Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Why John Carney Needs to Buy a Dictionary

John Carney wrote (I am almost embarrassed to link to this 3rd grade level of logic) a defense piece of self-proclaimed (and widely discredited) economic expert Niall Ferguson over at CNBC that demonstrated little other than the fact that Carney is an anti-tax shill and is willing to redefine words to his own liking in order to make a case.  In case you were wondering John, the word "deficit" actually has a meaning:

"a : an excess of expenditure over revenue"(from Merriam-Webster

Notice that the definition of the word itself references revenue.  In other words, things that are paid for with revenue do not create deficits.  By definition they cannot, as a deficit is the difference between revenue and expenditure, not expenditure by itself.  While I know that CNBC (like many other news organizations sadly) cares little about the accuracy of its reports or their neutrality, someone needs to call people that do not have a basic understanding of the English language and facts to the carpet for misrepresentation and outright fabrication.  

Not only was Niall Ferguson 100% wrong, but now John Carney and CNBC have doubled down with an intentional redefinition of the word deficit in a weak defense of Ferguson.  How about some integrity CNBC?

========
NDD here with the incredibly stupid claim Carney is making, verbatim:
I think it is fair enough to argue that increased expenditures paid for by new taxes and fees are the equivalent of deficit increases. ...

The primary critique of budget deficits is that they create debt obligations that will have to be paid for by tax increases on future generations. But the ACA creates new government obligations and pays for them (in part) with tax increases immediately. That is just debt in fast-forward. It inflicts immediately the very harm—higher taxes—that deficit-spending supposedly inflicts in the future.
See, when you pay cash for something at the store, all you're really doing is fast-forwarding your credit card bill. 

Oh.

The Stupid. It burns!