In the week before Christmas I talked about the association fallacy and chronological snobbery as they're commonly used in discussions about religion, and as promised I will now put one of them into a rather ripe political context, along with another logical fallacy. First as in all cases previous we start by posting the definition as found in Wikipedia.
"Association fallacy (guilt by association) – arguing that because two things share a property they are the same."
This particular fallacy is running amok through our current political climate. Prime evidence being exit polls from the recent election showing that at least half the people who voted believe our current economic woes are the fault of former president George W. Bush. The belief that economic down turns are the fault of politicians is, besides being an example of the regression fallacy, a prime example of the association fallacy. While it is common to blame downturns on the president who happened to be in office when it happened, pretty much all economists and historians would be quick to agree that whoever was president was not the cause. They recognize the logical fallacy in this assumption and the facts that come available through time show that this association of presidents with downturns is not only bad logic but in all past cases thus far wrong on all rational fronts.
In this example of the association fallacy Bush and his policies are assumed to be the cause of our current woes because they were in force when it started. Now on the other hand, there is evidence in history that supports the argument that presidents who preside over downturns, as Barack Obama has been doing, can cause the downturn to last longer than it would have without him or his policies. So logically the only blame for the current economy that could have been ascribed to any president would have belonged to Obama , but based on certain exit polls at least half the people who voted were swimming in a logical fallacy or two and blamed Bush, the logically un-blamable in this case.
To be totally fair I must say to assume Obama's policies have lengthened the current economic downturn solely because other presidents before him have done so would be a sloppy use of logic as well. To definitively determine if his policies have done that or not would require economic analysis, and the complete data needed to do that wont be available until long after Obama has left office. That said, there is at least sound reason to believe his policies have lengthened the downturn, though that reasoning is open to debate. Unlike the argument that Bush and his policies got us here, which is based on a logical fallacy. There should be no debate there. Bush and his policies didn't get us here. Contrary to the popular refrain, it is not Bush's fault.
Ah but we live in an era defined by logical fallacies. Here's another relevant one.
"Reductio ad absurdum - Extending an argument to ridiculous proportions and then criticizing the result."
The Bush administration's policies, like most presidential administration's, was a very mixed bag of good, bad, conservative, liberal, and moderate policies. His infamous tax cuts are a prime example. On one hand they've been commonly seen as an outgrowth of conservative governing principles, since lower taxes usually are. However there's something extremely un-conservative about them. They were intentionally designed to shift the proportional tax burden onto the rich. The progressive nature of the United States' income tax code is most definitely not conservative and the Bush tax cuts were even more progressive than the rates they replaced.
While conservatives favor breaks for the poor they don't favor a tax system that makes people pay a higher and higher percentage of their income as their income grows, and more importantly they don't favor a system where most of the income taxes are payed by a very small percentage at the top. This sets up democracy to be at its worst where a majority can vote themselves goodies from a treasury they make virtually no contribution to. The fact that the Bush tax cuts pushed the code in this direction was a huge flaw.
During the last campaign conservatives were tasked with defending a tax code they actually object to more than their critics do. This task was assigned to them through the use of the reductio ad absurdum fallacy. Since they're conservatives and didn't want to raise taxes they must favor the current tax code established through the Bush tax cuts. That last step, chaining them to the Bush tax cuts, was extending an argument to ridiculous proportions so as to criticize the result. There is nothing conservative about the Bush tax cuts other than they were tax cuts. They are now the current tax code, one that just happens to have a built-in mechanism to restore its rates to where they were before they were cut. Conservatives actually want a distribution of burden more like the old rates, they just don't like the idea of raising taxes.
This situation is very ironic. It would have been immensely unpopular and difficult to have passed legislation to restructure the tax code to spread the burden down the income latter, and that's pretty much what a Romney administration would have been tasked with. But, since Obama won re-election the task of correcting the major wrong of the Bush tax cuts is literally as simple as doing nothing. The rates with their unfair burden on the rich will expire on their own. And even more ironic, the fact that the tax rates going up will hurt the economy will be a burden born by an electorate that chose this very route.
That is not to say we all deserve the coming pain and suffering because a majority of voters amongst us chose it, but it is rather to say the blame for not doing this in a better way will rest clearly in the laps of those who voted for Obama. Oh sure, the blame is already being prepared to be laid in the laps of conservatives, but logic wont support it, and this era of logical fallacies has to come to an end some time. Until then allowing the Bush rates to expire is clearly the least of evils for conservatives. At least we will be done with what was wrong about them, and that will be a step in the right direction a Republican president may very likely have not been able to achieve, at least not this quickly.
Like Obama's campaign slogan says, "forward", and in this case it will be in spite of him, and against his goals. This is what happens when the foundations of one's agenda is built on faulty logic. Here's to a new year and the eventual end to this era of logical fallacies.
