The trouble with Paul Krugman is that he’s too brilliant. So says this wise Galtian:
The thing about 1% like me there’s a limit. What’s the limit 100% of my income. Unless you say now he’s got no income let’s go after his assets. We may get there … The money either comes from taxes or other activities… or a willing and compliant Fed saying how many bars you got? $1 billion? Turn the presses on! This is simple stuff! My problem with the Krugmans of the world is that they’re brilliant … they just may be too brilliant … Losing weight is not a very scientific endeavor you consume less calories than you burn you lose weight … so let’s stop all this crap with all of these high fallutin’ thoughts and ideas. You know what happens to people their eyes glaze over, I don’t know what the hell he’s saying.
Also too: I get a little bit of a “Well, I don’t really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end” vibe from this rant.
Just Some Fuckhead
lolwut
PsiFighter37
Sounds like even some of the richest folk (who are the alleged job creators and self-styled smartest people in the room) in this country don’t understand how marginal tax rates work.
Good thing this wasn’t on CNBC; otherwise, Rick Santelli or Joe Kernen would be wearing out the knees on their pants from all the rough fellating they would be engaging in.
Yutsano
Shorter Galtian billionaire: maths is hard!
Comrade Dread
Yeah, you know who canāt afford it? Everyone else, including my Old Man who worked every day of his life until late last year when he retired and paid into the bloody system with the assurances of the United States that if he did so, if he sacrificed part of his income then, that they would pay him benefits now.
Can we please start with the torches and pitchforks now?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Just Some Fuckhead: beat me to it. And the given context doesn’t much help.
1) Krugman doesn’t say the deficit is nothing to worry about, IIANM. He says it shouldn’t be our first priority, unemployment should
2) The gov’t isn’t and shouldn’t be a “business” and isn’t about profit.
scav
assets, mhhmmmmmmm there’s a thought. Plate of those garƧon! SautĆ© in glaze-des-yeux, preferably popped ones, soupƧon of garlic only. Medium rare.
makes as much sense.
Trollhattan
@Comrade Dread:
Also, too, without Obamacare there would have been no increase in my insurance premiums. Just like before.
My nanobots just build this violin for you, sir.
NonyNony
@PsiFighter37:
Nobody wants to understand how marginal tax rates work. If they did, half of their rationale for hating taxes would disappear.
Datapoint – I have family members who are accountants who have done tax accounting professionally who will work themselves up into rants like this. When I point out to them that they’re accountants and they know that this isn’t how marginal tax rates work they excuse it as “liberals like you would take it all if you could and you know it”.
(No it doesn’t make any sense. But then I consider paying taxes to be one of the highest forms of patriotism so clearly I’m an America-hating Commie.)
El Cid
By the way, no government in history ever paid for itself via taxing the rich. Egypt and the Hittite kingdoms and Babylonia and Assyria and China and so forth all studiously, studiously avoided ever taxing the richest among them, because obviously they didn’t want to slaughter their golden geese.
WTF?
We have the public discourse of 4 year olds drawing comics simulating the public discourse of 3 year olds.
PeakVT
Should I use gibberish or gobbledygook as the source language?
PsiFighter37
@El Cid: I think the obvious answer is we need to emulate what ancient civilizations did and get our conquering / enslavement on.
#notintendedtobeafactualstatement
Tata
Can that Galtian billionaire buy himself some punctuation?
scav
@El Cid:
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Tata:
Punctuation is for the little people…
Anoniminous
I don’t speak Jibberish, a FAIL! of my upbringing no doubt, so can someone translate this into English?
Thanking you in advance.
Alex S.
Honestly, I’ce come to the point where I wonder why they care. Apparently, Langone is a billionaire. He’s 77 years old, why does he care? Why do the Koch Brothers care? They’ll die soon. I get that someone in the low single-digit millions fears that Obamacare or whatever may push him down back to the level of the unwashed masses, but these old guys who own more money than they can still spend during their lives? I don’t get it.
Walker
Ah yes, the famous “common sense” gambit. Played by insecure underachievers throughout history. That one never gets old.
danimal
Economic illiteracy is going to kill us all.
Trollhattan
O/T In which Nooners takes to the WSJ for her 43-fluffing.
Jesus.
http://wonkette.com/513888/peggy-noonan-cleverly-notes-that-bush-is-not-obama-and-obama-is-not-bush#more-513888
liberal
@Alex S.:
A certain dead white European male answered that a couple centuries ago: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Trollhattan:
She must have broken out the industrial grade knee pads to write that…
Short Bus Bully
One more demonstration of the wisdom and over-riding superiority of the Galtian supermen who rule us all. I feel totally safe and secure under the warmth of his lash.
mdblanche
Squid ink.
