Jon Chait just published one of the best analyses of the conservative world-view as espoused by the Right's unofficial guardian of the faith, Paul Ryan.
Chait points out how conservatives in general and Ryan in particular twist themselves into pretzels attempting to explain one of these three positions:
- despite all of the evidence, rising income inequality doesn't really exist
- it does exist, but it isn't a problem
- it does exist, and it is a problem, but it is a problem for which the only solution is, wait for it, shifting the tax burden even further away from very high income earners and onto the middle class.
Sometimes the rhetorical gymnastics required for this leads conservatives to oppose their own stated positions, as Ryan does in the speech Chait quotes when he accepts in principle the
Warren Buffet secretary problem, despite the fact that he has formally proposed
ending all taxation on interest, stock dividends, inherited estates, and capital gains the existing low taxes on which are collectively the main cause of the Buffet problem.
Yes, that was good stuff. I was gratified that he mentioned the climate change comparison because that was the first thing I thought of when I read your bullets above. The climate change version is 1) there is no global warming, it's all pc pseudoscience 2) OK, there's global warming but it's normal and natural, nothing to do with human activity 3) OK, maybe we contribute to it but nothing can be done about it without depressing economic activity and that of course is completely out of the question. And for absolutely sure, there's no sacrifice of any kind or size that I should be making.
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