"Association fallacy (guilt by association) – arguing that because two things share a property they are the same."
This particular fallacy is running amok through our current political climate. Prime evidence being exit polls from the recent election showing that at least half the people who voted believe our current economic woes are the fault of former president George W. Bush. The belief that economic down turns are the fault of politicians is, besides being an example of the regression fallacy, a prime example of the association fallacy. While it is common to blame downturns on the president who happened to be in office when it happened, pretty much all economists and historians would be quick to agree that whoever was president was not the cause. They recognize the logical fallacy in this assumption and the facts that come available through time show that this association of presidents with downturns is not only bad logic but in all past cases thus far wrong on all rational fronts.
In this example of the association fallacy Bush and his policies are assumed to be the cause of our current woes because they were in force when it started. Now on the other hand, there is evidence in history that supports the argument that presidents who preside over downturns, as Barack Obama has been doing, can cause the downturn to last longer than it would have without him or his policies. So logically the only blame for the current economy that could have been ascribed to any president would have belonged to Obama , but based on certain exit polls at least half the people who voted were swimming in a logical fallacy or two and blamed Bush, the logically un-blamable in this case.
To be totally fair I must say to assume Obama's policies have lengthened the current economic downturn solely because other presidents before him have done so would be a sloppy use of logic as well. To definitively determine if his policies have done that or not would require economic analysis, and the complete data needed to do that wont be available until long after Obama has left office. That said, there is at least sound reason to believe his policies have lengthened the downturn, though that reasoning is open to debate. Unlike the argument that Bush and his policies got us here, which is based on a logical fallacy. There should be no debate there. Bush and his policies didn't get us here. Contrary to the popular refrain, it is not Bush's fault.
Ah but we live in an era defined by logical fallacies. Here's another relevant one.
"Reductio ad absurdum - Extending an argument to ridiculous proportions and then criticizing the result."
The Bush administration's policies, like most presidential administration's, was a very mixed bag of good, bad, conservative, liberal, and moderate policies. His infamous tax cuts are a prime example. On one hand they've been commonly seen as an outgrowth of conservative governing principles, since lower taxes usually are. However there's something extremely un-conservative about them. They were intentionally designed to shift the proportional tax burden onto the rich. The progressive nature of the United States' income tax code is most definitely not conservative and the Bush tax cuts were even more progressive than the rates they replaced.
While conservatives favor breaks for the poor they don't favor a tax system that makes people pay a higher and higher percentage of their income as their income grows, and more importantly they don't favor a system where most of the income taxes are payed by a very small percentage at the top. This sets up democracy to be at its worst where a majority can vote themselves goodies from a treasury they make virtually no contribution to. The fact that the Bush tax cuts pushed the code in this direction was a huge flaw.
During the last campaign conservatives were tasked with defending a tax code they actually object to more than their critics do. This task was assigned to them through the use of the reductio ad absurdum fallacy. Since they're conservatives and didn't want to raise taxes they must favor the current tax code established through the Bush tax cuts. That last step, chaining them to the Bush tax cuts, was extending an argument to ridiculous proportions so as to criticize the result. There is nothing conservative about the Bush tax cuts other than they were tax cuts. They are now the current tax code, one that just happens to have a built-in mechanism to restore its rates to where they were before they were cut. Conservatives actually want a distribution of burden more like the old rates, they just don't like the idea of raising taxes.
This situation is very ironic. It would have been immensely unpopular and difficult to have passed legislation to restructure the tax code to spread the burden down the income latter, and that's pretty much what a Romney administration would have been tasked with. But, since Obama won re-election the task of correcting the major wrong of the Bush tax cuts is literally as simple as doing nothing. The rates with their unfair burden on the rich will expire on their own. And even more ironic, the fact that the tax rates going up will hurt the economy will be a burden born by an electorate that chose this very route.
That is not to say we all deserve the coming pain and suffering because a majority of voters amongst us chose it, but it is rather to say the blame for not doing this in a better way will rest clearly in the laps of those who voted for Obama. Oh sure, the blame is already being prepared to be laid in the laps of conservatives, but logic wont support it, and this era of logical fallacies has to come to an end some time. Until then allowing the Bush rates to expire is clearly the least of evils for conservatives. At least we will be done with what was wrong about them, and that will be a step in the right direction a Republican president may very likely have not been able to achieve, at least not this quickly.
Like Obama's campaign slogan says, "forward", and in this case it will be in spite of him, and against his goals. This is what happens when the foundations of one's agenda is built on faulty logic. Here's to a new year and the eventual end to this era of logical fallacies.
As we know now, since this post was made, a deal was negotiated that made the Bush tax rates "permanent" only with an increase in rates for higher income brackets. In other words a bad set of tax rates was made even worse. And to add insult to injury everyone's taxes went up anyway. The only bright side to all of this is that Republicans seem unwilling to allow this awful tax structure to become any worse.
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