Fallacy: Guilt By Association

Good old Karl Marx. Three cheers for Karl!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yDrtNEr_5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QMhSFybfHw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YLV-bwQk5s&feature=related

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Actually, I only posted that to irritate you.

Trying to discredit the idea of progressive taxation by connecting it to "Marxist economic theory" is a an example of the guilt by association fallacy.

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Guilt by Association is a fallacy in which a person rejects a claim simply because it is pointed out that people she dislikes accept the claim. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

It is pointed out that people person A does not like accept claim P.
Therefore P is false
It is clear that sort of "reasoning" is fallacious. For example the following is obviously a case of poor "reasoning": "You think that 1+1=2. But, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin, and Ted Bundy all believed that 1+1=2. So, you shouldn't believe it."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/guilt-by-association.html

 

20% of working age males are unemployed. . . .

54% of recent college graduates (20-24) are unable to find work. . . .

The 9% Unemployment INSURANCE number is BS because all they have to do is slide people off the list and magically unemployment 'ain't so bad no more'. . . .

FED cheers at 73k new jobs when the economy produces 150k more workers. . . oh wait 'Gobbermit Math' those 77k unemployed magically disappear because they were never 'employed' so they can't be 'unemployed' because they aren't on the reported 'Unemployment Insurance' numbers. . . .

The definition of a recession is contraction for 2 or more quarters. . . . we are WAY past that.

You can call it 'strawberry fields' if you want, I'll call it what it is an economic depression. The world doesn't 'stop' in a depression, there are markets open and economic activity. And if you are SMART you can make a boatload of money.

Dig into the D.L.S. numbers on your own. The hours worked in the economy v census numbers of 'working age' adults is enlightening.

Y'all are so cynical with me, you need to try it with the bureaucrats too please. . .

 

Fallacy: Straw Man

Claiming that Democrat economists are Marxists is an example of the straw man fallacy.

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The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

Person A has position X.

Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).

Person B attacks position Y.

Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

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I do not know this for a fact, but I am confident that on American university economics departments the ideas of Karl Marx have nearly as little prestige as the ideas of Ayn Rand.

In the United States Marxism was quasi fashionable during the War in Vietnam, but even then it was limited to a small minority of college students and recent college students on a few of the more prestigious universities.

Now it is limited to a few organizations like the American Communist Party,
http://cpusa.org/
the Progressive Labor Party,
http://www.plp.org/
and the Revolutionary Communist Party.
http://rwor.org/rcp-e.htm

These organizations have few members. Those who worry about them should concern themselves with more realistic dangers, such as the bogeyman.

 

Anyone who thinks these numbers will get better if the Republican sweep the next election is delusional. Republicans like high unemployment because it relieves employers of the need to compete for employees.

 

I have too much fun with math to get irritated. I LOVE this stuff.

I have a tendency to run my subject matters together. I know how to do the business accounting and the economics stuff, but if you ask me how to do something like 'tune an engine' or 'brew beer' I'm worthless.

The economic theories are based on 'ownership of wealth', wealth being a nation's economic output per citizen. Marxist theory holds that it belongs to the state and the people all work for the state so everything they produce belongs to the state to distribute as they see fit. Austrian holds that the purpose of the state is to provide the infrastructure to facilitate the business of the citizens who own the wealth.

Taxation is difficult to gauge because it takes several quarters and many orders of effect to reach full effect. Spending patterns are different with a 'temporary' tax than a 'permanent' tax. A tax isn't really considered permanent (from a business decision perspective) until a few quarters have rolled by.

So G creates a new 'tax' and immediately spends that money, which creates a moderate + to G and creates the 1:1 job creation for that sector. Several quarters pass and business can no longer afford the decrease of their capital so they are forced to shrink -1:-(3 to 12) jobs.

So the G +2 immediately which shows 'growth'. Before the secondary and tertiary effects hit B and C (less capital and lost jobs = decreased spending in both) by those sectors losing -4 to -13 jobs. Net secondary effect from the tax is an agregate loss of -2 to -11 jobs.

Tertiary effect is that those new 2-11 unemployed hit the G and become inefficiency in the economy because the costs of running the G Unemployment agencies.

You have a pack of moron politicians being told by 'whoever' what to say into a press release that markets and packages their 'new policy' for the public using Marketing 101 and Psych 101. And it is being received by a bunch of people who generally don't know any better and are suffering the crippling effects of fear and confusion.

Don't believe me? Look at Empress Lainie's teeth clenching night sweats. That's what happens when fear and confusion meet. At that point the honeyed lie of 'we will take care of you' is easy to sell. The fact is that they can't keep this up

Back to taxes: so you see a temporary 'pop' in positive growth because the G spending but it creates a crippling downward ripple effect in the economy.

Progressive taxation is bullshit, it is more 'from each - to each' Marxist philosophy. People really need to read that stuff. It saturates society with its festering lie. But it is justified with ONLY the first order effect 'pop' to economic activity.

The following decline from a tax hike is difficult to see for most people. It is several quarters in the making and happens slowly.

 

Didn't you just accuse someone of fielding a strawman? And you turn right around and do the same thing.

 

Call a spade a spade. I don't play politics. I play math and know what I have read.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Marx

For a quick overview: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/karl_marx.html

Most politicos are morons. They quote Marx and don't even know they are doing it. . .

Remember Rohm Emanuel saying "Never let a crisis go to waste"? Here's Marx: "Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included." Emanuel paraphrased Marx and probably didn't even know it.

Call the spade a spade. . . When someone quotes Marx, they are quoting Marx, regardless of some bullshit and irrelevant party affiliation.

