"Conservatives shouldn’t fight the tale of the tape. Sometimes you have to take out your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the health of the American economy." -- Larry Kudlow.
But, he continued, at other times you have to use your political lenses to lie about the economy to suit your ideological goals. Well, no, I made that part up, but really, read the whole article for a fun exercise in denial. I was going to make this a "quote of the day," but there's so much fun stuff in here. Kudlow makes accurate -- if what seem to me over-optmistic -- arguments about economic growth, but he reaches to make clear that none of that growth is due to Obama's policies:For one thing, tax rates will rise in 2011 for successful earners and investors, quite unlike the Reagan cuts of the 1980s. So it’s possible that entrepreneurs and investors are bringing income, activity, and investment forward into 2010 in order to beat the tax man in 2011. This would artificially boost this year’s economy, stealing from next year’s economy.Recall that when Hillary Clinton took her Rose Law Firm bonus in December 1992, rather than January 1993, she knew full well that her husband Bill would raise the top tax rate in 1993. So the fourth quarter of 1992 grew at nearly 4.5 percent, but the first quarter of 1993 saw less than 1 percent growth.
Priceless! I have got to get better at stealing from the future. Obscure Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories! It's not possible, of course, that the timing of her bonus had more to do with cutting her ties with the private sector before her husband was inaugurated, but, you know, whatever's more convenient for your theories. Speaking of...
But then again, who knows? Maybe the tea-party revolution overturns the obstacles to future growth and the boom is sustained. Free-market populism and a return to Reaganism, along with an anti-federal-spending coalition that is the most powerful force in politics today, could right the economic ship.That’s the credible take.
Setting aside the very questionable idea that anti-federal-spending is the most powerful force in politics, I am interested in this tea-parties + Reagan + anti-spending equation, if only because I believe it creates a liberal-destroying mega robot called Unicron, or maybe Galvatron. I fear for the future.
-- Tim Fernholz