Yutsano
@Certified Mutant Enemy: Well someone has to take the place of Reagan Daddy in her universe now that Saint Ronaldus Magnus is worm food. And the elder George is a wimp after all.
RaflW
@NonyNony:
The longer these assholes act like this, the greater the risk of us fulfilling their worst fantasies.
Trollhattan
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
Or perhaps at the last botoxing, told Marcello to “hit the knees too, while you’re at it.”
srv
Well if no one is going to take up the slack for awol Stuck, I’d just like to say the Krugman is fat and unrealistic in always thinking that Obama has all these magical political powers.
Just Some Fuckhead
No way. I want them to keep most of it so we know who to shoot after the Glorious Revolution.
Soonergrunt
@Trollhattan: You gotta remember that 90% of this stuff with Obama being vain or arrogant or conceited boils down to their anger that the darkie doesn’t know his place.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Soonergrunt:
THIS.
PeakVT
@Alex S.: I think they have a screw loose. They’re not crazy in a conventional way, but they have a need to accumulate that in a most of people would have been satisfied at some much lower amount. ($10M? $100M?) That’s one of the reasons I think a high marginal rate on very high incomes would be a good thing.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Soonergrunt:
I don’t doubt there’s a lot of that shit going on with conservatives but I’ve also seen enough to know there’s a lot of that shit going on with Obama too.
Mr Stagger Lee
@danimal: Add this commentary by Mike Papntonio from Ring of Fire and you can see why these Galtian overlords are winning.
srv
@Trollhattan: If Obama drank more, Peggy could find a new alcoholic to commiserate with.
scav
OT faces in trolling: Briton admits threatening to shoot 200 US schoolchildren in Facebook posts
That is to say, no real news about the breed, although the FBI & Homeland Security in on this one — not that they have things they might possibly be busy about.
weaselone
I just tell people like this that I support the Reagan tax plan with the brackets automatically adjusted for inflation.
Ruckus
@Comrade Dread:
I’m probably around your dad’s age and about a year ago I had a relative tell me that I’d have to work till the day I died, because most people in the world had to. I don’t get to retire because then someone would have to take care of me financially. That someone is me. I did the same as your dad, paid into SS for over 50 yrs. Now I’m not supposed to have the contract that was explained to me 50 yrs ago honored. The one that I upheld my end on. I’m a peon so I don’t get to retire. Not retire in luxury, just retire at all. Fifty years of physical labor, standing on concrete, producing things, paying for my enjoyment of those years. That life ended up not worth a fuck because I made the decision to have the wrong parents and be born when I was. Yeah I enjoyed that conversation.
BTW I consider him to no longer be a relative. If I have 2 cents to my name when I die, he doesn’t get even one of them.
Ben Franklin
Are there no workhouses?
Trollhattan
@scav:
This certainly parts the curtain on the pathology of some[all?] of our resident trolls.
RaflW
@Soonergrunt: To some extent.
But it’s more a rewarming of the absurd trope that liberals are elitists. I’m pretty sure that Nooners salary and assets, not to mention who her employer is, puts her in the elite levels of society.
But she can, y’know, relate. So she can deploy the slam while sucking down Grey Goose at the best Georgetown soirees.
It really only makes sense to Villagers and gop donors.
scav
@Trollhattan: The transparent bath-curtain? Half-drawn at best, must depend on which part of the room you’re in.
Trollhattan
@Soonergrunt:
Fashizzle. Also, too, Bush got into Harvard the “right” way (legacy) while Obama got in the “wrong” way (affirmative action, never mind his grades and going to class and such), which was a double-crime because it 1. makes Harvard seem like a cheap date and 2. robs a legacy of a spot at Harvard.
Also, also, too, pondering decisions before making them is a sign of weakness/arrogance/showing off while snap judgements make the man, just like a nice pair of boots.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Just a humble fellow who thinks God wanted him to be President.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Oh Dahhhling, I just love it when you talk dirty to me like that.
Ben Franklin
In other News….http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57581161-38/u.s-gives-big-secret-push-to-internet-surveillance/
“
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Trollhattan:
Bush got into Harvard and Yale the “right” way…
Matt McIrvin
@NonyNony: Worse, the way they think tax rates work is the way a lot of means-testing for government assistance for the poor actually does work. Pass an income threshold, end up poorer.
