La, la, la, la

Not as a song, but as a chant sung with ears in fingers and eyes closed while shaking head. You know, like you do when there is something you don't want to see or hear, but it just keeps coming. I have mentioned this tactic in a number of posts so thought it might merit its very own. I call it the "My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts" strategy.

Maybe the all-time great example of this would have to be the Flat Earth Society. No, I'm not kidding, and neither are they. I can't decide which part I like better, that they think all the space agencies in the world are all involved in a conspiracy (to what end I wonder?) or that they base so much of what they do on their desire for true science. Wow. But while these folks are so whacko they are actually pretty funny, they do not have much of an agenda and are basically harmless. There are other groups, however, whose refusal to accept the facts - the science, the data, the evidence, the proof - is damaging to the general health and welfare of society at large and they need to get their fingers out of their ears.

Let's start with climate change, which, by the way, I think we should go back to calling global warming. We only stopped because there were too many morons who would say something like: "If global warming is real, why is it snowing?". Oy. The fact remains that it is now warmer than at any time in the previous four thousand years. And if the fact - fact! - that it is warmer doesn't alarm you, consider how quickly it has happened and how much impact it has already had. Here's a chart published by the wall Street Journal (and seen in the site above):



Now the WSJ is many things, but liberal or alarmist they are not. And on this topic they have been anything but progressive. In fact, they gave ink to a group of so-called climate scientists who peddled a serious pile of bs that was subsequently blasted by actual scientists, so for them to put this in their paper is significant. Also significant is that the EPA, who it can be argued is not as interested as it should be, has a great site dedicated to the science - science, people! - of climate change. By the way, the whole argument that it may or may not be caused by man . . . do we care? Should we do something about it, you know, save all the things that live on the earth, or argue about whose fault it is?

Along the same lines, and I must warn you my atheism might jump in here, let's talk evolution. This is like gravity. Back when Newton was tossing apples around it was called the "theory of gravity", but that implies that it is theoretical, like it might or might not be true. It is no longer in question so now we just call it gravity, just like with the "theories" of plate tectonics, cells or heliocentrism. Something that has been observed or tested so many times there is no longer a compelling reason to observe or test anymore becomes fact. Now I know this plays a little loose with the scientific definitions of theory and fact, but you get the gist. And evolution falls very firmly into the realm of fact. 

Here is a great site that covers the facts. The overwhelming, incontrovertible, proven and accepted facts.The alternate theory, that of intelligent design (creationism dressed in a lab coat) has been almost universally dismissed as faith vs science based. I say almost because there is always fringe "science" - see the Flatearthers above. One of the principal reasons this theory persists is because if the folk who believe it are forced to come to terms with it being false, they might have to examine the other parts of that faith. Put another way, if Genesis is proved false, can they continue to believe in Revelation? And that is a very scary for them. But here's the thing. There are plenty of scientists who believe in God, of many faiths and religions, and they can reconcile the two - something with which I frankly am not comfortable - so why don't we stop insisting that there are two sides to every argument? Hell, just apply Occam's razor and decide which is more likely: that there is a supreme intelligence that designed and created everything in existence or that natural forces that we can quantify and understand allowed that same everything to come to be. I know which I'm picking. 

Then there is supply-side, or trickle-down, economics. Here is Wikipedia's pithy summary of the idea: 

Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing regulation. According to supply-side economics, consumers will then benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical policy recommendations of supply-side economists are lower marginal tax rates and less regulation.

Here's the catch: it doesn't work. Once again, the overwhelming evidence and data indicate that there is no correlation between lower top marginal tax rates and GDP growth. Every chart you can find shows that when the supply-side folk are in charge the only people who do better are the people at the top, and damn you anyway Ronald Reagan. A thing that I find bemusing about it is that it doesn't even sound right. Trickle down? Picture a dam holding back a river and only a trickle of water making it to the valley below.Why would we even think that is a good plan? What is even more interesting is that much of the evidence indicates that the exact opposite of what the theory claims is actually true. I give you two charts:

                                    

The one on the left shows that tax decreases on the top 10% of income earners does not result in job growth, but decrease on the bottom 90% does. Hmm. So we don't get more jobs or growth. What do we get? Greater income inequality. Look to the graph on the right. The rich get richer, which really seems to me like the point of the whole ugly idea. Here is a fantastic video on how the distribution of wealth works in America, but if you don't watch it just know that 1% of the population has 40% of the money and the bottom 80% only has 7%, and most of that has built up in the last 20 to 30 years. So if there is any trickle coming down it is the rich pissing on the poor.That's what supply-side has given us. It doesn't work. Or if you are truly cynical about the motivations of the people who believe in it, it works great.

But these three examples of blind or misguided adherence to failed concepts aren't evil in and of themselves. If those who can't see the truth - and let's not hedge here, truth is what we are talking about - were just on the fringe being wacky a la our friends the Flatearthers, we could shake our heads and look away. Unfortunately it is only their thinking that is on the fringe. These willfully ignorant people influence decision and policy making and cause serious problems. We can't pass or enforce regulations regarding carbon emissions. We won't fund research or teach evolution in schools. We keep getting handed the same whole tired budget proposals. And these three examples are just a few of the more glaring on a long, long list.

I don't know which is scarier - that they are stupid and/or ignorant or that they know exactly what they're doing and do it anyway. Either way they need to take their fingers out of their ears acknowledge reality.