The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus

[€uroMeinke]

I'm just wondering if there's a Demand-side Mohammed comic?

[wendybeth]

I'm sure there is, but everyone is too afraid to print it.

[Alex]

What's funny about that is if you took the cartoon posted above and changed nothing in it graphically but in the talk bubbles replaced the word Jesus with Mohammed it would magically become offensive rather than just (arguably) stupid.

[cirquelover]

Well, if God didn't create bad people than who did? If you believe in God and he created everyone then isn't it logical that he created good and evil?

I think some people are just inherently bad, but that's just me thinking aloud a little too late at night.

Also, I agree we are responsible for shaping our children and trying to get them to see right from wrong. Teaching them that there are consequences for their actions is one of the best lessons we can give them.

[Kevy Baby]

They're not bad. They're just drawn that way.

[tracilicious]

What exactly is supply side whatever?

[wendybeth]

From Wikipedia:

Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought which emphasizes the "supply" part of "supply and demand". The central concept of supply-side economics is Say's Law: "supply creates its own demand", or the idea that one must produce before one has the means to buy. In evaluating public policy, supply-side economics is more concerned with the extent to which a reform will change producer incentives, rather than how it may stimulate demand. This emphasis represents a fundamental difference between classical, supply-side economics and Keynesian or demand side economics.
Supply-side economics was popularized in the 1970s by Robert Mundell, Arthur Laffer, and Jude Wanniski. The term was coined by Wanniski in 1975. In 1978 Jude Wanniski published The Way the World Works in which he laid out the central thesis of supply-side economics and detailed the failure of high tax-rate, "progressive" income tax systems and U.S. monetary policy under Keynesians in the 1970s. Wanninski advocated lower tax rates and a return to some kind of gold standard, à la the 1944-1971 Bretton Woods System.
In 1983, economist Victor Canto, a disciple of Arthur Laffer, published The Foundations of Supply-Side Economics. This theory focuses on the effects of marginal tax rates on the incentive to work and save, which affect the growth of the "supply side" or what Keynesians call potential output. While the latter focus on changes in the rate of supply-side growth in the long run, the "new" supply-siders often promised short-term results.
Supply-side economics is often conflated with trickle down economics.


The article also mentions Al Franken's cartoon, which started this thread.

[Alex]

Unfortunately, as a political football supply side economics has come to mean simply 'tax cuts' and the idea that some tax cuts can spur further economic growth which will still produce similar or higher tax revenues than without the tax
cuts.

Which is an idea with some (but limited) merit but which over time has come to be the idea that cutting any tax by any size will have the same impact. This is nonsense.

[tracilicious]

So what does any of this have to do with Jesus?

[wendybeth]

Supply-side economics are generally associated with conservative politics, many of whom subscribe to the theory but only follow through on portions of the tenets. (Such as the type of tax cutting Alex referred to above). Critics and more cynical people like myself think that it's just a ploy to keep money in the rich person's pockets while letting the poor fend for themselves. Jesus did not hold the rich in high regard, as such statements as "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to reach heaven" and "the meek shall inherit the earth" bear out. He had a real problem with the Pharisees, a well-to-do and influential religious sect in the Jewish community, who were not very good about taking care of the poor, and arrogantly thought that their largess was bestowed upon them (from God) because they were righteous. Of course, this is a really simplistic take on a very complicated history and economic theory, but Franken was pointing out that Jesus probably wasn't a supply-side sort of guy.