I think liberals don’t make a big deal of this largely because the response would probably not be to retool the means-testing to avoid perverse incentives, but to eliminate the programs entirely.
John
@El Cid:
Certainly the French monarchy of the 18th century didn’t tax the rich. Things worked out well for Louis XVI, right?
priscianus jr
@El Cid:
“… no government in history ever paid for itself via taxing the rich. Egypt and the Hittite kingdoms and Babylonia and Assyria and China”
And look where China is now! Q. E. D.
Alex S.
@liberal:
So I’m trying to guess the author without googling and end up somewhere between Adam Smith and Nietzsche.
So let’s look it up…ah Adam Smith, people of the same trade….
Seanly
First, WTF is with his terrible grammar? How did this guy become a billionaire talking like an idiot?
Second, nobody’s talking about taking 100% of your income. He’s probably paying a net tax of 10 to 15% – that still leaves a lot.
I’ve always thought of taxes and other deductions as what I have left. If I make only $10k and if taxes and insurance take 15%, that leaves me with $8000 – not much for a year. If I make $100k and all the deductions run about 30%, that leaves me with $70k. I think I know which case I would prefer. My FIL likes a stupid anecdote about 10 guys walk into a bar & buy lots of drinks. One pays $100, a couple pay $2 and the others pay nothing – my response should be that the guy paying $100 has a million in his pocket, the guys paying $2 have $20 and everyone else has loose change. He likes to repeat his stories so maybe I’ll get the chance.
priscianus jr
@Alex S.: “Honestly, Iāce come to the point where I wonder why they care. Apparently, Langone is a billionaire. Heās 77 years old, why does he care? Why do the Koch Brothers care? Theyāll die soon.”
O craven materialist! You are blind to the nobility of the human spirit.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Alex S.:
It’s their last chance to send off a final fuck you to Keynes, who said that in the long run we’re all dead. Take that you goddamm fucking communist hippie economist! They’re going to prove him wrong or die trying.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Seanly:
The guy who paid $100 owns the bar.
cmorenc
@Trollhattan: (quoting Peggy Noonan in the WSJ):
His gut was completely full of shit, and he gave his heart to the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. The one Bush definitely did get right was the part about himself not being “superior”.
oceanic dude
Whats the over under on the amount of these types needed to crash the world economy and fulfill Marx’s theory. Love these masters of the universe type who shit the bed when they get criticized. They always end with the dick slap. Kenny here ends with a boxing metaphor in which Krugman gets KOed in 5 seconds. In their head you need a plus 5 weapon or better to criticize them- you know at least a billion. listen up you unpatriotic heel, your just a money sucking tick.
JGabriel
Ken Langone “Galt” on Einstein:
Cassidy
Well, that’s a sentence that makes me take a writer seriously. Let’s just stop using them high fallutin’ ideas of math. Fucking numbnuts.
joel hanes
no government in history ever paid for itself via taxing the rich
Apparently the US in 1945 through 1970 is not part of history. I was not previously aware of this.
Cris (without an H)
Wow. I thought you were nutpicking a NYTimes comment before I followed the link.
Granted, it’s a transcript, so I’m sure it sounds slightly less like indecipherable gibberish when you hear it spoken. But content-wise, it’s still off the rails like Funland at the Beach.
MattR
@cmorenc: While I agree with you that Bush was most definitely not superior, I have to (shockingly) disagree with Noonan’s premise that “Mr. Bush didnāt think he was was superior. He thought he was luckily born” If Bush thought that, he had a very funny way of showing it.
Chyron HR
Yeah, and you’d better hope you don’t reach it anytime soon, fucknugget.
JGabriel
@Seanly:
True, but I’d like the gov’t to take 70% of the amount over, oh, let’s say $5 million. Not just 10-15%.
.
Tonal Crow
How appropriate that this anti-intellectual bullshit piece be published as we’re mourning the completion of the George W. Bush “Library”.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@MattR:
Yup. At a purely trivial level, his habit of giving humiliating and scatalogical nicknames to people in his entourage was revealing of something funny going on upstairs, and I wouldn’t put personal humility at the top of the list of speculative explanations for that.
Alex S.
@Tonal Crow:
This joke must have been made a thousand times already, but… will the Bush Library feature ‘My Pet Goat’?
Michele C
@Trollhattan: Creepy is the new black.
Tonal Crow
@NonyNony:
Oh yes it does. It’s lying propaganda. They know it’s false, but they’re still arguing it because implanting it into others’ minds furthers their ideology.
