Why Libertarians Suck

The Republican president candidates are economic illiterates. That point needs to be stressed repeatedly. The latest piece of bogus economics is from Ron Paul.

"You don't have to get rid of all of the government," Paul told Jay Leno. "If you got rid of the income tax, you would still have enough revenues which were about equivalent to what we had in the year 2000."

Take a look at the chart below. The green line is total federal revenue. The orange is individual income tax receipts.



Paul has the wonderful Republican idea that eliminating the Education Department would magically solve all budget and tax woes. The Department of Education budget for 2007 is $54.4 billion. The majority of Republican and Democratic voters support funding for education. Republicans have an insane hostility dating back to Newt Gingrinch's fantasies of elimating public education.

If any other presidetial candidate floated such bogus numbers, I would accuse them of fudging the facts. Paul could have economists break down the numbers for him and still believe is assertion that elimating income taxes would leave the federal government with 2000 revenue.

Libertarians are a breed that can not process information. Megan McArdle states that Republican economic policy is not dominated by Supply-side theory. Glenn Reynolds continues to blog about the "good news" from Iraq. The libertarian madness goes on. I take a NRA Republican over libertarians any day.