The thing about ‘cognitive dissonance’ is that once you believe something—I mean REALLY believe it—you tend to modify your perception of reality to fit the belief, rather than the other way around.
Properly managed, it’s a great tool for shaping and locking in beliefs within a cult. Start with a small lie, then build up to the whoppers.
Another thing about cognitive dissonance is that it’s easy to detect in people with whom you disagree – just hard to tell whether it’s their dissonance or your own.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Deficit Spending
There’s a viral FB post that compares our government’s deficit to a family which keeps outspending it income – going deeper into debt each year.
This is a choir-pleasing, but flawed analogy. While fiscal discipline over time is important, the Federal Government of the largest economy on Earth does not, and should not, behave economically like an individual household.
During times of economic crisis, deficit spending by the government is precisely the right thing to do. Domestic spending—particularly aid to low-income citizens—doesn’t leave the economy, but is recycled, and can increase overall income as the money is recycled through the economy. This is not a controversial assertion; it’s basic macroeconomics.
But for the sake of argument, let’s run with the household analogy. A more helpful example would be a family which makes plenty of money overall, but where the primary breadwinner holds back much of his income, leaving the family to rely heavily on Mom’s ‘Pampered Chef’ money, and the proceeds from the kid’s paper route.
And as a kicker, Dad’s a gun nut. He’s got the best collection in the neighborhood – more, in fact than all the neighbors combined. And he keeps buying more – not with his own money, but by tapping into (and borrowing against) the family’s butter-n-egg money.
This is a choir-pleasing, but flawed analogy. While fiscal discipline over time is important, the Federal Government of the largest economy on Earth does not, and should not, behave economically like an individual household.
During times of economic crisis, deficit spending by the government is precisely the right thing to do. Domestic spending—particularly aid to low-income citizens—doesn’t leave the economy, but is recycled, and can increase overall income as the money is recycled through the economy. This is not a controversial assertion; it’s basic macroeconomics.
But for the sake of argument, let’s run with the household analogy. A more helpful example would be a family which makes plenty of money overall, but where the primary breadwinner holds back much of his income, leaving the family to rely heavily on Mom’s ‘Pampered Chef’ money, and the proceeds from the kid’s paper route.
And as a kicker, Dad’s a gun nut. He’s got the best collection in the neighborhood – more, in fact than all the neighbors combined. And he keeps buying more – not with his own money, but by tapping into (and borrowing against) the family’s butter-n-egg money.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Talking Heads and Smart-Asses
I tried to watch some of the Sunday morning Talking Head programs, but got nauseated and had to switch off the tee-vee.
Grover Norquist was sitting at the table with Paul Krugman, Christiane Amanpour, and George Will. He seemed to assume that since ABC had seated him there, he was Krugman’s equal.
He’s not.
Norquist was just squirming in his seat with delight at the mockery they had made of the Democrats and the legislative process, with the debt-extension 'compromise'; while Krugman was trying to explain the human and economic price we will all pay for this travesty.
Norquist is a nasty, squatty, smart-ass, smarmy little troll! When I was a kid, I used to thump on people like him for practice – just to stay loose for the people I really wanted to fight. You really don’t even get a ‘W’ for beating up somebody like him – just the gratitude of the other kids on the playground, and a trip to the principal’s office.
I’m not proud of that. It was just something I did because somebody needed to.
Grover Norquist was sitting at the table with Paul Krugman, Christiane Amanpour, and George Will. He seemed to assume that since ABC had seated him there, he was Krugman’s equal.
He’s not.
Norquist was just squirming in his seat with delight at the mockery they had made of the Democrats and the legislative process, with the debt-extension 'compromise'; while Krugman was trying to explain the human and economic price we will all pay for this travesty.
Norquist is a nasty, squatty, smart-ass, smarmy little troll! When I was a kid, I used to thump on people like him for practice – just to stay loose for the people I really wanted to fight. You really don’t even get a ‘W’ for beating up somebody like him – just the gratitude of the other kids on the playground, and a trip to the principal’s office.
I’m not proud of that. It was just something I did because somebody needed to.
Class Warfare
The ‘class war’ is over; that’s been obvious for some time now. What is increasingly clear is that the so-called ‘leaders’ of the Democratic Party are unwilling or unable to even sue for decent terms of surrender.
The Late, Great Democratic Party
I miss the Democratic Party … by which I mean the party who stared down the ‘malefactors of great wealth’, and called them out—by name if necessary—and asserted that, ‘They hate me ... and I welcome their hatred.’
It’s embarrassing to be part of the ‘Would you like fries with that?’ Democratic Party of Barack Obama and Harry Reid. The biggest selling point for their ‘compromise’ on extending the debt limit is that it was just like the Republican Plan. Other than the demand that Obama dress up in a tutu, and dance in front of the news cameras, they’re absolutely right on that point.
Harry Truman once famously said of Richard Nixon, "Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he`d lie just to keep his hand in."
This could today apply to the entire Republican Congressional leadership - along with many of the Democrats.
It’s embarrassing to be part of the ‘Would you like fries with that?’ Democratic Party of Barack Obama and Harry Reid. The biggest selling point for their ‘compromise’ on extending the debt limit is that it was just like the Republican Plan. Other than the demand that Obama dress up in a tutu, and dance in front of the news cameras, they’re absolutely right on that point.
Harry Truman once famously said of Richard Nixon, "Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he`d lie just to keep his hand in."
This could today apply to the entire Republican Congressional leadership - along with many of the Democrats.
SHAME!
“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
– Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain, upon the signing of the Munich Pact,
which ceded much of Czechoslovakia to Germany, in return for 'Peace in our Day'.
History lesson for Barak Obama, and Harry Reid:
When somebody is hell-bent on your destruction, principled compromise will not be reciprocated; abject appeasement yields only contempt – along with the certainty that they will soon return with even more outrageous demands.
– Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain, upon the signing of the Munich Pact,
which ceded much of Czechoslovakia to Germany, in return for 'Peace in our Day'.
History lesson for Barak Obama, and Harry Reid:
When somebody is hell-bent on your destruction, principled compromise will not be reciprocated; abject appeasement yields only contempt – along with the certainty that they will soon return with even more outrageous demands.
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