Posted on January 17, 2013
“Revenue”
Redefined
Libs
abuse another innocent word
by
Daniel Clark
Sometimes it seems like it would be a good idea to publish a liberal-to-English dictionary. That way, normal people would be able to understand what liberals mean when they take already existing words, and apply meanings to them that are nowhere close to their true definitions.
Listening to liberals speak can be like visiting Alice’s Wonderland. Taking things that belong to somebody else is what they call “fairness.” Parading through town while wearing leashes and chains and nothing else is an exhibition of “pride.” Violent criminals who are turned loose on the streets are referred to as “ex-felons,” as if it were reasonable to presume a recidivism rate of zero.
The
killing of innocent children in the womb is called “choice,” as if it had no
greater moral consequence than a choice among coffee, tea or milk. If that’s not chilling enough, the people who
do the killing are said to be “providers.”
Economic terms are subject to their grotesque redefinitions, also. A legitimate tax deduction is deemed a “break” if liberals would rather you not have it. Wanting to keep more of what you earn is called “greed,” whereas another person’s claim to your earnings is an “entitlement.” Now, as a result of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, higher taxes have been renamed “revenues.”
This latest euphemism is undoubtedly the result of a premeditated campaign of deception. Linguistics professor George Lakoff, the Democrats’ chief advisor on all things gobbledy, proposed that they start saying “revenue” when they mean “taxes” as early as 2009, when he and fellow linguist Elisabeth Wehling co-authored The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic. Lakoff pitches his advice as if he were merely helping his party to express itself more effectively, when in reality, he’s just plain lying.
The ostensible purpose of raising tax rates may be to increase revenue, but the two are far from synonymous, and Lakoff surely knows it. To assume a direct correlation between tax rates and federal revenues is to apply the discredited static economic analysis on which the Democrats’ assumptions, and therefore those of the media, are based.
A static analysis assumes that an income tax rate cut will
result in a proportional decrease in federal income tax revenues. That’s why Democrats always claim that tax
cuts need to be “paid for.” It’s also
how the media help them blame the Obama deficits on George W. Bush. In 2009, federal revenues fell by more than
$400 billion, accounting for almost a third of that year’s startlingly high
deficit. If 
revenues
equaled tax rates, this must mean that tax rates were dramatically reduced shortly beforehand, but they weren’t.
The drop in 2009 revenues was the result of the stagnant economic growth that followed the subprime mortgage crash, and bore no relation to tax policy whatsoever. The bulk of the Bush tax cuts were enacted back in 2003, and not only did they not cause a reduction in federal revenues, but they helped stimulate the economy in such a way that annual revenues rose by almost 50 percent over the next four years.
George W. Bush increased federal revenues by cutting tax rates, just as Presidents Kennedy and Reagan had done before him. Lakoff’s Democrats are now trying to erase that record, by introducing a new economic lexicon that makes such results sound literally impossible. If taxes are “revenues,” then you can’t both cut and increase “revenues” simultaneously, can you?
Moreover, this semantic trick ignores potential revenues from sources other than taxation. Privatization can produce revenue, for example, but don’t expect our pro-“revenue” politicians to entertain the thought of selling Amtrak. In other words, now that “revenue” means taxes, it can no longer mean revenue also. If the Democrats ever want to refer to actual revenue, they’ll have to think of something else to call it.
So you see, there’s no need to write a liberal-to-English dictionary, because Lakoff has already done that, albeit preemptively. If Lakoff were to write that euthanasia should be called “anti-aging,” Democrats would soon start touting the anti-aging effects of Obamacare, and Sunday news anchors would accuse Republicans of wanting to inflict age on people. To liberals, no reality exists beyond their own words.
It is said that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. The Democrats, not wanting to give up any precious honey, have decided instead to put a “free honey” sign next to the vinegar. Can the flies really be that stupid?
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