Kevin Graham wrote:Is that why I have intellectuals in academia hitting me up on occasion praising me for my input?
It very well may be, depending upon the issues and subject matter.
Even LDS intellectuals who don't particularly like me, would never in a million years say what you're saying.
Many other LDS intellectuals, as well as non-LDS intellectuals, however, would. I'm only going by roughly 5 to 7 years and a huge archive of your own posts and assertions.
The only person I know who has dared criticize me in this way, is a man in his fifties still trying to obtain a bachelors degree in Kershaw, South Carolina. So I take your criticism as a compliment. Seriously, I do.
Much of what you say, on a regular basis, Kevin, is vacuously silly, from a serious intellectual standpoint, and other portions of your standard arguments are clearly purely polemical and emotion-based in nature. This has been too obvious for too long to require any further elucidation.
As it is, you can't refute anything I've said, all you can do is claim I'm wrong, lying, etc.
I and other apologists and, on political issues, conservatives (LDS, for the most part, given the venues), have been sending you packing with your pants down around your ankles for years. Your fantastic narcissism and feverish hostility to anyone who sees things differently from you effectively prevents you from educating yourself beyond a tiny bandwidth of ideologically safe intellectual cubby holes from which you can absorb and regurgitate pat answers and neo-Marxist cartoon denunciations of conservatism and other fantabulous constructions of your and the Left's vivid imagination.
You'll spend pages and pages saying the same thing about how right and smart you are,
The only time I've ever done any such thing is as a defensive retort to those who have made a cottage industry of insulting and questioning my intelligence. Dr. Frankenstein, meet one of your monsters.
but you can never make an actual argument that isn't already panned out for you by an online article from Mises.org or the laughable Heritage Foundation. You have shown no ability at original or critical thought.
Actually, the vast majority of everything I've ever argued here, or anywhere else, has been penned out of my brain as I've sat here and tapped my keyboard, many times without any research materials in front of me at all, but sometimes with them. When I do research for a post (which you seem to condemn, and no wonder, given the intellectual content of much of your writing), I always make arguments in my own words, in my own prose, and from my own position and perspective.
You can't handle that, Kevin, because most of what you claim to believe is driven primarily by a powerful, surging emotional, vitriolic hatred of the Church and of anything and everything that can be associated with it. Any "light and truth," from whatever source, will provoke a strong reaction from you. I've seen it again and again.
I stand by my statement as would any economist worth his salt. Historically increased taxes on the highest earners have not damaged the economy.
Here we go...
In the first place, I don't for a second believe that you have any intellectual background from which you could determine what a legitimate economist is or thinks. Economics is not a science, but a rational and logically grounded discipline that studies human behavior and motives as well as, on a much more abstract, theoretic level, larger scale (macro) economic phenomena. There are numerous, and have been numerous theories in play for a long time, and still are. This is your usual credentialist argument who's intent is to end the debate before it starts.
Secondly, as I already pointed out, your assertion is patently unsupportable, from an empirical perspective (significant episodes of economic downturn have occurred repeatedly due to a combination of overhigh taxation, regulation, and the manipulation of money and credit), and the rest of your claim has no precise meaning. What we do know is that that, after some point, higher taxation results in less productive economic activity. The lower the taxation, the more. This observation is aprioristic in nature and doesn't ever really need a logical argument to made it explicit. History, experience, and the fundamental underlying principles of human nature tell us most of what we need to know here.
If you want more of something, incentivize it through lower taxation. If you want less, raise taxes on it. If you want to destroy it, raise taxes to destroying levels.
This argument is mostly utilitarian in nature, however. The real problem with levels of taxation at which America and most of the Western world now operate are moral and philosophical in nature, and have to do with liberty and the proper scope and responsibilities of the state, not economic efficiency per se.
In fact the opposite has been shown to be true.
No, it hasn't. Quite the opposite. Indeed, it has been progressively proven false in Western Europe and the U.K. for the last several decades.
The fact is our debt has been skyrocketing ever since Reagan implemented supply-side economic theory
This is why I and other people who actually, again, are educated and value knowledge and education do not and will not take you seriously. You are not even elementarily knowledgeable about the various elements in play in the economic realm that produce such phenomena from president to president and from era to era.
