Paul Ryan -- GOP Young Gun

Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity will, if enacted, slash 197 trillion dollars from the federal budget, permanently end unemployment, raise everyone’s incomes, provide healthcare to all through free market competition and even clip your dog’s toenails.

Okay, it doesn’t say that, but I figure if we’re going to pull numbers and results from our wazoos, as Ryan does from his, we might as well make them as impressive as possible.

What economic projections Ryan doesn’t pull from his lower productive output or leave to the implications of invisible ink come from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank whose motto should be: “Never Correct, But Always Right.” They did a fine job of projecting the job creation benefits of the Bush tax cuts (really debt increases, but tax cuts sounds better). When I say they did a fine job, I mean if you turn the chart upside down, like this:

                                    Projections blue -- results red

See? That looks better, doesn’t it?

Back to the USSR

The presumptive flim-flammery contained in Ryan’s Path doesn’t lead to prosperity, but back to the Soviet Union’s Politboro. They also addressed real problems by talking them away. The collectivist farms can’t produce enough wheat to feed the people? The solution is simple – raise the production quotas! They, like Ryan, operated on ideology, not reality, and to an ideologue, nothing is more important than “proving” the ideology works.

The result is what Paul Krugman rightly calls Ryan’s multiple Unicorns. This observation again leads us back to the USSR – the Unicorns of Supply Side Republicans. Ryan’s path is nothing more than a regurgitation of supply-side silliness and right-libertarian ideology.

If what is improperly called Supply-Side Economics works, then why are those trillions of dollars in capital not being invested to create jobs? After all, this is the perfect scenario for its application -- top end tax cuts = investment/job creation. They intentionally forget one key element to market function, and substitute it for an old accounting trick -- assume a consumer. Yet the only reason being offered by the GOP's Central Committee on Nostrums and Excuses is that a couple of trillion isn't enough to please the Confidence Fairy.

The truth is we’ve been on this "supply-side" path for 30 years, so we can add Einstein’s definition of insanity to Ryan's ideas. 30 years of stagnant wages covered-over by two income families, lowering credit standards/increased credit, manufacturing/job outsourcing and cheap imports/rising trade imbalances. This fraud has been fed by top-end income redistribution, leading to too much money chasing too few legitimate, productive investments, which translates into bubbly, paper-inflating boom-bust cycles. This has been nothing more than a gigantic case of economic fraud; a national reply to an e-mail from Nigeria; "free market" kleptocapitalism.

Paul Ryan is a fast-talking zealot and an acolyte of that famous speed-freak and cult leader – Ayn Rand (Ryan is an anagram for Ayn R – coincidence, or divine warning?). This begs the question: Is the inspiration for his “Path” Rand’s method...or meth?

Whatever the inspiration, his deceptively named Path to Prosperity would serve a more practical use if it were printed on rolls – preferably 3 ply and quilted.

 Ryan Pic - Wikipedia

Charts - Heritage Foundation-v-BLS data

 Original Tp image - lockinventor.com