Who made the Best Economic/Political Prediction of 2020?
I assert that it was yours truly.
Sure, some savvy folks projected (I did) that Vlad Putin would enter into a warlike spasm end-game, once western agencies were unleashed (post-Trump) to fight back. Others were on target with election forecasts, or tech breakthroughs, or investment strategies… and I am on-record (from 15 years ago) predicting that 2023 would see the ‘flying car.’
Amateurs can get it right, sometimes.
But how about forecasting the exact pattern of US federal deficit-to-GDP ratio, across all administrations?
Allow me to submit for your consideration a chart that I’ve displayed online since 2015, followed by an amended version that I published in Polemical Judo (2020). It shows the stark and perfectly pure difference in fiscal management between Democratic and Republican administrations, since the Second World War, plainly revealing that Democrats are always – that is absolutely always – the fiscally prudent ones…
… and that Republicans are absolutely always spendthrift wastrels, apparently bent on throwing our children into the poorhouse.
If that seems opposite to all you ever heard – e.g. about supposed GOP sobriety and penny-pinching - then shame on you for accepting clichés without question! And triple shame on the Democratic pundits and politicians who allowed that lie-incantation to stand for generations.
(There are reasons they did this; I’ll get to those reasons in a minute.)
Here’s the 2015 version, and you can see my point quickly enough. During every Republican administration, the rate of accumulating public debt accelerates… in math terms that is called a positive 2nd derivative of public debt. In graphical terms, that means the center pivot of the debt trajectory across GOP terms is always above the curve.
The curve trends downward across democratic administrations, as the rate of accumulation of public debt declines. Deficits decelerate. The 2nd derivative of debt is negative.
That chart extended until 2015 or so. Now see a second chart offering the exact same data (over a wider period from WW-II up to 2017) with different graphics that some of you might prefer.
Again, it is a perfect correlation that no one declares with the vehemence it deserves. Not even Robert Reich or Al Franken.
Okay, last chart. It shows the same effects, only in the FIRST derivative of public debt-to-GDP. And yes, the trend – again – is absolutely perfect.
Finally, why do dem pols never bray about this, since it should help corner a million wavering decent-folk Republicans into realizing they’ve been had, for decades, by a hypocritical cult incantation? Shouldn’t this totally absolute correlation help peel many thousands away from the lobotomized, jabbering-treason Fox cult?
Should not some dem pols or pundits at least try?
The reason that they don’t is simple. Because of the left. Because our own side’s cults – while fantastically less-harmful than the Mad Right – are still nut jobs who yowl insipid nonsense like ‘Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).’
“If deficits are going down, it means we’re not spending enough!”
Instead of viewing this ‘fiscal responsibility correlation’ as a wonderful weapon to eviscerate Republican hypocrisy, those leftists are guaranteed to behave exactly the way Fox wants to portray all Democrats -- as extravagant wastrels who want only to spend us into penury.
Yes, Joe Biden and the Democratic political castes did just spend a vast amount in their stimulus bills. They also fixed a few (far from all) of the horrendous ‘supply side’ vampire tax cheats that the GOP has given to blood-sucking oligarchy, across the last generation.
That, plus re-funding the IRS to go after the cheater moguls and Wall Street parasites and inheritance brats, is why the net outcome of the Biden-Schumer-Pelosi bills will be to reduce poverty, unemployment, infrastructure decay AND deficits, yet again.
It's win-win that could be parlayed into electoral victories, if played right. (Bets whether our own mad wing will allow it, though? Sanctimony is always preferable to pragmatic progress.)
== Anybody listening? Hello? ==
And so, there we are. A factual correlation so perfect that it ought to be a powerful weapon for the side of the Enlightenment Experiment, or at least the basis for many aggressive wagers…
…but alas a correlation that will instead (again) only appear on this blog. Because… well…
…In fact, I haven’t the foggiest notion why I have to shout these things into apparent vacuum. Maybe I should finally take a hint and shut t f up..
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== Addenda ==
Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would require super PACs and “dark money” groups to disclose large donors, The Washington Post reports.
Despite supply chain ructions and war caused by the prior administration. Bet me now over comparable actual economic outcomes... including federal deficits... across full democratic vs republican administrations. I have not met a Foxite with the guts of a tardigrade, to back up their blowhard assertions.
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== Final question ==
Would these missives get a lot more attention if I did them as podcasts? I don't really want to.
Oh, he's entertaining and clever. Makes a few good points, amid all the pyrotechnic drama... and knows virtually nothing about privacy other than shallow surfaces.
But 850,000 views? Jesus. Nobody reads anymore. We're doomed, I guess, after all.