Supply-side economics produced the longest peace time economic boom in history up to that point, a roughly seven year boom that then turned into a 20 year period of economic growth that benefited everyone, directly or indirectly, from the poorest to the richest.
which has proven to be a disaster. This isn't a moot point, it is an established fact.
Chant your mantras, Kevin. There is no historical or empirical support for them, but chant them anyway. This is what virtually all leftists must do when facing down reality. There is no way out for you, at this juncture, other than to fight, tooth and claw, against truth, facts, evidence, and logical argument. That's all you can do...just fight.
Anyone familiar with doing a budget knows you have to have income to match expenditures. Reagan and the Bush duo slashed expenditures dramatically
A flat-footed falsehood. But who cares? You can remain ideologically pure in this manner, Kevin, so don't let me spoil your fun. Reagan increased the military budget substantially, and the Democrat controlled House spent each and every penny of new revenue that came into its coffers (the size of the economy nearly doubled, from 1983 to 1990) and then borrowed further funds and spent more. Entitlement spending rose dramatically during the 80s. You don't know what you're talking about, Kevin. Let me repeat:
you don't understand what you're talking about. You folks didn't say a friggin word about the debt or the deficits when "W" was President.
This shows, yet again, that you are utterly in the dark regarding the world of the conservative intellectual movement or its grassroots, and that you have effectively sealed yourself off from any change of ever being intellectually serious.
Some "intellectuals" may or may not call you for a quantum of solace. Many other very smart, educated, and knowledgeable people who's intelligence you've insulted over the years are rolling their eyeballs at most of what you say.
The fact is you are bitching about a progressive tax system that has been in place for quite some time now and you can't brag about America's accomplishments over two hundred years and then give credit only to a recent (supply-side) economic theory which has in fact proven to be an utter disaster. I have already shown that you do not understand the tax system,
This is interesting coming from someone who appears to have no bloody understanding of basic economics whatsoever. You see, this is the narcissism and educational problem anyone who tangles with you faces.
The U.S. has prospered under various levels of progressive taxation, but this isn't an argument for progressive taxation, let alone the levels of taxation we are now facing and which are crushing Western Europe.
All this talk of "prosperity" and "thriving" economies overlooks at least two things, the first being the vast opportunity costs associated with high taxation and regulation (which means that, as taxes rise, human economic behavior and incentives change) and secondly that the term "prosper" or "thrive" are relative and don't have a clear meaning. What would the U.S. have looked like without such massive transfers out of the productive sector to the parasitic public sector?
Bcspace's claim that increased taxes "do little" to increase revenues, is downright idiotic.
No, its empirically factual. I could produce, quite easily, a body of charts and graphs demonstrating precisely this. But then you would produce some deep fat fried charts and graphs showing the opposite. Hence, I've long ago given up chart and graph wars. The fact is, however, as it has been empirically settled, that as taxes rise, there is an initial spike in revenue, which then sinks and stagnates. Jimmy Carters revenues, under substantially higher marginal rates, were massively lower then at the end of the 80s. This can be shown to have been the case in other low-tax eras as well.
This is very, very simple, Kevin. Changes in tax rates, at least of any substance (like regulatory burdens, the way depreciation is handled, inflation etc.)
alters human behavior.This is not all that difficult to understand.In fact, I can't think of a single "debate" where it could reasonably be said that you "won."
You're staring it in the face now. The problem is, that's all you actually care about - winning debates with your ideological enemies.
To be really honest, I'm not even really sure you actually believe much of the leftist ideology you defend. I'm not even sure you were ever really a conservative, in an authentic, settled sense, all those years ago. I'm not sure what your core really is, or if you have one. Years ago, coinciding with your full apostasy from the gospel, you suddenly lurched, almost overnight, from a stanch conservative, defender of George Bush, the Iraq War, and free market economics, to a Chomsky leftist.
People who lurch from pole to pole, with severe rapidity and vehemence are not the kinds of people I would normally trust to provide an intellectually stable or sincere perspective, even of their own views.
Further, you constant anger, hostility, and intellectual self-promotion have always led me to think that you are not really all that secure in much of what you defend and support.
(Thanks, beastie, for the link)