The Fail Files (Vol. I)

By on November 11, 2010 in News 6

The expected ripostes have begun to trickle in from our inaugural post — especially from my favorite aggregation site, Disinfo.com.  I anticipate quite a number of challenges to the self-evident notion that 1-1=0 from the Korporate Kabbalist crowd.  So I thought I’d actually give a name to the series of posts I expect to file answering them, “The Fail Files” — reflecting the laughable durabilty of such a stupid notion as the Laffer Curve.

"You have slain my corporate master! Prepare to die!"

Okay, so here’s the first two questions I choose to answer*

1.  Q:  “But won’t our corporate masters simply pass their taxes on to us in the form of higher prices?”

A:  Not statistically likely.  There is an extremely weak correlation between increases in corporate income tax and inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index–less than 3%, in fact.  Which is within the typical margin of error for a coin flip.  See details here.

More Dystopia Diaries

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  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Aside from approving of the Q & A style examination of topics that shouldn’t even require debate (the numbers have been in and piling up for almost a century…the Right is wrong…discussion over.)…

    …that picture alone is worth a thousand words.

    • Liam_McGonagle

      Of course you’re right. The evidence’s been in for a while and the conclusion is clear.

      And your point about the format is particularly perspecuitous–this exercise is mostly interesting as a practical experiment in cognitive theory and the dissection of cultural memes.

      You may, like Bill Hicks, feel frustrated waiting for the rest of us to catch up on the Evolutionary Curve, but my sense is that as a nation have an extraordinary growth opportunity ahead of us, despite or maybe even because of the recent disasterous midterms. We just need to be creative, consistent and persistent to take advantage of it.

      It’s still early days, but my sense is that we’re onto something here, a new pedagogical or polemical approach that could shift the public’s point of view: concrete, tactile articulations of the true, sick dynamic of society.

      Yes, this stuff is beyond obvious to you and Emperorreagan, but you guys probably are in the upper 5 percentile in terms of ability to abstract and learn from others’ experience. The vast majority of the public, I fear, live in a much smaller cognitive world where things that go beyond what they as individuals can touch and feel seem as irrelevant or outright lies.

      Of course the shoe is REALLY beginning to pinch now. Materially: highest deficits, unemployment, income inequality since WWII. And cognitively, too: a 180 degree divergence of the Right Wing’s policy from its rhetoric. Yes, you may say, the essential tensions and contradictions between the Republicans’ elitist policy directions and its populist polemics were evident from the ’60′s at least. But the situation today is clearly on a whole other order of magnitude; even Nixon would seem like a hippie by today’s standards (Earth Day, energy conservation initiatives, opening up to Red China, etc.).

      So what I’m doing and continue to do in this blog is to seize on these developments and achieve The Ultimate Teachable Moment, put power into the hands of kinesthetic learners like myself.

      1. Appeal to low-comedy to tap latent energies
      2. Provide tactile, interactive experience to reinforce lessons that you and Emperorreagan learned centuries ago
      3. Promote the general cutlural values of creativity and engagement in public policy
      4. Point to some practical solutions

      So the Q&A format is part of it. The goofy photos and over-the-top comedic rhetoric are part of it. The interactive Excel workbooks are a bit part of it. Going forward I also hope to include online quizzes, etc. to drive engagement even further.

      As always, your high value-add comment are awesome.

      • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

        I should throw in my usual disclaimer then…for the sake of posterity. NO…the Right wasn’t always this wrong…but since the Reagan era rise of the neo-conservatives within the party, the rise of neo-liberalism as economic policy, and the rise of the religious right…they have not merely become wrong…they have embraced it joyfully and with gusto. Turn back the hands of time…and they can be worthwhile again…but not until the average member of the GOP does more independent thinking than the average lemming.http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/2010/08/its-not-my-grandfathers-gop-anymore.html

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Aside from approving of the Q & A style examination of topics that shouldn’t even require debate (the numbers have been in and piling up for almost a century…the Right is wrong…discussion over.)…

    …that picture alone is worth a thousand words.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Of course you’re right. The evidence’s been in for a while and the conclusion is clear.

    And your point about the format is particularly perspecuitous–this exercise is mostly interesting as a practical experiment in cognitive theory and the dissection of cultural memes.

    You may, like Bill Hicks, feel frustrated waiting for the rest of us to catch up on the Evolutionary Curve, but my sense is that as a nation have an extraordinary growth opportunity ahead of us, despite or maybe even because of the recent disasterous midterms. We just need to be creative, consistent and persistent to take advantage of it.

    It’s still early days, but my sense is that we’re onto something here, a new pedagogical or polemical approach that could shift the public’s point of view: concrete, tactile articulations of the true, sick dynamic of society.

    Yes, this stuff is beyond obvious to you and Emperorreagan, but you guys probably are in the upper 5 percentile in terms of ability to abstract and learn from others’ experience. The vast majority of the public, I fear, live in a much smaller cognitive world where things that go beyond what they as individuals can touch and feel seem as irrelevant or outright lies.

    Of course the shoe is REALLY beginning to pinch now. Materially: highest deficits, unemployment, income inequality since WWII. And cognitively, too: a 180 degree divergence of the Right Wing’s policy from its rhetoric. Yes, you may say, the essential tensions and contradictions between the Republicans’ elitist policy directions and its populist polemics were evident from the ’60′s at least. But the situation today is clearly on a whole other order of magnitude; even Nixon would seem like a hippie by today’s standards (Earth Day, energy conservation initiatives, opening up to Red China, etc.).

    So what I’m doing and continue to do in this blog is to seize on these developments and achieve The Ultimate Teachable Moment, put power into the hands of kinesthetic learners like myself.

    1. Appeal to low-comedy to tap latent energies
    2. Provide tactile, interactive experience to reinforce lessons that you and Emperorreagan learned centuries ago
    3. Promote the general cutlural values of creativity and engagement in public policy
    4. Point to some practical solutions

    So the Q&A format is part of it. The goofy photos and over-the-top comedic rhetoric are part of it. The interactive Excel workbooks are a bit part of it. Going forward I also hope to include online quizzes, etc. to drive engagement even further.

    As always, your high value-add comment are awesome.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I should throw in my usual disclaimer then…for the sake of posterity. NO…the Right wasn’t always this wrong…but since the Reagan era rise of the neo-conservatives within the party, the rise of neo-liberalism as economic policy, and the rise of the religious right…they have not merely become wrong…they have embraced it joyfully and with gusto. Turn back the hands of time…and they can be worthwhile again…but not until the average member of the GOP does more independent thinking than the average lemming.http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/2010/08/its-not-my-grandfathers-gop-anymore.html