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Showing posts from February, 2017

Revenue neutral tax reform

This is the Republican plan. It means that the total amount of money coming into the government won't change, but who pays for what will. It's not a tax cut, it's a tax rearrangement. (Any actual cut will be financed by anticipated future growth, growth that will come from the animal spirits released by the government taking in less money, and by the inherent goodness of people doing the right thing.) If this sounds plan familiar, it is. If you think it's for you, or that it will help you in any way -- it's not and it won’t. Think Kansas . Brownback Kansas nationwide.

Truth is just an interpretation argued forcefully from a position of power.

Truth is just an interpretation argued forcefully from a position of power. Again — we live in an adversarial system, imagined as a marketplace of ideas. That it works despite itself is neither a selling point or a recommendation to keeping our eyes shut tight. The market can be arranged, streets can blocked, and systems gamed — to idealize an adversarial system as fair or good is to deny the truth of human beings. The rules are adversarial and are made by the winners, and the winners are decided the force of arms, justified by the force of intellect. We are right because we have the intellect to say we are right in convincing terms, "We have property rights and the rule of law and these things make us right”, even if these rights are applied based on color or dick size. To the veneer of intellect, we add the ability to punch you in the face repeatedly if you doubt the truth or sincerity of our paperwork. The next empire will have its own rules and reality, whic