More from Sirota

Here is the latest exchange with Sirota about his nonsensical piece on high taxes which I discussed in my earlier piece this morning called David Sirota -- Learn Economics.

From Sirota:

Right, it was the war economy...and yet, we're in two wars, longer than the war that you cite...and we're doing way worse...with way lower tax rates.

Game. Set. Match.

Thanks for playing,
D


My response:

Are you really going to compare our current two “wars” with world war two? Let’s see: in world war two there were over 12 million men in the armed forces (just under 9% of the total population of the USA) and the defense budget was something on the order of 60% of GDP for four years in a row. Now we have less than 250,000 total soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan (less than 1% of the population) and the defense budget is less than 5% of GDP. The defense effort was so great during WW2 that no private cars were produced in this country from 1942 until the end of the war (I better say that the war ended in 1945 as I doubt you know that). There was no private production of appliances. Certain types of food, oil, and a whole host of other items were rationed due to shortages. Prices and wages were frozen. We had a total command economy that was designed to produce the maximum for the war effort. You compare that to today? Did you really say “Game set match”? Are you kidding?

I bet that you think that you can just spout off some nonsense like that and have me believe it. Your war statistics are about as valid as those you quote from Mr. Black socks. Why not try answering my comparison of 1933-1940 with its high tax rates and those of 1982-1991 with low tax rates? The answer is that you have no answer.

You can be as ideological as you want (and as idiotic as you want), just don’t try to present your view as a fact.


By the way, I liked seeing you mind at work in this correspondence enough that I posted the whole thing on my blog. I think everyone should see your logic (or lack of logic) at work. Oh, and I see that they picked up your article on Salon. Congrats. Most of those folks have no idea how to even spell economics.

Jeff Aronson