favorite economic lie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM5Ep9fS7Z0

voting for most execrable?

or cynical. or damaging. whatever strikes your fancy

option 5

trickle down. some of the others might be somewhat counterintuitive and it kind of makes sense that people misunderstand how things work, but trickle down is so stupid on so many levels, it's depressing that anybody actually falls for it.

i think it's pretty gross to try to re-contextualize a social agreement to care for our elderly as analogous to a 'ponzi scheme' designed to steal money from the gullible.

voted budget deficits

SS as a ponzi scheme was my choice. this is invariably the pet opinion of people who think they are 10x smarter than anyone who doesn't agree with them.

if we shrink government we'll create jobs

this one isn't the funniest one but it is the strangest one. like wtf is the argument, that slashing funds for e.g. libraries will lead to more bookstores?

high taxes on the rich hurt the economy

I believe this is the new translation of "e pluribus unum"

"it's unfair that lower income americans pay lower income taxes"

i mean

I picked "cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy with additional spending." This is like rudimentary "Fucking economies, how do they work?" stuff that people should have to understand before they're allowed to collect a paycheck.

Timely in light of option 1 btw: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why-is-inequality-so-much-higher-in-the-us-than-in-france/278660/

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jr34bRwO-hs/Ugz2EtiteOI/AAAAAAAANek/o-q5aAaY-hI/s400/InequalityTaxes.png

still deciding, but this one is nice, for lots of reasons

cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy with additional spending

the fed has balanced the books, for a total of about 55 years out of 230 or so, just six times since 1776 -- 1817-21, 1823-36, 1852-57, 1867-73, 1880-93, 1920-30, and 1998-2001 . . . and we've also suffered six depressions, if you don't count what's gone down since 2008: 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929. interesting correlation there!

Trickle down has a nice scatological quality to it that I'm sure rich people laugh about to each other when they discuss how they're screwing the lower class.

voted for "it's unfair that lower income americans pay lower income taxes"

which I assume means it's unfair that lower income americans pay a lower tax rate which is the argument I actually hear republicans/libertarians make

i went with "cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy with additional spending".

it feels like the lie that's having the most detrimental impact right now. it's now so ingrained into the american psyche that the prospect of significant spending increases (stimulus style) is out of the question.

went with trickle down because it's so pervasive

that's what they want you to think

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

trickle down landslide
we're all rich!

the rich are definitely trickling down on the rest of society

i remember being 15-16 and fancying myself a lolbertarian. my tenuous grasp of economics would've made each of these a fairly easy sell EXCEPT "unfair that lower income americans pay lower income taxes"...

i mean, even if you're one of those flat tax nitwits surely you get that the payroll tax and sales tax on essentials are egregiously regressive.

a couple of these aren't really "lies," just (dumb) opinions or beliefs

S as a ponzi scheme was my choice. this is invariably the pet opinion of people who think they are 10x smarter than anyone who doesn't agree with them.

― Aimless, Thursday, August 15, 2013 1:59 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^ this. SS is a Ponzi scheme = what morons say when they want to appear smart.

government should spend like families!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/11/what-if-a-typical-family-spent-like-the-federal-government-itd-be-a-very-weird-family/

This society claims to reward the best and brightest regardless of family background. In practice, however, the children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities and connections unavailable to children of the middle and working classes. And it was clear . . . that the gap between the society’s meritocratic ideology and its increasingly oligarchic reality is having a deeply demoralizing effect. [. . .] Which society are we talking about? The answer is: the Harvard Business School — an elite institution, but one that is now characterized by a sharp internal division between ordinary students and a sub-elite of students from wealthy families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/opinion/krugman-rich-mans-recovery.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0