-in for British government spending on public services. Don't be daft.

or by excessive public spending in general, (such contention being implied by your disputing that Sayle was using a strawman.)

You're using "it" for too many things to skip the disambiguation of your antecedents. But please yourself -- your word salad is on you.

If you aren't contending that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, then what the heck is your point in this whole exchange?

That Sayle's remark is a brilliant bit of satire.

They likewise provide no support for your disputing that the austerity meme is future-oriented, not past-oriented.

The claim that excessive public spending caused the GFC is past-oriented - not that I disputed any such thing, or care.

But you have produced no evidence that austerity supporters made any such claim.

Nor do they logically support your claim that "The UK Conservative Party and right wing press argued relentlessly that the GFC and subsequent great recession were caused by excessive public spending.", a claim which warrants a high degree of skepticism. The fact that the Global Financial Crisis originated in the United States was so universally known that it would have been absurd on its face for British politicians to have been blaming the British government for it.

They weren't proffered as support for the claim but as context. That the Tories argued thus isn't even controversial.

The Guardian? That's your evidence? Seriously?!?

No, the evidence is the widely reported content of the article, which wouldn't even make sense outwith the context of said Tory claims. Sir Nicholas Macpherson is not The Guardian (which is consistently rated with The Times as the most trusted and accurate UK newspapers). Nor are the authors of numerous academic tomes about said claims in the right wing press, e.g :

​

During this period and long after, the financial crisis and its consequences were fundamentally portrayed as an issue around "overspending" (Cooper 2012, Doudaki et al. 2016, Mercille 2013, Tracy 2012). This led to ample consensus around the Structural Adjustment Programmes in places such as Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, and ficilitated the type of austerity programmes implemented in Britain and Ireland that historically have proven to be flawed and ineffective (Blyth 2013, Calcano 2012). In fact, as then Permanent Secretary to the UK Treasury, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, argued, the 2008 financial crisis was "a banking crisis pure and simple", contradicting therefore the Conservative Party's claims that it was caused by Labour's overspending (Wintour 2015).

Nevertheless, the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008 saw the mainstream news media framing welfare recipients in a negative light while welfare cuts were enacted through the government's austerity programme (Briant, Watson, Philo, 2013), which justify them as necessary for the 'recovery' and presented them as the main cause of the crisis.

(...)

So quickly in the public discourse it became apparent that far from blaming bankers, stock market speculators and real estate tycoons, the predominant narrative was one in which an excess of nurses, firecrews and teachers were to be blamed for the collapse of the economy.

- Poor News: Media Dicourses of Poverty in Times of Austerity, Dr. Steven Harkins, Dr. Jairo Lugo-Ocando, Rowman and Littlefield International Ltd, 2018.

It's a notorious left-wing rag. Yes, I can well believe that "the Tories argued thus" isn't even controversial among the inhabitants of the left-wing echo chamber. Religious zealots live and breathe misrepresentations of their opponents' views. Such people seldom regard their opponents as entitled even to truthfulness, let alone the effort of actually trying to understand their arguments. It's the same reason you just repeatedly insinuated that I consider nurses, teachers, firemen etc. to be dicks.

But there's a hint in your link as to what may have happened.

"His remarks emerged after Ed Miliband came under pressure on the leader’s Question Time on BBC1 on Thursday, facing accusations that Labour government had overspent, a view strengthened by the now notorious letter left by the former Treasury chief secretary Liam Byrne to his successor in 2010 that there was “no money left”.
...
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility, in its main assessment of the causes of the crisis written in September last year, has taken a more nuanced view. It argues overspending did not cause the deficit or the banking crisis, but that the UK government was less well prepared for the crisis due to a consistently over optimistic view of the revenues the Treasury was likely to receive from 2003 onwards."​

Perhaps the Tories argued, not that excessive British public spending had caused the GFC, but that excessive British public spending had prevented the government from being in any financial position to deal effectively with the fallout from the GFC. That hypothesis has the ring of truth -- such an accusation is intuitively plausible, unlike an accusation that Britain made American financial institutions fail -- and it's fully in line with typical pro-austerity economic thinking. Moreover, it sounds just barely enough like blaming the GFC on overspending for an echo chamber of careless self-congratulatory religious twits to seize on, start telling one another the Tories said overspending caused the GFC, and repeat it to one another so often they come to believe their own slander.

