But Jim, haven’t you heard, cutting taxes raises revenue!! ALWAYS!! And raising taxes cuts revenue!! ALWAYS!! I know this to be so, because Jesus Reagan told me so!!

This is a caricature that exists solely in the liberal economist mind. What supply-siders claim is that raising taxes will always result in less revenue growth than predicted by static scoring because taxpayers change economic behavior to avoid taxes, and in some future year (e.g. 5 or 10 years down the road), you will pull in less revenue that year because of stunted economic growth than if you had left the tax rate alone. Alternatively, cutting taxes will result in less revenue, but not as much of a drop as predicted by static scoring, and long-term, revenues will eventually catch up and exceed what you’d get if you simply left the tax rate alone.

This principle is captured in the Laffer Curve, the general theory of which is now widely accepted (most disagreements amongst economists are about how sharp or flat the curve is and where current tax rates are along that curve).

To the extent supply-siders have been disingenuous, its been because of their propensity to be rosy in their analysis of when tax cuts will quote-unquote pay for themselves. This can be likened to unions’ propensity to argue for pension increases based on rosy economic forecasts that imply very little risk on the part of the government to grant.

I’ve sent you an Excel spreadsheet via email, to illustrate the point in hard numbers. Obviously you’ll see that the numbers are largely driven by assumptions, which can be changed to drastically affect the numbers, but all of the assumptions I made reflect observations of economic behavior that are generally accepted to be true.

Although I refrained from saying it in the post, for fear of being more overtly partisan than I already was, this is one of the chief “fairy tales” I was thinking of when I used that term. It has incredible currency on the Right at the moment. It’s as if they don’t realize the mathematical paradox of their view, that surely AT SOME POINT lowering taxes (like, say, to 0%? or perhaps 0.01%? or perhaps some slightly higher number?) would, in fact, cut revenue.

Again, see the Laffer Curve, which is foundational to supply-side economics. The mathematical paradox only exists in your distorted caricature of what supply-side economics purports to represent. You are the one proffering fairy tales here, not supply-siders.

If you don’t believe me that supply-siders believe a caricature of their views, believe one of the founders fo supply-side economics:

I won’t bother to refute Bartlett point-by-point, I will instead respond generally and say that Bartlett, like you, is over-caricaturizing his former supply-side comrades. No doubt partisans in the Bush Administration sold rosier Laffer scenarios than realistic economic analysis would otherwise support, but even granting that, Bartlett is just plain wrong in that tax revenue did recover fairly quickly and arguably grew at a faster rate (and sooner) than if tax rates were otherwise left alone. The sin was on the spending side, where outlays were not sufficiently restrained and deficits were allowed to outpace economic expansion. Simply put, the Bush tax cuts definitely paid for themselves, but they didn’t pay for the corresponding growth in spending (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Rx Medicare Bill, etc.).

Furthermore, Bartlett attacks Republicans for aiding and abetting the growth of tax credits and loopholes and such, while ignoring the fact that it’s the conservative right (and nobody in the center or on the left) that is the sole political force advocating for tax simplification and reform (either to a flat tax or a national sales tax).

The one point I will happily concede to Bartlett is that Republicans erred in adopting the “starve the beast” approach, which was taken more out of political convenience than out of adherence to any actual philosophical principles (actually cutting spending and ending government programs is too politically difficult). However, it is incorrect to lay the blame of deficits solely at the feet of supply-siders and starve-the-beast-ers. The federal government ran chronic deficits for two decades before Reagan came along with his SSE supporters, and the federal deficits are only getting worse now that Obama and the Democrats have control of the House, Senate, and the White House. I also firmly believe that messing with tax rates at this point is only tinkering around the edges, as we are now at the point where only serious entitlement reform offers any hope of restoring fiscal sanity to the budget. And let me remind you, by the way, of the last two presidents who made any attempt at that sort of reform, but were thoroughly ridiculed and attacked by opposition Democrats — their names are Dubya and Reagan.

I am personally perplexed when people I respect turn out to be progressives. It simply seems incredible to me that an intelligent, rational person could really believe all that crap the leftys are saying.

And I know that the Brendans, Davids and Sandys of the world feel exactly the same about us on the right. How can they believe that crap?

He was clearly NOT attacking the left, he was equating how the two sides feel about each other to later make the following point:

Now the argument about which side is right is eternal. That question will never be answered, because man will never be perfect.

But how is it that the left and the right can co-exist in the same country, with such disgust and disdain, such inability to understand the other.

I would argue that it is the very robustness of our political system.

In other words, he is making an argument that the vitriol and partisanship inherent in our politics and media today are not reflective of some sort of depressing, rotting phenomenon, they are glaring examples of the inherent strength of our political system. You may disagree, but to ignore the point he was attempting to make and to instead spin his opening statement as an unhinged attack on the left is disingenuous at best.

The reality is, fascism (and one of its opposites, libertarianism) is a great example of why the traditional left-to-right ideology spectrum is flawed. There is nothing “conservative” about fascism, and there is nothing “liberal” about it either — except for the fact that modern liberals consistently claim the label “progressive”, and many past progressives were proud fascists.

I think you are wrong. I think it has a place in a discussion of the state of modern political struggle.

The purpose for the book on it’s most basic level is an attempt to get YOU guys to stop calling us guys NAZIs or fascists.

Or is this some kind of bizarre performance meta-art that’s going above my head?

How about you provide for us some of the centerpieces of his argument?

In the end, however, for once I agree with Sandy:

If your point is to make sure the conversation doesn’t go towards liberals/communists/fascists, then why introduce that in the first place?