PsiFighter37
I wish some of these fuckheads had been alive 50 years ago if they wanted to know what it was like to REALLY be taxed. Fuckers complaining about a 39.6% top marginal rate when it was 90% when JFK was inaugurated.
Trollhattan
@cmorenc:
Just lurve how Nooners separates Dubya’s “gut” and his “heart” as though that’s the standard decision-duo by which authentic leaders, lead.
“And sometimes, he made decisions from his small intestine rather than his usual large intestine” [colon, to you nonbelievers].
Lawd knows, he never made decisions from Woody Allen’s two favorite organs.
Trollhattan
@PsiFighter37:
Why did Ike hate America?
MikeJ
@Trollhattan:
You’ll recall that “conservatives” have long accused Ike of being a communist.
Davis X. Machina
Langone belongs to the class of people where it’s not enough to win, someone else — a lot of someone elses — also has to lose, and be seen to lose, before the winning is really winning.
The technical term in moral theology for these people is ‘assholes’.
It’s in St. Ambrose of Milan. Trust me on this.
MattR
For some reason the “Losing weight is not a very scientific endeavor you consume less calories than you burn you lose weight” analogy is really annoying me. I think part of it is that they insist that government should be run like a business, but that analogy is not one that would apply in the business world. In reality, companies spend more than they take in all the time. However they recognize that the money they spend (on R&D, marketing, etc) will actually lead to increased revenue down the road (much like the idea of government stimulus). Any businessman who insisted that his company never spend more than it had in revenue would never make it off the ground.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cmorenc: I never believed Maureen Dowd’s idea that the Bushes divided the world into two classes– peers and The Help– till I got a good look at the Princeling. Dumbya’s habit of casually using other people’s clothes as Handi-Wipes is not the act of a humble man.
Zifnab
@JGabriel:
You know, at the end of the day I don’t give a shit. The government can take 5% or 50% or 500%, just so long as at the end of the day they’re providing a higher quality of life for me than when the day started.
If you can run the US economy on two nickles and a pocket full of lint, more power to you. Just don’t pitch the age old canard “America is broke!” when we just did $15T of business last year. I’m tired of hearing the lame-ass line about how everyone is poor and we all just need to tighten our belts. Everyone isn’t poor. Quite a few of us are filthy stinking rich. And “free market says you should work 80 hour work weeks, but you still shouldn’t earn enough to put a roof over your head and food on your plate” sounds like some serious cock-and-bull to me, particularly when I’m hearing it shouted from your gold-plated penthouse.
Chris
What was that thing we just read about two posts ago? Something about “are you just saying people are stupid [or in this case wrong] because they disagree with your conclusions?”
raven
“Thank God for the moderates that donāt approve of whatās being done,” Gohmert continued. “But this administration has so many Muslim brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.”
gene108
@PeakVT:
Is there any demonstratable health benefit to running a sub 4:00 minute mile?
Plenty of people have obsessions that go beyond need.
Some obsessions are awe inspiring, like a great athlete setting a record. Some productive to society, like scientists finding medical cures. Some may not be as awe inspiring or productive like billionaire investors.
I don’t think being super rich is inherently a bad thing, it’s just so many do so little to benefit others with what they have.
Trollhattan
@MattR:
It’s one quick-n-easy step from “Losing weight is not a very scientific endeavor you consume less calories than you burn you lose weight” to “Stopping poverty is not a very scientific endeavor: you consume fewer dollars than you earn and you cease to be poor.”
See, economy solved! [claps dust offa hands]
Tonal Crow
Where did the concept of “calories” come from? The concept of energy balance? The relationship between energy balance and weight? The concept that energy use is not static, but is influenced by food consumption and current weight?
Oh yeah, all that came from…scientists.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@raven:
āBut this administration has so many Muslim brotherhood members
Name one.
Another Halocene Human
@El Cid: These idiots are going to be REALLY fun when they’re old and retired and their brain functions go into final decline.
Too much leaded gasoline and that sweet, sweet high of white supremacy and me-ism.
Maude
@Trollhattan:
#42
Obama didn’t use affirmative action to get into Harvard. He didn’t put down on his application that he was black.
mdblanche
@Trollhattan: He had deeply unconservative ideas about how the national debt was meant to be paid off rather than ignored and/or demagogued about.
MomSense
@Trollhattan:
I am embarrassed for her since she is clearly incapable of feeling it herself.
@srv:
I miss him. Where the heck is he??
