Tuesday, July 15, 2014

When A Deficit Dingbat Speaks In A Congress, And There's No Context To Connect It To .... Is It Still Meaningless? Orrin Hatch & CBO Discuss SocSec Taxes

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson - hat tip to John Lounsbury)


Answers to Questions From Senator Hatch About Various Options for Payroll Taxes and Social Security
What, we're gonna run out of sectors? To hide dimensionless units in?

Or, see the following.

Distributional Effects of Raising the Social Security Payroll Tax

Both of these discussions come straight from a listing in the "can't make this stuff up" department.

Either that, or they're acting out a modernist version of Alice In Blunderland, where some Mad Squatters insist that contexts mean just what their data presumptions intend them to mean, something less, and even less.

In reality, both Walter Shewhart and Robert Eisner would disagree - for completely different perspectives - but of course we're not talking reality when clueless, er, "august" entities like Hatch and CBO speak.

Or perhaps it's just a philosophical question? When a Deficit Dingbat speaks in a Congress, and there's no context to connect it to .... is it still meaningless? I think we finally have an answer! It's more clueless than a Santelli trading fiat savings bonds.

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