Are Republicans opportunistic liars, or just stupid?

[_Bret Ripley]

Look, any friend of the Good Doctor (especially if its Tom Baker) is a friend of mine.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Would you care for a Jelly Baby?

[_Droopy]

As a business owner in practice,

What does this mean?

I have tried to pound home this exact point numerous times. But folks like Droopy simply don't get it. They seem to live in this delusion that says the more money a business owner has, the more people will be hired. Therefore, let them keep as much of their tax money as possible because that will increase employment.

That's called rational self interest, otherwise known as working for a living. If economic growth is not important to you after a certain business size is reached, than slight increases in taxes may not bother you. As rates continue to rise, however, economic decisions will be forced upon any business relative to size of operations and of workforce.

This kind of reasoning is laughable to those who have actual owned a business and we already know from historical precedent that this is a myth that doesn't live up to the hype. In a period of record profits for businesses, along with record lows in taxes, corporations have not interpreted any of this as an incentive to go on hiring sprees. The theory has been proved to be myth, and one that Droopy and his ilk refuse to abandon.

The reason corporations have not been hiring in the present economic environment is because of vast tax and regulatory uncertainty Obama has introduced into the American economy. No one knows what government might do next. Obamacare has introduced critical uncertainties and economic hazard as well, and hiring won't return until Obama is long gone, his policies repealed, and the economy (the American people) are allowed to invest, risk, work, and prosper in a much freer, open economic environment.

The example I presented was hiring teachers for an English school in Brazil. If I only have 30 students, I don't need to hire more than two teachers. If the government decided to let me keep all the taxes I paid, and I put an extra $10,000 in my pocket, that would have no effect on my decision, as a business owner, to hire more teachers. With only 30 students, hiring a fourth or fifth teacher would be a waste of money, so why do it?

If you are running a private K-12, high school, or college, and you find your enrollment is going to go up in the coming year, and you find that you need more teachers, you are then going - if you wish to actually serve your new students properly - to hire new teachers.

If, however, taxes have gone up to the point that your bottom line -your ability to maintain what you already have at a profit that allows you to continue operations and pay your professors and staff what the market will bear (which you must do to attract and keep the best talent available), you are going to have to make cuts to your operations. Where? That's right, the new professors and new classes.

If you notice that Kevin's economic analysis frequently makes no rational sense at all, and is in many cases logically counter-intuitive, you're correct.

The only reason I would need to hire more teachers is if... (drum roll) ... consumer demand increases. If suddenly an extra 50-100 students registered for classes, then I would need to hire more teachers to accommodate the increase in business.

Which is what I've delineated above. Now, what happens if taxes rise substantially in the interim and cut deeply into the profit making potential of running the school as an entity? You're school needs to trim staff and and other overhead. What goes first?

This is the whole point of the stimulus, which is designed to put more money into the hands of consumers who spend. When people have extra money to spend, then they start engaging in activities like learning a second language.

All of which is irrelevant, because the fact of the matter is that consumer demand does not drive the economy. Production drives the economy - work, productive economic activity, drives and creates the conditions of job opportunity, economic growth, and prosperity. Consumer demand is completely dependent upon production and its creation of new net wealth and new net job opportunity, and the incentives that drive production are those centered in the profit motive and rational self interest.

Secondly, government stimulus creates all of its consumer demand only at the cost of economic activity in other sectors of the economy and by targeting such stimulus at specific constituencies (such as unionized teachers, state government employees, heavily unionized private sector manufacturing, and artificially generated industries such as the "green" energy sector, which is where the vast majority of both stimulus packages went - it was little more than a political slush fund)

Those entities who receive the stimulus see palpable economic effects. They are in a better economic situation. Their own economic situation has been made better. The other sectors of the economy (including the general working population) at who's expense the above sector as received a windfall is never spoken of. Nor are the substantial distortions of market forces and the fact that all the stimulus seen in one place has come at the expense of jobs, prosperity, and economic growth in another often mentioned, if at all, in the public media sphere.

Stimulus spending of this kind, and especially at the fantastic levels at which the Obama administration has pursued them, are wildly inflationary. Creating and handing out money to various sectors of the economy without a corresponding increase in goods and services within that economy creates broad based general price inflation - the very kind of government created debasement of the currency that has come to define the monetary policies of most Western governments in the 20th century.

Keynesianism has been discredited for nearly a century both as a matter of theory and repeated historical experience. It continues among the political classes, not because it has ever delivered on its promises, but because, whatever its merits or weaknesses as a theory, it is a theory that justifies and legitimates the open-ended expansion and centralization of power in the state.

Which is the only reason leftists are attracted to it at all.

[_krose]

What is this word, praxological, that you continue to use?

Maybe "paradoxical problem"? Just a guess, Droopy has some problems with English. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want to speak for Droopy.

He also likes to use arcane words to show his erudition. Maybe he meant this:
http://praxeology.net/praxeo.htm

I figured that was probably the intention, but it was repeated so often with the same spelling that I felt compelled to poke. (And yes, I saw what you did there.)

By the way, my right-click spell checker suggests "proctological" as the replacement.

[Guest]

Maybe "paradoxical problem"? Just a guess, Droopy has some problems with English. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want to speak for Droopy.

He also likes to use arcane words to show his erudition. Maybe he meant this:
http://praxeology.net/praxeo.htm

No, Quasiintelligent, I meant "praxeological," the term long used by the Austrian school of economics, and coined (I believe) by Von Mises, as meaning the study of human action; the incentives, motives, and values that guide and produce productive economic activity.

[_krose]

Maybe "paradoxical problem"? Just a guess, Droopy has some problems with English. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want to speak for Droopy.

He also likes to use arcane words to show his erudition. Maybe he meant this:
http://praxeology.net/praxeo.htm

No, Quasiintelligent, I meant "praxological," the term long used by the Austrian school of economics, and coined (I believe) by Von Mises, as meaning the study of human action; the incentives, motives, and values that guide and produce productive economic activity.

Interesting. Can you point to a reference where "praxological" is defined and used?

(I know you're probably busy looking through the IRS instructions for Schedule C right now, so whenever you can get to it.)

[_Quasimodo]

By the way, my right-click spell checker suggests "proctological" as the replacement.

Wow, 'proctological' adds a whole new and uncomfortable aspect to his comments.

[_Quasimodo]

No, Quasiintelligent, I meant "praxological," the term long used by the Austrian school of economics, and coined (I believe) by Von Mises, as meaning the study of human action; the incentives, motives, and values that guide and produce productive economic activity.

Gee Droopy (I would try to think of some clever twist of your name as well, but Droopy covers it pretty well), I thought you were not talking to me anymore. Glad to see you're back! If you read down, I posted that definition (the very same as yours) as well.

[_Droopy]

Interesting. Can you point to a reference where "praxeological" is defined and used?

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Praxeology

[_Quasimodo]

Interesting. Can you point to a reference where "praxeological" is defined and used?

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Praxeology

Good to see that you can use wiki to defend your grammar. Praxeological is not a five dollar word. It's a ten dollar word. It must have taken you a while to find. I don't see you using it in daily conversation. If you did, the people you were talking to would look at you askance.

The five dollar and ten dollar words do not make you sound smart, just desperate to seem smart.

[_krose]

Interesting. Can you point to a reference where "praxeological" is defined and used?

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Praxeology

That's pretty dishonest, dude, editing my post so that it now spells an actual word, rather than what you typed (many times) earlier.

My actual text:

Interesting. Can you point to a reference where "praxological" is defined and used?