Is the Senate bill fiscally responsible?

Tyler Cowen is not fooled by the golden rhetoric. Here’s an excerpt on Tyler’s new Comments Style Guide:

(…) Another argument I have seen in MR comments is: if we can’t solve this health care costs problem it won’t matter, therefore we can spend more without making the problem in net terms worse. That’s a fallacy and you would never apply such reasoning while driving over the speed limit (“I’ll accelerate right now, after all at some point I’ve got to slow down anyway.”) Think of it as a kind of Zen-like, reverse Sorites ploy: “It is adding stones which takes a pile away.” Or “Let us add stones. The pile must disappear in any case.”

Here is a numerical style guide (SG) for identifying future arguments in these veins, because they will recur when you have an activist government which wants to be very popular, combined with an under-educated, short-term oriented citizenry:

SG1. The retreat into the relative: “All the other options are even worse.”

SG2. Blame the Republicans: “They made the bill bad, not us.”

SG3. The critic is evil or inconsistent: “Your views are inconsistent, or you are morally questionable, so I can dismiss your worries.”

From now on in the MR comments section you can just cite the appropriate number and spare yourself carpal tunnel syndrome.

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