 

Marxism is valuable critical viewpoint that has some legitimacy. Marxism does not equal Communism.

But, FNG, you still haven't presented any evidence that tax cuts are GUARANTEED to boost aggregate demand....

This is not Marxism. This is communism.

I knew you'd come around. Lower taxes are not a slam dunk for boosting economic growth.

How is progressive taxation explicitly Marxist and not simply pragmatic? The wealthy do not feel the pinch of taxes as much because they have more income. We do no punish wealth in country--equity growth is encouraged. Wealth funds are protected from taxation. Given the amount of deductibles in the tax code, wealthy citizens usually don't pay much more than everyone else...

Very difficult, if not impossible to control all the variables....

 

True conservatives, rather than the ideological cranks in the United States who call themselves "conservatives," respect the past without worshiping it. I base my arguments on what has happened in the past. The past is our only real guide to what is likely to happen in the future.

My fingers get tired posting the same facts in futile efforts to change the narrow minds of the unshakably ignorant. Nevertheless, from the administrations of Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush there has always been more job creation per year under Democratic presidents. This is true even in absolute numbers, not adjusted for population increases. In addition, Harry Truman has a better record on job creation than Dwight Eisenhower.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

 

Again a strawman, you fail to take into account what other dynamics were present. You take a microscopic piece of data and expand it into an epic drama.

 

Karl Marx never claimed to be infallible. When he learned that some of his followers claimed infallibility on his behalf, he said, "I thank God that I am not a Marxist."

Unfortunately, Marx's followers and his detractors have made his theories into a secular religion. Frequently with little or nothing of an understanding, they think that everything Marx wrote is either true, or false. Marx would probably agree with me that his writings should be read for insight, rather than doctrine.

Karl Marx does not deserve to be blamed for Stalinist tyranny any more than does Jesus deserve to be blamed for the pogroms, or the Spanish and Italian inquisitions.

Marx did make a number of critical mistakes. An important insight going back to The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848 is that the natural effect of laissez faire capitalism, which was the only he knew, was to build wealth while reducing the average standard of living. In other words, per capita gross domestic product goes up. Median income adjusted for inflation or deflation goes down.

Beginning with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 this tendency was muted by Keynesian economic policies that mandated efforts by the government to assure that most Americans received more from the economy than they would have from the law of supply and demand.

Since 1980 de regulation and tax cuts for the rich have made the tendencies detected by Marx in 1848 increasingly evident. Real after tax income for eighty percent of the population has declined since the election of Ronald Reagan. In addition, economic downturns have become increasingly lengthly and destructive. This was also predicted by Marx in The Communist Manifesto.

I have never considered myself to be a Marxist. Nevertheless, I have read The Communist Manifesto many times. I also took a seminar on Das Kapital given by the American Communist Party. The seminar included many of Marx's other writings as well. I have known several members of the American Communist Party. I have liked each of them.

 

Average number of jobs created per year during Republican and Democratic presidents is hardly "a microscopic piece of data." The consistent pattern of more job creation under Democratic presidents is "an epic drama."

Here is the data again, gleaned from The Wall Street Journal:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/

 

Well that's a lovely textbook bit of McCarthyism.. thank you.

Let us examine the "Honeyed Lie" of Capitalism shall we? Wherein in theory you work, save your money, invest in business, become successful.
IF your lucky and happen to be at the right place at the right time.
like Communism, works in Theory. From what I have seen of Capitalism it breeds elitists with a concept of entitlement because they happened to be more manipulative and dishonest than the next parasitic banker/merchant.
I see it in the attitude "Oh they're poor they must be lazy" or "Too old to be worth employing"..and the ancient cliche "if you can't afford a coin for the Doctor, don't get sick" Capitalism is about self interest.. greed..how to screw over the next guy so you can get more of the pie..
And then the naive hope that the wealthy will donate the money to charities, the sick, and the poor. that trickle down economics will sustain an economy..

Well, you have plenty of wealthy down there, where are your jobs that capitalism promises? These jobs that anyone can get if they just got off their ass. these fantastic jobs that allow you get a chunk of the pie, will allow you to pay rent, buy groceries, pay utilities AND allow you to go to school.

Between socialism and capitalism? I'll take socialism. I believe in the protection of the worker, the person doing the hard labour, not rewarding the CEO and bankers simply because they are in a position of authority.

Capitalism smacks of feudalism, the few wealthy elite lording it over the masses of poor and destitute.

 

You totally and completely ignore the other dynamics, why for instance was the Democrat elected, what were the conditions of the economy? There are forces that effect the economy far more than politics.

You say that the historical reference to one facet of the overall economy trumps all others, you are wrong.

 

Yes he can be, He is the worst of all four...

1- He is a Marxist, because he is attempting to have the government run everything and interfere everywhere.

2- He is a blind liberal because he unnecessarily appologised to everyone, and that is why the world sees him as a joke.

3- He is a Nazi, because his extreme dictatorial policies with no room for compromises, forced upon people with or without their consent (i.e healthcare)

4- He is an Extreme Muslim because he is working (maybe unintentionally) hard to destory this country. As the saying went "If Osama wants to destroy America he better hurry up, Obama is beating him to it".

 

A tendency among those on either side of an ideological dispute is to compare their highest ideals with the worst reality of the other side. Another tendency is to distort arguments on the other side in order to make them easier to refute.

 

Did you just quote yourself again?

 

With this blast of right wing hot air you reveal your stupidity and ignorance. I do you a favor by condescending to respond.

 

No. I quoted Krieg.

 

The Obama effect is starting.