I find myself wondering how people can accept some of the conservative palaver that seems rampant at times. For instance, on Saturday I heard the interview of a supposed authority on the "fiscal cliff" on Fox News. According to him, it is the most cataclysmic prospect we have faced since the 2008 catastrophe built for us over the thirty years prior to 2008 by the Republican conservative complex (Rcc)...and that may be so. We may be facing a recession as deep as the one we suffered beginning that year, but the question isn't whether such is the case, though making that claim does give moment to the bundle of threats the Republican Party is making in an effort to rehabilitate the idea that tax increases for the rich are the devil's tool. That idea was roundly rejected by the people who count...a bit more than 51% of the American electorate, and over 60% of those surveyed on the question, so they are trying to reinvigorate it by creating fear. But while that may be a legitimate political tactic these days, there is no excuse for using non-facts to do so. Thus, when I heard the "expert" say that the rescission of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% represents only three days worth of the federal deficit, I suspected that he either didn't know what he was talking about or he was trying to mislead Fox News watchers, and that apparently Fox News didn't care or didn't know what they were talking about either.
I usually find it demeaning to analyze anyone's arguments on the basis of arithmetic, and it is rarely necessary to stoop to that level. If you are dealing only with the four basic mathematical operations, you shouldn't need to have your calculations checked when you start talking to the American people as if you know what you are talking about, and even most conservatives don't. Their numbers may be manipulated, but they are not often complete fabrications. But three days is just over .8% of a year and we are experiencing deficits of just over $1 trillion per year. My understanding is that those tax breaks comprise a total of something between fifty and seventy billion dollars per year, $82 billion if David Brooks was right in his Friday op-ed. That is something between 5% and 8.2% of the federal budget deficit. That's about a month worth of days, not three days but ten times that: a month. And if we can cut the deficit by one twelfth, that sounds worth doing whereas three days, which represents less than one per cent doesn't seem worthy of serious consideration. So, the motive for the misrepresentation was clear...to trivialize the benefit of a tax increase on the rich and thus render it an implausible remedy for our fiscal problems. And then the manner in which he had made his error became clear as well. He misplaced a decimal point and made his calculation of the number of days of deficit those cuts would represent by multiplying 365 days by .082% instead of .82% ($8.2 billion dollars worth of tax revenue instead of $82 billion).
Having been reduced to the trivial task of checking someone's elementary math already, I feel personally diminished, but it had to be done. By today, there are thousands...and maybe millions...of ordinary people going around the country spreading the rumor that the increase in marginal tax rates for the rich that is the sine qua non for President Obama's signature on a new tax package is nearly meaningless, especially in light of another canard on which they rely: that taxes on the rich will cost them their jobs. Thus, instead of seeing that a meager 4.9% tax increase for the 2% of American people who already have plenty of money would eliminate over 8% of our total deficit problem and proportionally alleviate pressure to reduce government programs on which they rely, they are supporting the Republican myth that such tax increases won't help, but will rather be inimical to economic growth and job creation. By the way, that myth is also supported by some dubious math and clever phrasing. So, trivial as the arithmetic error of some marginal, obscure would-be maven may be, it is important to understand that these things happen regularly, and that elections sometimes turn on them. Things like the apocryphal EPA regulation against raising dust on the dirt road to your farm house precipitate the credence of millions when over-eager conservative acolytes like Newt Gingrich bemoan them on the campaign trail. Similarly, when Fox News airs the opinion of someone whom they cloak in expertise born of provenance and nothing else, voters in future elections make their electoral decisions and they become immutable because they think they have heard the truth. A myth like this three day thing...catchy in the way of most contrived political calculi...will linger in the minds of some voters for two years until they get to vote again, and then they will vote for the Republican candidate on the basis of that myth. And Fox News, purveyor of the illusion that the media are liberally slanted, will be responsible for it...and proud of it as well.
Rather than finding experts to support media slants and biases where they exist, the media on both sides should be concentrating on the fact that no one remedy will ameliorate our fiscal difficulties. We could advocate for some extant package of policy changes--the Simpson-Boles proposal or the "fiscal cliff" itself for example--and get pretty close to where we want to go, but the pain would be intense, and we would be risking another recession that would be perhaps more devastating than the first. Or, in the alternative, we could cherry pick the least painful measures from among the ideas that are coming in from all sides. My thought is that the increase in top marginal tax rates is a good beginning: 12% of what we need to break even every year. Then we could eliminate capital gains treatment for short-term capital gains at least, if not all capital gains except dividends and interest. No one needs to encourage the rich to invest their money by giving them tax breaks to induce them to do so. They are not going to stop trying to increase their wealth by investing in the stock market because they can only increase it 75% as fast after taxes go up. And maybe there should be a cap on deductions along with the elimination of tax loopholes that affect primarily big business and the rich. But it will take a bundle of these things to get us out of this mess. And as has been said many times by all kinds of people, including me, we're going to be ten years climbing out of this economic hole, and then only if we stop digging. So whenever someone makes one of those facile observations about the number of days of deficit spending that a measure represents or how high a stack of dollar bills in some amount would be, be skeptical. The facts and the theories involved in getting to the bottom of all this are not carved in stone. They are scrawled in shifting sand. Thus, as usual, the key to a sound thinking is to do it with your own head, not someone else's.
Your friend,
Mike
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