re: #177 Fozzie Bear

It used to be that people at least understood that the Laffer curve, if it existed in the simple way it was posited (which, obviously, it doesn’t) was a curve.

And yet very quickly after I heard it being talked about a lot, people started treating it as a line. Many people will unashamedly assert that lowering taxes always raises tax revenue, and that raising taxes can never increase them. Not only is this historically demonstrably false, but they cite the Laffer curve as a proof of this— and ignore that it’s a curve.

There are many, many things like that, I think, about economics. A shameful amount of those on the right wing don’t know what progressive taxation is, or think that the rates are entirely different than what they are. Global warming was accepted by Bush— and then suddenly acceptance of it went into reverse, as millions were spent on propaganda against it.

What I don’t understand is the nihilism of those doing it. I can’t explain it. All the explanations are pretty toxic.