Thinking Fast Slow and Large with Professor Grover

While I agree that it is a bit third-grader-ish to put up pictures of Grover Monster along with stories about Grover Norquist...that does not mean that I won't do it again.



Sunshine State News:  Grover Norquist: Fiscal-Cliff Compromise a Honey of a Win for Republicans, Taxpayers

""[Norquist]  First, no Republican voted for a tax increase. ... This was a very smart operation ..The Bush tax cuts lapsed at midnight on the 1st (of January). That means every House Republican who voted for the Senate bill was voting to cut taxes and was keeping the pledge. By voting 'yes,' they were reinstating the Bush tax cuts," Norquist said...Did we get everything we wanted? No. .."But keep in mind where we were heading. As unpleasant as this deal was in many respects, we had to get out of the position we were in. There was a USD500 billion tax increase leveled at all Americans immediately if nothing happened. ... Over a decade it would have been a USD500 trillion tax increase...Norquist explained, "The Bush tax cuts were due to expire two years ago and Obama extended them for everybody for two years. Then he said he was worried about the economy and jobs. Funny thing, though. As soon as his job was safe, he didn't care about the others anymore"

Hold on..Let's read that again  "There was a USD500 billion tax increase leveled at all Americans immediately if nothing happened. ... Over a decade it would have been a USD500 trillion tax increase."

Professor Grover your calculation is off by a factor of 100.  Ten times USD500 billion is USD5 trillion not USD500 trillion.  I hope that is a just a misprint.  At very least the the editor should have caught the inconsistency.  But as I noted here - when we talk about large numbers (millions, billions, trillions) people lose the ability to picture the scale which makes it difficult to judge the validity of a statement.  If Professor Grover had instead said that he had just bought a large pizza for USD1,400 that would appear obviously wrong and would not be published, but claiming that the status quo would have increased taxes by USD500 trillion over the next decade does not set off similar alarm bells.  In case you wondered US GDP is approximately USD15 trillion per year.