Why indeed? This is Glenn Beck theater at its best. “I’m not saying you are this, but this comes from you.”

Perhaps in an literal sense you are correct, to discuss shared roots or shared ideology is not to state that one thing is the other. But then what, other than an academic exercise, does the point add to conversations here.

I understand that you weren’t the person to bring it up first in this thread, but you are, to my knowledge, the person who referenced it first and most regularly here on the blog.

You left out the word “leftist” before scholars.

I’ll simply repeat the so far unanswered question…have any of you actually read Goldberg’s book?

Goldberg is sliming American liberals by pointing to the similarities in ideology that they have with Hitler. People do the same by comparing Republicans in the same fashion, and yes they do have things in common, but so what?!? Most sensible people know that the number of American liberals (and republicans) don’t want a tyrannical state.

Furthermore associating the Republican and Democratic party of 60 to 100 years ago to today’s parties is completely dishonest as well, not only because people were completely different back then, society was completely different back then, but the parties were completely different back then as well. The Republicans who supported Ronald Reagan as recently as 30 years ago, would not support him today because for one thing, he would be a Democrat. His political philosophy was completely the opposite of what Republicans stand for today, from negotiating with our enemies to amnesty forget it. They would’ve threw the bum out the second he opened his mouth.

“Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right of the conventional left-right political spectrum.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Why don’t you guys READ what I write?

How many times do I have to say the premise is not that the left is fascist, but that fascism comes from the left? Why is that I can say communism comes from the left and no one immediately leaps to the conclusion “He saying all of us are communists!”?

it seems counter to the very premise to be having a discussion about wither the left is essentially fascist, born out of fascism or the other way around.

I am explicitly (and so is Goldberg by the way) not attempting to have that conversation.

Again, have you guys read his book and/or looked at his evidence?

I recall people, on this very blog, blaming Obama for the bad economy in November of 2008 because Americans KNEW that a democrat was going to take over and that was the problem with the economy. Certainly nothing that the Republicans running the Senate and Congress for 12 of the last 13 years could be responsible for, or the Republican president of the last 8 years could be responsible for.

Brendan’s point is made with this thread and the assinine labels that are attached to the political parties. We really need to identify liberals as socialists, facists or nazis? Is the Democratic party really that close to nazis? I mean really?!!?

What are the Democrats not listening to with regards to Republicans? Americans voted democrats into power, as our system goes, because the Republicans were miserable failures in their jobs. I understand the republican mouthpieces trying to disseminate their positions and stop democrats from advancing their agendas, but labeling Obama a socialist or saying that he’s going to tax us to death or run us into debt… that’s already happened before he took office.

To suggest that ‘well democrats said the same things about Bush/Cheney’, that’s true, but after Bush planned to or did murder 100,000+ people in Iraq for no good (to most rational people (90% of earth)) reason, and numerous other ‘mistakes’ (on purpose) that hurt real people.

The only time I can recall a president being maligned before even taking office is Bill Clinton, and again it was a democrat. I truly don’t think much is going to change in this coming election because so many of the anti-democrats are eye-bugging nut-jobs who voice strange criticisms of a government that was left in turmoil when we (the voters) “threw the bums out”. It’s only the dwindling numbers of Republicans and tea partiers who actually think putting Republicans back in office is the answer.

This is an event-horizon, but it’s the death of the conservative movement, when the Republican party was hijacked by extremists and turned into the goofball express. What do they stand for? Pointing out that Obama is a socialist and a community organizer still? It’s 2010, the wake-up call is in November. The Republican party still has no direction or leadership worthy of primetime. Until that happens the reason nobody is considering Republican opinions is because there are none, and Sarah Palin is your leader due to lack of interest in the position.

I rejected the “Bush is a Fascist” cry from the left, you should reject the, uh… “the left is a fascist” cry from… uh… yourself? It’s counterproductive, not terribly accurate, and kind of makes you look like a fool.

It’s not a feature solely of the right, but it is certainly associated more with the right than of the left. The left tends to be more internationalist. Of course this all gets cloudy. The Left SRs and even most of the early Bolsheviks were incredibly internationalist, as was Castro early on but as we all know by Stalin’s time the role of the ComIntern was diminished. Does that mean Stalin wasn’t a leftist? I don’t know, that’s a difficult question. Any sober analysis of Stalin will concede he certainly diminished the leftist aspects of even Lenin’s ideology (ex. Lenin’s more hands off approach to the ethnic question).

Either way, the states you list are certainly not strongly nationalistic, at least not on a scale that includes Fascist Italy and Fascist Germany. The United States has nationalistic elements, but I wouldn’t call it a nationalist regime. I certainly wouldn’t call them fascist regimes. Fascism specifically opposes Marxism and class based conflict. Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea each seek to exploit class based divisions, so they are not Fascist.

Well, we are making progress. Just to be clear, you are now acknowledging that fascism is of the left. I will counter by acknowledging that it is not solely of the left.

Sigh. I can’t tell whether you are being purposefully obtuse or what. No, I am not acknowledging that. I am stating simply that if you say it is *of the left* I am establishing that whether or not its spectrum includes the left or not, it is not solely of the left. If it not solely of the left then, it is essentially incorrect to say it is of the left.

The point being, I think it is of the right, but I think the references in that link, while not establishing my viewpoint demolish yours.

What do you mean by this? Are you implying that fascism has changed since the turn of the century?

I am meaning to say that 20th century fascism is the yardstick by which fascism is measured. It is both the first inception and the most pure.

And just for the record, citing wiki about politics is pretty useless.

No, it’s not useless. It solely depends on the quality of citations, and the section I’ve referenced is very well cited.