They argued both. A deficit resulting from a recession caused by the banking crisis was portrayed as a recession resulting from a deficit caused by excessive public spending.

 

[Canard DuJour]

..speaking of comedy which wouldn't otherwise make sense :

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtWA3jQN1Pg[/YOUTUBE]

 

[SimpleDon]

It starts at the top. Orange Judas is now singing a new tune with the refrain of "we're doing the best job anyone has ever done handling a pandemic because I knew it was a pandemic before the doctors did". So whistling a happy tune and spreading the gospel that COVID-19 is another Democratic hoax intended to do nothing but make Trump look bad, is no longer viable.

I may have been too optimistic about changes involving Trump. Currently he is being driven by two things. The first is the fear of being blamed for the clearly inadequate federal government's planning prior to the appearance of the disease and the clearly inadequate response after the disease appeared. Who knew that the man at the top of an organization would be blamed for the failures of that organization? Was Bush II blamed for the failures of the federal government in New Orleans after Katina? Was Reagan blamed for the slow response to the HVI/Aids epidemic while it seemed to only target Gay men and intravenous drug users? These things only bothered liberals, conservatives weren't bothered by these failures.

Besides the people who died because of these failures were socially undesirables to conservatives like blacks, gays, and drug users. And the numbers were small, 2000 for Bush II (plus 1500 US military and 80,000 Iraq civilian deaths in the Iraqi war started by mistake) and 6000+ for Reagan. Trump should be on the hook for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Real™ Americans, even though a disproportion number are black and poor who will never vote for Republicans.

The second issue that drives Trump is Wall Street and the need to not only maintain the current income inequality but to enlarge it, thus his desire to restart the economy way too early risking a second wave of infection and death. The only thing that Trump could point to from his three and a half years in office was the gains in the stock market and the increasing growth of the income and the wealth inequality favoring the already rich.

 

[Bomb#20]

The people who need to rely on public services get those services, at the expense of the taxpayers, because the taxpayers do not take a "So if you need public services, why should we suffer?" view of the situation, because we're all in this together. But when there's a Great Recession, the taxpayers have a lot of bad weeks. And that means the people who rely on the taxpayers perceiving that we're all in this together will have a lot of bad weeks too, because we're all in this together, and we're-all-in-this-together is a two-way street. And the left-wing jackasses who argue "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" are a bunch of dicks. They are asymmetrically giving their favorites the benefit of we're-all-in-this-together thinking while withholding it from those they mean to exploit. Those left-wing jackasses are treating the taxpayers not as fellow members of our we're-all-in-this-together society but as mere means to an end -- as beasts of burden.

Then it is evidently you who doesn't understand what you're reading. Fiscal consolidation means policies intended to reduce govt deficits , i.e. cutting public spending and/or raising taxes. The "left wing jackass" - actually Keynesian - argument opposes both ("fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery" - remember?).

Oh, for the love of god. "Fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery" is a Keynesian argument. "The people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" is a left-wing-jackass argument. An argument does not magically become Keynesian just because it happens to advocate the same policy as a Keynesian argument.

The argument was not that recession-hit tax payers should stump up for the public sector, but that govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts.

You're the one who brought up the "unfair to punish them" argument in the first place! Don't stand there now and pretend that it was some completely different argument. No, "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" was not an argument that "govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts". That's ridiculous.

If "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" were a sound argument, then "the taxpayers did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument.

It IS an equally sound argument. Neither tax payers nor people who provide/rely on public services (who aren't separate groups anyway)

Meaning you choose to equate them in your own mind. If taxpayers and people who provide/rely on public services were actually the same people then taxes would be unnecessary -- the people relying on public services could just pay the providers when they get the services, the same as any other commercial transaction.

caused the crash and resulting deficit, so it was unfair to punish either.

Indeed. But to demand no budget cuts in public services is to demand the taxpayers be punished -- their income is down, so maintaining the same level of services puts a greater burden on them, which they did not cause and do not deserve. The argument treats public workers and service recipients as entitled to fairness, and treats the taxpayers who make the whole endeavor possible as not entitled to fairness.

And punishing either, i.e. by cutting public spending or taxing squeezed incomes in a downturn, is likely to hinder recovery.

