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HJeck, I'm blunt , but at least I know what I'm talking about. :-)

Most people don't know much if anything at all about economics and gobble up the pablem, spewed by the triple threat of Dan, Peter, and Brokaw. Economics USED to be taught, as a mtter of course, in high school ; my mother took two required courses in it. It's no longer even being taught much in colleges, today.

Yes, people used to be shamed by being on the dole; now, they demand more and more and M-O-R-E government handouts. Stick it to the rich, is the battle cry. Their own taxes ? They haven't a clue about that.

I don't think that we'll get anywhere close to the Japanese model; but, deflation is here , now, and I hope that it doesn't get any worse.

We seem to be on the same page. :-)

The problem is more than a lack of economics education and a media bias that characterizes tax cuts as skewed to the wealthy, it's a refusal by people to believe what is right in front of their eyes. In fact, over the next few months for those people who file taxes, the lesson is going to be a little lower at puppy level, i.e., their noses are about to be rubbed in the poop and they still won't get it.

Armed with calculators, papers, forms and instructions, some of these puppies are going to be filling out, crossing out, and cursing out everything and everyone as they complete tax form upon tax form---their noses nostril deep in the poop. The remaining puppies will send their taxes out to a preparer and smugly congratulate themselves on not dirtying their noses at all, forgetting that paying to have their taxes prepared is still getting a snout full.

In either case, it will never occur to the vast majority of them that their anguish or cost could be entirely alleviated if they did not reflexively reject tax simplification in the form of a flat tax. Or did I miss President Steve Forbes' inauguration? It will not occur to them that they owe less due to tax cuts than they have in the past. In fact, some will complain that they are not getting as much back as they did, proof to them how the system is really screwed up. (These are the same people who believe they "made out great" when getting back more of their own money.) And worst of all, they will shrug when it's over and say, "What can you do, that's the way the system is?"

At least a puppy makes the connection between the nose surf through the poop he just endured and how it got there. We cannot say the same about the majority of taxpaying puppies.

the economy has always been a great engine of progress for the american people. In the last 30 years it has not been performing as such. Only A Fool Denies This. Period.

Today to get the same standard of living that people routinely enjoyed in 1965 with one person working we now require two people working. The pay people receive has gone down on a wholesale level when we measure it as a basket of goods that can be purchased in the economy for the pay received from one person working. People have done studies and written about it. I've read detailed articles in National Review, in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere showing exactly this.