@Seanly:
“How did this guy become a billionaire talking like an idiot?”
Something is very wrong when this is possible.
Chris
@El Cid:
This deserves elaboration. Actually, the reason so many of these civilizations collapsed is precisely BECAUSE they wouldn’t tax the rich.
There have been quite a few civilizations where at some point the elites managed to make themselves more or less immune from taxation. After that, you get two trends that combine to make a disaster; on the one hand, an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the “golden geese” and on the other hand, a tax burden that falls more and more heavily on everyone else. Except “everyone else” isn’t where the money is, and that gets more and more true as time goes by… so you eventually hit a point where society breaks, because it simply can’t pay for itself anymore.
That happened in China a couple times. It’s also what kicked off the French Revolution. Estates-General were brought together to raise taxes (to pay off the debt of a recent war… gee, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?); it became clear that it was just going to be another round of “nobles pay nothing, Third Estate pays everything;” the Third Estate, which at that point no longer had anything to give, simply said “fuck it, we’re burning the place down.”
PeakVT
@gene108: Running a 4:00 mile doesn’t give you the power to buy politicians. Becoming a billionaire does, and billionaires often exercise that power. And that problem is just one of several that result from high levels of inequality.
Another Halocene Human
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Unless you say now heās got no income letās go after his assets
Oh Dahhhling, I just love it when you talk dirty to me like that.
Seriously, if we’re going to talk about welfare CHEATS, insecure pukes with inherited wealth who arrange their life to have zero income & then draw public assistance of whatever source ARE FIRST ON THE LIST.
MomSense
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
He was a bully. I speak from personal experience.
liberal
@gene108:
The problem is that most of the super rich got that way not by making a contribution to production but rather by collecting economics rents.
liberal
@Chris:
More precisely, it’s when landowners are made immune from taxation, since like most of today’s elite they don’t actually contribute to production; they’re just rent-collecting trolls sitting in a tollbooth.
catclub
@Trollhattan: There was a graph somewhere recently showing insurance premiums doubled under Bush. I think the increase has already slowed down under Obama.
2001: 7061
2005: 10880 factor of 50% in 4 years
2009: 13375 factor of 1.89 in 8 years
2012: 15745 factor of 1.17 in three years
Trollhattan
@MomSense:
Since posting the Wonkette link I’ve now read Pierce’s turn at the Nooners pinata. He does not disappoint.
[Note to self: never turn your back on somebody with LexisNexis access.]
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/peggy-noonan-george-w-bush-library-042613
sonofsamantha
Don’t be so hard on the old miserable galtian fuk! It’s not easy to try blame everything on Obama/Liberals and still sound coherent at any age.
It’s an art form in its own right and the best of the best get to be elected Republicans.
catclub
@Certified Mutant Enemy: It was a quote from Louie Gohmert. Ask him, not Raven.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@catclub:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply Raven said it…
phil
Basically, Kenny made his money taking his cut of businesses that other folks worked very hard to build.
EconWatcher
K-thug has actually been pretty gentle with Reinhart and Rogoff. Especially today, he seemed almost reticent, even though they lobbed a giant meatball down the middle with their whining op-ed.
The charitable explanation is that he thinks they’re flaming out so badly, he feels a little sorry for them, and decided just to let them do their own damage. The somewhat less charitable explanation is that they’re all part of the same club, even though they’re ideological opponents, and there’s only so far he wants to go in destroying them (in contrast to how far he might go against a politician).
catclub
@Certified Mutant Enemy: But where would we be if everybody apologized for mistakes?
Dogs and cats living with the bloghost!
MomSense
@Trollhattan:
Ooh that is good!
I have lexisnexis access but I promise I am totally trustworthy!
El Cid
I was being sourcastic.
All of those ancient civilizations had rulers who taxed the rich. Because that’s where the money was.
Now, the next link in that chain was that typically the rich that were taxed by the priests and upper monarchy were thefting that money from the vast poor and productive population, but that’s a different thing.
The point is, powerful rulers taxed the rich when they could and didn’t when they couldn’t.
They just may or may not have cared where those rich got the money, and whether or not they were in effect double-taxing the poor anyway.
They sure as hell much less commonly had an elaborate argument against taking money from those who had it versus getting it from those who didn’t.
John
An interesting analogy to use… Yes, when you reduce calories and enter a period of starvation you will lose some weight, until your metabolism slows to compensate for the reduced caloric intake. At that point you can reduce calories further to lose weight, until you hit the problems associated with starvation and malnutrition, or if you resume a normal caloric intake you will gain the weight you lost back, and more due to slowed metabolism.
