Bubble Boy's Self-Contradiction

Today the Shrubbery Road Show hit the road to tell me that despite flat incomes for the past five years, a two percent increase in the number of people living in poverty, another two million Americans without health care coverage and dramatically increased costs of living, the economy is just cooking along. Of course, my finances are schizophrenic. The part of them that is supported by a job and that has to pay to heat my modest suburban home isn't noticing anything except a decline in my lifestyle while the part that is invested in the stock market is joyous. All this, claims the Shrub, are the result of tax reductions that we need to make permanent.

Uh, Prevaricator in Chief, isn't the deficit a problem? I read today that China may move some of its financial reserves from dollars to other currencies. Won't that mean a very weak dollar as in falling free as the Chilean peso? While that may be great for U. S. manufactured goods, the few that we still manufacture, won't it mean that my costs of heating my modest home, foreign oil bought with weak U. S. dollars, will increase further? All it will take for the dollar to crash is for a major investor to decide that another currency is more attractive then there are two options: Raise interest rates to levels not seen since the seventies and bankrupt U. S. businesses or settle for hyperinflation as the dollar goes into free-fall against the remainder of the world's currencies. A permanent tax cut to make a few million- and billionaires a bit richer won't help that problem in the least.

Then there's the simple fact that the economy, in your words, is cooking along. The Fed has been raising interest rates to cool the economy for how long now? So, given me the deficits, Mr. Obfuscator in Chief, where is the need to cut taxes? The economy doesn't need it, the deficit doesn't need it, there's no need for it unless....

Shrink government to the point where you can drown it in a bathtub, isn't that the Neocon mantra? The only logical reason to cut taxes is to shrink government. I tend to like balanced solutions, Mr. Shrubinator, solutions that both rely on individual initiative (saving for retirement) and government help (Social Security in case the market zags while I'm zigging). Drug companies and privately-owned hospitals will never fight a bird flu epidemic, nor will they make decisions based on the greater good. The medications and respirators will be for sale to the highest bidder - a seventy-five year old billionaire is on life support that could save a young, less affluent person. Is that the Republican dream? Individuals ueber alles? I tend to believe there is a greater good, a good individuals may serve as evidenced by the Sago miners giving the survivor their oxygen so he can raise his family and a good that organizations may serve. Corporations do not tend to take the altruistic position and are ill-suited to replace the government you, Herr President, want to drown.

Cutting taxes to stimulate the economy? You contradict yourself, bubble boy. What's the real reason?