However if the ecomomy had gone south after the bill's passage, you, as a loyal conservative, would had a field day blaming Clinton.....all's fair in politics, you would agree.
Ad-hominem is a logical fallacy because its irrelevant. If that was true, it wouldn't change the reality that
1 - The tax increase didn't cause the healthy economic situation. The healthy economic situation happened despite the tax increase.
2 - The tax increase is certainly economically harmful in direct terms. (After consideration of the deficit the question is more complex, its only certain if you only consider direct terms. Government spending whether deficit financed, inflation financed, or tax financed, placed a burden on the private sector, so increasing taxes may not be harmful, if rates are not too high, if the tax increase doesn't create new perverse incentives, if its not an increase in taxes on investment income (or if the increase in investment taxes is from and to a very low rate), and if you assume the extra tax revenue doesn't help spending increase, or keep it from declining).
3 - The Republicans (intentionally or not) gave a somewhat distorted image of the tax increase by calling it the largest ever (even though technically they where right by one way of measuring tax increases).
Would I have blamed Clinton for the bad economy? At the time with the lesser degree of knowledge and understanding I had at the time, I probably would have. If I had the understanding I now have, I would have either not talked so much about the issue, or pointed out that there where many factors behind the bad economy, and while the tax increase was harmful, it is unlikely to be enough to cause such bad economic results. Of course that assumes the other factors would have arose. If you had all of the positive factors of the time, but the economy totally crashed after the tax increase despite them (which seems rather unlikely to say the least), then it might be reasonable to tentatively blame the tax increase (while searching for additional factors).
But less say I understood all of that, but I was intellectually dishonest. Lets say I simply wanted to paint Clinton in a bad light, and I didn't care what I fuged, misrepresented, or flat out lied about in order to do it, and I said "this depression is the result of Clinton's tax increase", even though I didn't think it was (only) because of the increase. Well that would not reflect well on me, but I'm not the subject. The reasons for the good economic times (or bad times in this alternate history scenario) and the effects of the tax increase is the subject. Nothing about me changes anything about the subject, so not only are such attacks false, they are also irrelevant to the subject we are discussing.
but when looking back all one has to do is insert the years and give credit to the guy in power
For political purposes that's often what's done, but if your aim is to actually understand and accurately describe what happened that's not a good way to go about it. (OTOH if your aim is only to score cheap political points, maybe its a decent strategy).
I'm always amused when someone says something like "oh, both sides do it"....
It doesn't excuse the behavior, but that is the behavior your going to get. Not only to both sides do it, both sides (and smaller political forces that don't line up with either party) do it all the time, and pretty much always have. Many are doing so honestly, they just don't understand the complexities of the real world. Others are doing so because they understand but figure others won't so they are trying to simplify, even if it distorts things, they think some reality is being conveyed. Others are being deliberately and near totally dishonest about it, not trying to inform, just trying to distort to their own advantage. You want to condemn that last group? Fine, they deserve it. But I don't see any way out of it. Politics is an issue of soundbites, not 20 page essays. Oversimplification is often necessary, and outright dishonesty, while not as necessary, is probably always going to be attached to it. I can join you in regretting that fact. I can avoid it myself, but I won't suffer under the delusion that its going to go away, or that its a one sided thing with one party being angels and the other demons.
"for example all the Democrat who attacked Reagan and later Bush II for the "largest deficits","
How much did Bush II add to the national debt.....how many trillions? 5-6-7?
Now your making the same error that I said you might want to attack the Republicans for making about Clinton's tax increase. Your using nominal dollar figures. As a portion of the economy the biggest deficits where with FDR as president, then you have a big drop and Wilson is next, then you have a good sized drop and Lincoln was next, then you have a very small drop to Obama, then you have a big drop to Reagan.
CHART OF THE DAY: The US Deficit Problem Is At Civil War Levels
businessinsider.com
Your also making the mistake of not considering who is in charge of congress (Under all those presidents listed above the Democrats where at least partially in charge except for Lincoln's presidency. They controlled the house throughout Reagan's presidency, and controlled the Senate for part of Reagan's time in office. Also spending and deficits under Bush II, increased once the Democrats took control of congress.) |