But that is not a fairness argument -- that's a forward-looking means-ends argument -- and it does nothing to eliminate the asymmetry in who is treated as entitled to fairness and who is treated as a beast of burden. What, are you under the impression that Keynesian government deficit spending has magical powers? Public services are paid for by taxpayers. Deficit spending doesn't make the hurting taxpayers not have to shoulder the burden of maintaining those public services; it merely delays the punishment of the taxpayers until after the unhindered-from-recovering economy recovers, when the taxpayers will be better able to endure it. It's a wise policy but it doesn't alter the reality of who is burdened by whom.

Deficit reduction, OTOH, could equally have meant raising taxes, but that would have been counter to the Tories' small state, low tax ideology. Hence they had to sell the idea that the deficit was caused by Labour's public spending. Hence, for example the Tory election slogan "Don't give the keys back to the people who crashed the car".

What's to sell? Deficits are always caused by public spending. What else is there to cause them? Reduced tax revenues don't cause deficits; they merely do a less-good-than-before job of preventing them. Moreover, it sounds like Osborne was attacking Labour's tax hikes as much as their spending, so it's not as though Labour was getting condemned for being good little Keynesians.

If you aren't contending that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, then what the heck is your point in this whole exchange?

That Sayle's remark is a brilliant bit of satire.

But, since austerity really isn't the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, a misrepresentation of austerity proponents.

The Guardian? That's your evidence? Seriously?!?

No, the evidence is the widely reported content of the article, which wouldn't even make sense outwith the context of said Tory claims. Sir Nicholas Macpherson is not The Guardian (which is consistently rated with The Times as the most trusted and accurate UK newspapers). Nor are the authors of numerous academic tomes about said claims in the right wing press, e.g :

Oh, well, if it was said by the authors of academic tomes then it can't have been a leftist echo chamber.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Oh, for the love of god. "Fiscal consolidation in a downturn hinders recovery" is a Keynesian argument. "The people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" is a left-wing-jackass argument. An argument does not magically become Keynesian just because it happens to advocate the same policy as a Keynesian argument.

Here's what I said :


"On the contrary, anti-austerian arguments were widely put that

- the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them

- fiscal consolidation in a downturn would, if anything, hinder recovery anyway

- austerity was thus a political choice motivated by ideology, not economic necessity"


Whatever you're talking about isn't what I was talking about.

The argument was not that recession-hit tax payers should stump up for the public sector, but that govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts.

You're the one who brought up the "unfair to punish them" argument in the first place! Don't stand there now and pretend that it was some completely different argument. No, "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" was not an argument that "govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts".

It doesn't need to be. Anyone arguing against fiscal consolidation and for maintaining public services (see above) is not arguing for punishing tax payers.

That's ridiculous.

Not to anyone who understands the terms.

If "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" were a sound argument, then "the taxpayers did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument.

It IS an equally sound argument. Neither tax payers nor people who provide/rely on public services (who aren't separate groups anyway)

Meaning you choose to equate them in your own mind. If taxpayers and people who provide/rely on public services were actually the same people then taxes would be unnecessary -- the people relying on public services could just pay the providers when they get the services, the same as any other commercial transaction.

Whether or not they were the same people, tax raises were unneccessary. That's what "govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts" means.

caused the crash and resulting deficit, so it was unfair to punish either.

Indeed. But to demand no budget cuts in public services is to demand the taxpayers be punished -- their income is down, so maintaining the same level of services puts a greater burden on them, which they did not cause and do not deserve. The argument treats public workers and service recipients as entitled to fairness, and treats the taxpayers who make the whole endeavor possible as not entitled to fairness.

No it isn't and no it doesn't (see above).

And punishing either, i.e. by cutting public spending or taxing squeezed incomes in a downturn, is likely to hinder recovery.

But that is not a fairness argument -- that's a forward-looking means-ends argument -- and it does nothing to eliminate the asymmetry in who is treated as entitled to fairness and who is treated as a beast of burden. What, are you under the impression that Keynesian government deficit spending has magical powers? Public services are paid for by taxpayers. Deficit spending doesn't make the hurting taxpayers not have to shoulder the burden of maintaining those public services; it merely delays the punishment of the taxpayers until after the unhindered-from-recovering economy recovers, when the taxpayers will be better able to endure it. It's a wise policy but it doesn't alter the reality of who is burdened by whom.

