• @aesthelete
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    4 hours ago

    It’s by design. But in a serious country, serious world, or amongst serious people, we would’ve been laughing at the “Laffer curve” the moment Laffer ejaculated it into the napkin he first wet dreamed it upon.

    But instead because we’re both as laughable as the curve itself and because the rich, industrial asshats in this country were foaming at the mouth for a thin, arguably objective, seemingly mathematical piece of horseshit to cover their “steal from the poor and give to the rich” policy preferences, reproductions of Arthur’s ejaculate were disseminated like it was the fucking Mona Lisa.

    It should never be said that conservatives are conservative in the normal, adjective sense of the word. For the last fifty years, they’ve been tearing at the fraying seams of society and have been using “trickle down economics” as their seam ripper, while simultaneously blaming anything and everything other than their objectively horrific policies for the havoc wreaked.

    • @undergroundoverground
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      156 minutes ago

      Oh, the laffer curve is just fine. The issue is, the people who choose to missuse it deliberately or through utter ignorance never mention that the X value is about 90%. As I always say to those types whenever they bring it up:

      “Theh all want to talk about the laffer curve, right up until you have to explain to them how hight the X value is. Then, as if by magic, they suddenly don’t want to talk about it anymore and never agreed with it in the first place.”

      The real problem with economics, imo, is that they always presume inequality to not exist, in order to make the calculations work. The reason being that, if you accept that inequality exists and add it to the pot, as it were, the answer always comes out as “the problem is inequality.”

      However, that doesn’t justify tax breaks for the rich or their rampant greed and exploitation. So, we pretend its non-existent and, tbf, in a wold with no inequality what so ever, where only the best rise to the top and anyone could be rich, if they worked for it and it wasn’t a closed shop, most of neoliberalism would be absolute genius.

      Of course, the problem is that, in the real world, inequality not only exists but is the definining feature of our economy.