Both Their Fundamental Premises Are Simply Wrong April 18, 2013April 18, 2013 But first . . . NO-NONSENSE NEW ZEALAND PARLIAMENTARY MARRIAGE HUMOR Four minutes — here. Really: they’re getting it all over the world. And remember: this is government-issued, civil marriage equality we’re talking about. Religions are still free to withhold the rites of holy matrimony from anyone they want. And now . . . When you think about it, the two central economic premises of our friends on the right are, first, that the rich must be lightly taxed because they are “the job creators” and second that we must cut our deficit drastically to get the economy growing faster. The first premise is simply demolished in this six-minute clip by serial entrepreneur and billionaire Nick Hanauer that I keep linking to. And it turns out there’s a bit of a problem with the second, as well: “NEVER MIND” From Salon: Whoops! Turns out debt doesn’t ruin economies A paper justifying international austerity measures had a couple of mistakes that totally undermine its argument By Alex Pareene Read it here. Basically, they screwed up their Excel spreadsheet and thus arrived at the wrong conclusion. We should be stepping on the gas not the brakes. Jim McElwee: “One wonders how many jobs could have been saved, families stabilized, schools maintained if political and economic activists had demanded peer review of the Reinhart-Rogoff data before reacting in an economy busting fashion.” This is a big deal and won’t take long to read. Infrastructure! Put people to work rebuilding our country! The world is throwing long-term money at us virtually interest free to finance this work. Nice side-benefit: it would get our economy booming again, which itself would lower the deficit as tax receipts rose and safety-net payments fell. What are we waiting for?