- Extrapolating from assumptions and then forgetting that we started with an assumption. You almost always have to start with an assumption, so it's OK to do that, but you have to remember that when you do, your conclusion is itself an assumption, and not necessarily a fact.
- Not checking your work for errors. When we find a conclusion that sounds good to us, we have one more step before we have something resembling facts. We have to check our work for flaws. We have to test our "facts" with an open mind, and that's most easily done by listening to people who disagree with us. Listening to them doesn't mean agreeing with them, it means considering what they say, and understanding what they mean, and checking their point of view for bad assumptions and errors... objectively. Are you a socialist? You should listen to a Libertarian and a Conservative. Are you a Libertarian? You should listen to the other two. And so on. Try to see errors in your logic, rather than in your conclusion. You should be able to tell if the other person is presenting a logical argument or just spouting doctrine.
One of the paradigms almost universally accepted by both capitalist conservatives and leftist socialists, is this three-tier income paradigm, where we have a bottom layer we call the "poor," which most of us define as people with less money than we have. (That's another logical error, by the way: not bothering to define your terms as you build your argument). Then we have a middle class layer, which we all tend to think of ourselves as living in. Above that, we have "the rich," obviously people with more money than we have or earn. Thus, a poor man in India believes that the guy in the USA standing on a corner with a cardboard sign is "rich." The guy on the corner thinks the guy who works at McDonald's is rich. The guy asking if you want fries with that thinks you're rich if you have a retirement plan, and so on, until the small business owner thinks the banker is the rich guy.
This image always makes a kind of sense to us, but it is flawed because it isn't and can't be uniformly applied, which means that we use the terms differently when we discuss or listen. Undefined terms are worse than useless, since they actually distort communications without us even realizing it. Worse, they distort thinking itself. Like the useless word "evolution," we think we're using it to reach a logical conclusion, but we allow it to mean one thing in this sentence, but another in that sentence. Or worse, two different things at the same time!
Try this way of thinking, though - four layers of wealth. Yes, I said four. You see, one of the layers we've been using is actually two layers with strongly differing characteristics.
The Poor: people who struggle to pay for necessities, and know luxuries as a rare gift. This group ranges from a person who has nothing but the clothes on his body, and never knows where his next bite of food is coming from... to the family collecting public assistance in order to eat and stay warm. He doesn't pay taxes that he knows of, except for sales tax.
The Middle Class: you can disagree on the definition for your own reasoning purposes, but for now let's use mine. This could be a person who has a job, can pay for a small apartment, buy food regularly, and pay for some minor luxuries. It can also be the small business owner who manages to make enough profit to keep things going, feed his family, and save some of it for retirement. He may own his own home, though it's probably via a current mortgage. You probably already put yourself here, since we're a very large group.
The Successful: This would be the folks who would normally be stuffed into the "rich" category, depending on who is drafting the argument. Many who are in this category are well-meaning socialists who mean somebody else when they say "rich," because they think of themselves as middle class, while those working for income redistribution are, if fact, targeting them, because that's where a lot of the money is that can be tapped. Think orthodontists who invest carefully, business owners with more than a dozen employees, people with, say, an annual family income of a quarter million a year or less.Shoot, make it a half million, with inflation the way it is.
The Extremely Rich: Now we have those who own several factories, play in politics, and use their money for more than just making more money - changing the world, for example, which is a code phrase for controlling other people - we're talking power. These are the people who can have their taxes raised, and never know it until they check the ledgers prepared for them. If they pay an additional million or so in taxes, it will make no difference in their lifestyles - they will eat in the same restaurants, buy the same toys, live in the same houses they would have chosen before the tax increase. These are the movie stars, the politicians, the bankers, the true elites of the financial world. George Soros, Donald Trump.
Now let's look at a cliché we argue about every day.
"Make the rich pay their fair share." When you heard this before, you thought "the rich" meant the Extremely Rich. But is it so? Or, depending on your own income level, maybe you thought they meant the successful and the Extremely Rich, didn't you, because you had them in the same group. But when you hear this from politicians, they secretly know that they don't mean the Extremely Rich, they mean the Successful - and actually the Middle Class, meaning you - yes, you. If you have a computer, my friend, you are not poor.
Now understand this: The Extremely Rich control the politicians these days, ironically because of Campaign Finance Reform, so when taxes go up, they do so in a way that benefits them, and not you.
Are you getting the picture? Bear in mind that the people at the top of the food chain, the Extremely Rich, already see the classes this way, and use it to their advantage.
Now that you have the new image to use, the new paradigm I'm offering, lets look at our situation in the American economy.