Wrong. Deficit spending does not subsequently burden the tax payer unless the govt subsequently tries to reduce the stock of govt debt by running a surplus, which Keynesianism does not advocate except as means of restraining aggregate demand in boom times. Which, by definition, is not punishing recession-hit tax payers.

Deficit reduction, OTOH, could equally have meant raising taxes, but that would have been counter to the Tories' small state, low tax ideology. Hence they had to sell the idea that the deficit was caused by Labour's public spending. Hence, for example the Tory election slogan "Don't give the keys back to the people who crashed the car".

What's to sell? Deficits are always caused by public spending.

No they are not.

What else is there to cause them? Reduced tax revenues don't cause deficits; they merely do a less-good-than-before job of preventing them.

Garbage. If you have a balanced budget and tax revenues fall, govt goes into deficit. If govt is already in deficit (as most rich countries are almost continually) and revenues fall, the deficit increases.

Moreover, it sounds like Osborne was attacking Labour's tax hikes as much as their spending, so it's not as though Labour was getting condemned for being good little Keynesians.

On the contrary, Osborne urgently advocated fiscal consolidation.

If you aren't contending that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, then what the heck is your point in this whole exchange?

That Sayle's remark is a brilliant bit of satire.

But, since austerity really isn't the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, a misrepresentation of austerity proponents.

No, it highlights the misrepresentation of the causes of the UK post-crash deficit and recession.

The Guardian? That's your evidence? Seriously?!?

No, the evidence is the widely reported content of the article, which wouldn't even make sense outwith the context of said Tory claims. Sir Nicholas Macpherson is not The Guardian (which is consistently rated with The Times as the most trusted and accurate UK newspapers). Nor are the authors of numerous academic tomes about said claims in the right wing press, e.g :

Oh, well, if it was said by the authors of academic tomes then it can't have been a leftist echo chamber.

Indeed. They refer to the right wing echo chamber wherein "far from blaming bankers, stock market speculators and real estate tycoons, the predominant narrative was one in which an excess of nurses, firecrews and teachers were to be blamed for the collapse of the economy."

 

[ZiprHead]

Tax change in coronavirus package overwhelmingly benefits millionaires, congressional body finds
The provision, included by Senate Republicans, would cost taxpayers approximately $90 billion in 2020

More than 80 percent of the benefits of a tax change tucked into the coronavirus relief package Congress passed last month will go to those who earn more than $1 million annually, according to a report by a nonpartisan congressional body expected to be released Tuesday.

The provision, inserted into the legislation by Senate Republicans, temporarily suspends a limitation on how much owners of businesses formed as “pass-through” entities can deduct against their nonbusiness income, such as capital gains, to reduce their tax liability. The limitation was created as part of the 2017 Republican tax law to offset other tax cuts to firms in that legislation.

Suspending the limitation will cost taxpayers about $90 billion in 2020 alone, part of a set of tax changes that will add close to $170 billion to the national deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the nonpartisan congressional body.

Well, of course it does...

 

[Harry Bosch]

Here's what I said :


"On the contrary, anti-austerian arguments were widely put that

- the people who provide and rely on public sevices did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them

- fiscal consolidation in a downturn would, if anything, hinder recovery anyway

- austerity was thus a political choice motivated by ideology, not economic necessity"


Whatever you're talking about isn't what I was talking about.

You're the one who brought up the "unfair to punish them" argument in the first place! Don't stand there now and pretend that it was some completely different argument. No, "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" was not an argument that "govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts".

It doesn't need to be. Anyone arguing against fiscal consolidation and for maintaining public services (see above) is not arguing for punishing tax payers.

That's ridiculous.

Not to anyone who understands the terms.

If "the people who provide and rely on public services did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" were a sound argument, then "the taxpayers did not cause the crash and it was therefore unfair to punish them" would be an equally sound argument.

It IS an equally sound argument. Neither tax payers nor people who provide/rely on public services (who aren't separate groups anyway)

Meaning you choose to equate them in your own mind. If taxpayers and people who provide/rely on public services were actually the same people then taxes would be unnecessary -- the people relying on public services could just pay the providers when they get the services, the same as any other commercial transaction.

