Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Innumeracy: An Infantile Right-Wing Disorder

Duncan Black's head explodes he contemplates the innumeracy of Andrew Sullivan:

Eschaton: Give That Man a Budget: I know picking on Silly Sully [Andrew Sullivan] is just swatting flies, and the fact that intellectual lightweights like Sully dominate our discourse is truly sad, but this is part of the current conceit of post-Bush conservatives who are just shocked at his spending ways:

So let's recap: I'm in favor of Bush's tax cuts, but want spending cuts to match them; I favor balanced budgets... I want more money for defense, specifically more troops...

What would you cut? Which $350 billion or so would you cut out of the current budget, plus even more cuts to provide for even more defense spending, and even more cuts to pay for the extension to the tax cuts when the whole thing blows up?

It's a nice little fantasy to fetishize "small government" and imagine that liberals fetishize "big government" but that just isn't the reality. Put up or shut up--what would you cut out of this budget? Once you've answered that question, ask yourself if the politicians advocating such cuts will manage to stay in office.

The question one asks of these tax-cut big-defense balanced-budget "conservatives": are you knaves or are you fools? Are you trying to con your readers by not pointing out that two plus two does not equal five? Or do you believe that two plus two equals five yourself?

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