Virtually everyone in America understands that we are in a desperately precarious position economically. The politicians and the Extremely Rich want to hold onto their money and power, so they need to keep the wars going, and they need to keep the economy from collapsing, and they need to keep the voters supporting them - or they're going to have to "take over the country," as it were. They mostly keep the masses supporting them by pointing to the other party - we have to elect Democrats or the Republicans will take away our rights, or we have to support the Republicans or the Democrats will take away our money. Every election we are told that this is a crucial crossroads, and we dare not consider a third party or the [other party] will win. But when the Republicans had a majority in both houses, had their president in place, and even had a majority on the Supreme Court, did they undo any programs enacted by the Democrats? No. When the Democrats had the same majorities in their turn, did they repeal the Patriot Act or bring any troops home? No, they expanded the Patriot Act, and started even more wars. So both parties, or at least the people who control them, are different only in degree and rhetoric. (The difference in rhetoric is spectacular - unfortunately, words are useless in this case).
So the spending and the reduction in our liberties has continued to be increased in turn, as we change from one party to the other, and back. We abandon one in disappointment, then give the other one another chance, and they keep driving us to the killing pens. But there's a problem. They've kept increasing both the deficit and the debt, generation after generation, passing it on to the children, then to the grandchildren, postponing the pain of paying for it all, while honest economists (not the ones bought by the politicians, real ones) kept trying to remind us that eventually it has to be paid for, and the longer we wait, the more painful it's going to be. And each time they tried to remind us, the party in power minimized it, while the party outside told us we have to fix it, and soon, because it's always good to accuse the other party, even if the accusation is true.
So here we are, at last. We can't leave it for the next generation to feel the pain, because the problem is no longer over the horizon, nicely out of sight. It's looming. It crouches over us, fangs bared. So what are the politicians (and those who finance them) going to do? They've been misleading us for so long that they can't really tell us the truth, that we're going to have to get ready to feel some economic pain. But we and they all know what happened in Greece, and we know that it will happen here if we don't fix this.
OK, the laws of economics are not breakable, they can only be bent. We have to get more money from somewhere if we intend to keep spending it to keep the powerful in power. So let's look at the options.
We could raise taxes. That's what the left wants to do. But...
- You can't raise taxes on the poor. They don't have the money to pay.
- You can't raise taxes on the Middle Class, because they will have no choice but to spend less, which means profits go down for the corporations, which means less money flows to the Extremely Rich, which defeats the purpose of taxing the Middle Class.
- You could raise taxes on the successful. But if you do, they will invest less in the corporations, they will hire fewer people for their own businesses, and actually they will lay off some of their existing employees, rather than operate at a loss. When they do, the economy goes into a deeper recession, less money is spent on consumer goods, and you've defeated the purpose of taxing them, too.
- You could raise taxes on the Extremely Rich, and that will probably be done - but only to an extent that won't be painful to them, because they control the people who write the tax laws and spend the money. Once it starts to hurt, they will hand off the hurt to the other three classes, because - well, because they can. In any case, it won't be enough, not even close. It wouldn't be enough if you hit them with a 100% income tax rate.
Well, we could cut spending.
No, I don't mean the way they're doing it now. When they talk about spending cuts, they really mean just cutting the rate of increase. Instead of increasing spending by a trillion dollars, we'll only increase it by a third of a trillion, so we have a spending "cut" of two thirds of a trillion. You think I'm kidding? That's not even new, Bucky. They've been plying that fraud for decades. You could look it up.
I mean actual cuts. Eliminate several departments, such as the Department of Education, the Commerce department, with all those czars and bureaucrats. Get rid of those thousands and thousands of TSA employees and the jobs program that the TSA really is. End the block grants. Stop building the empire and bring the troops home and commit them to defense rather than nation building and trying to bring "freedom" to people who want no part of it. End the drug war, which hasn't worked and never will. Repeal Obamacare. Tighten up social security eligibility. This would actually work, and would be less painful than a collapse. It's what serious economists, libertarians and that crazy old man Ron Paul are suggesting. But it would mean less power for the incumbent politicians, so it's unthinkable.
Or we could print more money, aka "monetize the debt."
And that's what they have decided to do - and will keep it up as long as we can until the collapse, while preparing shelters for themselves for when it does. You don't know it, because they reworked the formulas for calculating inflation and cost of living data. But they're printing money like Guido and Louie down in the basement. That is why your money buys so much less than it used to - whether you buy gasoline, groceries, or a home. Services you contract with keep raising their rates, medical care keeps going up, pretty much everything you pay for. Which means it's really an "inflation tax." They print the money to pay bills, and you pay for it because it makes your money worth less. And since they reworked the spreadsheet, your COLA you were so proud of won't begin to keep up. If you're on a fixed income, it's even worse. So you feel the pain, but you don't know why.
The Extremely Rich own the banks, and charge you 25% interest on your credit cards, but if you save money with them you earn less than 1% - so they're not feeling any pain. And the money keeps flowing from you to them via the tax laws and spending policies, though you have this image that the money really flows from them to you somehow. So you resist the idea of cutting that spending. And you call for more taxes on the rich, but those taxes won't hit the Extremely Rich, they will only hit the Successful, and you.
It's a neat trick. And they get by with it, because you don't follow the rules of logic, and define things, and recognize false assumptions when you try to figure things out, and listen to opposing views when you can.
Logic would be your friend if you would only let it.
