Thursday, April 27, 2017

Only Dumb Democrats Care About The Deficit

I usually say "nobody does," though that isn't entirely true. I think some Democrats do, in the way that they imagine themselves to be the stewards of the Serious Norms of Washington, even when those Serious Norms are just a con game played by Republicans and NPR and the Washington Post editorial page on Democratic marks (and some are just conservatives and hate nice things like Republicans). Quite a trick, that it's only Democrats who worry about the deficit, and Republicans get all the credit for it!

But voters don't care about "the deficit" except it is something they've been told is "bad" for decades and so whenever anything is actually bad they think it's because of "the deficit" and those irresponsible people in Washington giving all their money to the blahs.

No this is not an argument that therefore the US government can sensibly deploy limitless resources too good measure, just that in my lifetime the consequences of anti-government spending propaganda (because The Deficit Is Bad), have been much greater than the possible consequences of any reasonably possible "overspending."