Austerity: not good for the economy or for the waistline.
mere mortal
Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?
Chris
@El Cid:
Which is basically still the case, even if the mechanisms make it technically legal.
This is why I’ve never understood the arguments about redistribution being “unfair.” It’s no mystery why CEOs and the other people at the top make so much money while their employees still struggle to have basic services – they run the company, so they get to decide who has which salaries, and not surprisingly they decide it in such a way that out of all the money that all the people in the company produce, the lion’s share goes to them and the little people get only as much as absolutely necessary. (If they earn a hundred times more than their average employee, it’s certainly not because they work a hundred times harder or are a hundred times more irreplaceable).
Considering that the market is effectively a deck stacked in their favor, it’s hardly egregious for the government to take some of that ludicrously earned money and pass it back to the people who helped them make it but got shafted when it came to actually collecting.
El Cid
@John: Also, analogies aren’t always real arguments! Things that affect your diet might not be applicable to describe nation-state scale economies!
pseudonymous in nc
Starve yourself into good health, galtard. Really: stop eating entirely and let’s discuss this in a fortnight.
jl
Don’t have time or stomach to watch the clip. The focus on one individual, Krugman, is unfortunate. I guess Krugman is the super hero with seemingly superhuman powers because he has a prominent platform.
Krugman was actually slow on the uptake wrt to what was happening in real time in last part of Bush II term and as recession started. Stiglitz and Galbraith got it righter quicker, and as I have mentioned before, you can see some interviews on youtube with Stigltiz in spring and summer 2008 where it is like he has some kind of second sight into the next year. Though, that doesn’t mean I think everything Stiglitz and Galbraith think is correct.
Krugman is correct that this is a victory for Keynesian macroeconomics as an empirical discipline (even if it cannot be easily fit into the intellectual straitjacket of how microeconomics is supposed to explain stuff). There are at least a dozen very prominent economists who have been saying the same thing as Krugman but they are invisible in the mainstream corporate media. Funny that crummy business cable news brings them on once in awhile, while they seem to be banned from any appearances on mainstream broadcast and cable networks, or major newspapers.
Edit: Well, Stiglitz does seem to get a column into the NYT once a year or so., but other than that, I don’t see any of the other people.
IowaOldLady
Is that you, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?
jl
@IowaOldLady: You talking to me? I am not of prominent anything of any sort.
IowaOldLady
@jl: LOL. No, I’m responding to the post title. It’s a Springsteen song, “Brilliant Disguise.”
Captain C
@Zifnab: @Zifnab:
Then perhaps we should stop listening to this free market person, as he seems to be a particularly sadistic sociopath. We should also stop listening to people who don’t understand that free market generally means lowering entry barriers and some restrictions (such as those prevalent in the 18th century), not a rules-free free-for-all.
@MattR: The next time some yutz yammers on about how families can’t spend more than they take in, I’d like to ask him or her if they really wouldn’t go into debt to fix a dangerously leaky roof, or to provide medical care to their critically sick child.
DougJ
@IowaOldLady:
Thank you for getting it!
jl
@DougJ: I almost never listen to rock lyrics. I wonder if I will ever understand one of these damn BJ post titles.
bemused
@PeakVT:
They should have their own hoarding reality tv show.
JoyfulA
@Certified Mutant Enemy: But Bush couldn’t get into the University of Texas Law School, which may forever hold my respect.
Bruce S
Why does a 77-year old moron get TeeVee time? This man is just fucking stupid. Of course, it’s in his interest to be stupid – but I don’t think it’s much more complicated than stupidity meeting venality at the crossroads of media fail. Why book this idiot? Oh yeah – ‘cuz he’s a billionaire. That makes sense…
Bruce S
Could we get a couple of high-fallutin’ Harvard economists to fake some data so this poor bastard isn’t left flailing with naught but his dementia?
McJulie
@PeakVT: My theory is that they are sociopaths and the only pleasure they get is from “winning.”
Paying taxes, no matter how little the amount or how much good they do or how little you feel the pain, does not equal winning.
Paying no taxes, no matter how many millions you spend in pursuit of that goal propping up astroturf movements, buying media outlets, attempting to buy elections, etc., equals winning.
Sondra
@PsiFighter37:
It seems ths guy has hit one bar too many. All drunk people have glazed over eyes so he’s not unique.
What?
He didn’t mean that kind of bar?
Nevermind.