Whether or not they were the same people, tax raises were unneccessary. That's what "govt should - per Keynes - run deficits as necessary until recovery with, if anything, tax cuts" means.

caused the crash and resulting deficit, so it was unfair to punish either.

Indeed. But to demand no budget cuts in public services is to demand the taxpayers be punished -- their income is down, so maintaining the same level of services puts a greater burden on them, which they did not cause and do not deserve. The argument treats public workers and service recipients as entitled to fairness, and treats the taxpayers who make the whole endeavor possible as not entitled to fairness.

No it isn't and no it doesn't (see above).

And punishing either, i.e. by cutting public spending or taxing squeezed incomes in a downturn, is likely to hinder recovery.

But that is not a fairness argument -- that's a forward-looking means-ends argument -- and it does nothing to eliminate the asymmetry in who is treated as entitled to fairness and who is treated as a beast of burden. What, are you under the impression that Keynesian government deficit spending has magical powers? Public services are paid for by taxpayers. Deficit spending doesn't make the hurting taxpayers not have to shoulder the burden of maintaining those public services; it merely delays the punishment of the taxpayers until after the unhindered-from-recovering economy recovers, when the taxpayers will be better able to endure it. It's a wise policy but it doesn't alter the reality of who is burdened by whom.

Wrong. Deficit spending does not subsequently burden the tax payer unless the govt subsequently tries to reduce the stock of govt debt by running a surplus, which Keynesianism does not advocate except as means of restraining aggregate demand in boom times. Which, by definition, is not punishing recession-hit tax payers.

Deficit reduction, OTOH, could equally have meant raising taxes, but that would have been counter to the Tories' small state, low tax ideology. Hence they had to sell the idea that the deficit was caused by Labour's public spending. Hence, for example the Tory election slogan "Don't give the keys back to the people who crashed the car".

What's to sell? Deficits are always caused by public spending.

No they are not.

What else is there to cause them? Reduced tax revenues don't cause deficits; they merely do a less-good-than-before job of preventing them.

Garbage. If you have a balanced budget and tax revenues fall, govt goes into deficit. If govt is already in deficit (as most rich countries are almost continually) and revenues fall, the deficit increases.

Moreover, it sounds like Osborne was attacking Labour's tax hikes as much as their spending, so it's not as though Labour was getting condemned for being good little Keynesians.

On the contrary, Osborne urgently advocated fiscal consolidation.

If you aren't contending that austerity really is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, then what the heck is your point in this whole exchange?

That Sayle's remark is a brilliant bit of satire.

But, since austerity really isn't the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by excessive public spending, a misrepresentation of austerity proponents.

No, it highlights the misrepresentation of the causes of the UK post-crash deficit and recession.

The Guardian? That's your evidence? Seriously?!?

No, the evidence is the widely reported content of the article, which wouldn't even make sense outwith the context of said Tory claims. Sir Nicholas Macpherson is not The Guardian (which is consistently rated with The Times as the most trusted and accurate UK newspapers). Nor are the authors of numerous academic tomes about said claims in the right wing press, e.g :

Oh, well, if it was said by the authors of academic tomes then it can't have been a leftist echo chamber.

Indeed. They refer to the right wing echo chamber wherein "far from blaming bankers, stock market speculators and real estate tycoons, the predominant narrative was one in which an excess of nurses, firecrews and teachers were to be blamed for the collapse of the economy."

When has the United states ever been in a state of "austerity"? You're not one of those people who think that Trump and Bush cut funding are you?

 

[ZiprHead]

Kentucky Republicans celebrate after making it more difficult for people to vote during coronavirus crisis

Kentucky Republicans celebrated on Tuesday after successfully overriding a veto on a bill to make it more difficult to vote.

Kentucky state senate Republicans posted a photo of Sen. Damon Thayer and Sen. Robby Mills posing with Secretary of State Michael Adams.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear had blasted the bill in his veto message.

“I am vetoing Senate Bill 2 because the provisions of the law would create an obstacle to the ability of Kentuckians to exercise their right to vote, resulting in fewer people voting and undermining our democracy,” Beshear said in early April.

“During this time, the offices that would provide this identification are not open to in-person traffic, which would be necessary to create the actual identification,” Beshear noted.

See my sig line.