Escher’s Waterfall Economics Revisited

Robbing Peter to simply to pay Paul no longer wins the debate • Waving pens still does not create wealth • The rich spend money, too • Escher’s Waterfall economics revisited • Redistribution stimulates consumption and taxes production • More consumption with comparatively less production will cause prices to rise • We’ve seen this before in the market for higher education • You still can’t get something for nothing

The 2020 election season is picking up, so I’m bound to see more posts like this one on facebook in the coming months. This is a commercial from the British Labour party, rationalizing various government economic interventions to stimulate consumption. Though made for British politics, American progressives and Democrats make similar arguments. They call it “common sense”. Watch for yourself, then I’ll give you my reaction:

I’m Voting Third-Party on November 8th, and Your Grandma-Lecturing Facebook Posts Won’t Change That

My Vote Is Not A Protest Vote • There Is No “Just This Once” in Politics • Voting for the Lesser of Evils Enables a Race to the Bottom • I’m Voting for the Future • It Takes All Kinds. • Third Party Presidential Candidates Build Party Visibility for Candidates at All Levels of Government • The American Republican Party was Viable within Two Years and in the Oval Office Within Six • I’m No More Selfish Than Any Other Self-Interested Voter Is On Election Day • Summary

I’ve found that some of the most acerbic, haughty, and belligerent political critiques so far this election season to have been levied not at Donald Trump or his supporters but rather at us third party supporters who were more-or-less minding our own business before the travelling Grand Giugnol commonly referred to as “mainstream politics” came to town and dumped endless rivers of useless effluvium down our facebook feeds.

Reading the Four Major Party Platforms, 2016

Platform: n. A list of what politicians are supposed to be trying to do.

I’ve been telling my friends that I’ve tuned out of politics during the 2016 primary season, mainly because there have been too many candidates to keep track of, and because it has been mostly a circus sideshow beneath my dignity. I told several of my politically interested friends that I’ll get more into following the race after the conventions, after the teams have picked their players. Today is the first day of August, 2016, and that time has come.

The plan I’ve hatched to become politically informed for the remainder of the election season is to read and comment upon the four major party platforms. Libertarian, Green, Republican, and Democratic.

I’ve been working two jobs this summer, and I’ve got a family history project that I’d rather do. Time to read through these platforms is scarce, but I’ll see how far I can get. I’ll go section by section, make my comments as terse as possible, and see if I can give each section a general thumbs up or down.

I haven’t decided the order in which I’ll do them. I’ll probably bounce around, to be fair, but perhaps favor the Libertarians and Greens. Since the Republicans and Democrats seem to be dwindling into irrelevancy, I don’t know if I ought to waste so much scarce time on them.

Image source: evresourcesite.wikispaces.com