Facts are hardy things.
The thing about the Trump economy is that nobody in the Democratic Party, including all of media and academia, could even envision that performance like this was possible. It's not because they lack imagination. No. It's because even they know the consequences of their policies.
Democrats were not wrong in projecting that American economy could never again grow at anything like a 3%+ clip. Their prediction would have come true if Hillary had won. Democrats were simply lowering expectations to the level of their policy outcomes.
Democrats would gladly sink the American economy to a comatose level in order to impose their preferred political order. Obama is on record saying he would like to raise capital gains tax even if it leads to a lower overall tax collection by the govt, because it would be "fair."
Voters should run away from any politician who uses the word "fair." We all want fairness, but any time a politician says "fair," it only means one thing -- the politician will use the govt to coerce you, and bankrupt you, in order to impose his/her idea of fairness, not yours.
"If there is ever a contest to pick which word has done the most damage to people's thinking, and to actions to carry out that thinking, my nomination would be the word "fair." It is a word thrown around by far more people than have ever even tried to define it." -- Thomas Sowell
This mushy vagueness may be a big handicap in logic but it is a big advantage in politics. All sorts of people, with varying notions of what is fair, can be mobilized behind this word, in utter disregard of the fact that they mean very different things when they use that word.
Some years ago, there was a big outcry that various aptitude tests used for college admissions or for employment were "unfair" to many individuals or groups. Fortunately one voice of sanity said: "The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results."
If by "fair" you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it, it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.
Even within the same family, among children born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, the first-borns on average have higher IQs than their brothers and sisters, and usually achieve more in life. Of course there are exceptions. This is a statistical statement.
Unfairness is often blamed on somebody, even if only on "society." But whose fault is it if you were not the first born?
Many people fail to see the fundamental difference between saying that a particular thing— whether an aptitude test or an institution— is conveying a difference that already exists or is creating a difference that would not exist otherwise.
Creating a difference that would not exist otherwise is discrimination, and something can be done about that. But, in recent times, virtually any disparity in outcomes is almost automatically blamed on discrimination, despite the incredible range of other reasons for disparities.
Nature's discrimination completely dwarfs man's discrimination. We should work hard to eliminate man-made discrimination, but not flail and rail insanely against nature's discrimination as if all discrimination is man-made. The latter is a road to disaster.
So never fall for the word "fair" without subjecting it to extensive interrogation to ascertain that the person using this term means the same thing in a given context as your own understanding of it. If someone uses it too vaguely, you know you have spotted a conman.
The END
The END
Credit: The above thread is mostly based on a 2010 essay ("The Fallacy of "Fairness"") by the great thinker and economist Thomas Sowell.
