Bottom Line? Mish Shedlock is an Idiot

Addendum below.

So recently, The Hourly G ran a post about the State finances of Texas, which are in far worse shape than one would think. How bad? California bad.

Dungeon Master Mish Shedlock,
with his fetish object.

The key passage was:

Texas is famously pro-business, low-taxes, no-union. It doesn’t have a state income tax, and it lowered its school property taxes by a third in 2005.

Still, it has this 15% deficit, and a total debt which will cross the 100% mark this year—which pretty much gives lie to the notion that you can get all that you want by lowering taxes, squeezing out unions, and letting business get down to business.

People like Mish Shedlock who constantly harp about the union and the taxes fail explain that the only way a low-tax, pro-business, no-union situation can exist is to cut services—drastically. Or not have them at all.

This was an en passant reference to the Windy City Windbag. But lo and behold, he wrote in the comment section some lines that show . . . well, they give the prosecution’s case for declaring him a certifiable idiot:

The Windbag wrote: 

Preposterous. 

States do not need to cut services at all.

Instead they need to scrap union wages, scrap absurd union benefits, get rid of collective bargaining for unions, and get rid of prevailing wage laws. 

Not a single teacher, firefighter, or police officer need be fired. 

The problem is public union wages and benefits are bankrupting states. I have explained this 100 times. Some people simply cannot read.

Dungeon Master Mish doesn’t seem to realize that Texas does not have any of the conditions he is constantly harping about—yet Texas is still nearing insolvency. That was the whole point of the post, which he didn’t bother to read (or maybe he reads nothing except that which is written by The Great Dungeon Master In The Sky—Gary Gygax).

See, children learn early: TANSTAAFL—There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. You gotta pay for stuff, one way or another. 

The people of Texas want police? Fine. Firefighters, garbage collectors, all the other city services? That’s cool too—but they gotta pay for this stuff. They don’t pay but still demand these services? They go broke—it’s that simple.

Texas has no income tax, lower property tax, no unions for public workers, etc., etc.—all the wet dreams of Mish Shedlock and other 40 year-old virgins like him. (Don’t think he’s a virgin? Please take a good long look at the above picture of the man.)

Your government goes broke when you vote for services but against taxes—it’s that simple. The Other 40-Year Old Virgin does not seem to understand this fairly basic concept. Like a lot of morons on both the Right and the Left, he seems to think that some external bugaboo is to blame for not getting what the whiny brats want for free. 

Dungeon Master Mish cannot conceive that it’s a problem of simple arithmetic: Spending more than you earn drives you to bankruptcy. Like other minions of the tin-foil hat brigade, The Windbag is convinced that UFO’s are responsible for crop circles, and that Texas’ looming bankruptcy is all the fault of the unions, all the fault of the minimum wages, or COLA’s, or something else.

To Mish Shedlock, bankruptcy is never the fault of craven politicians who vote for more services and less taxes, in order to suck up to the electorate, who are foolish enough to believe this balderdash. In a very real sense, Shedlock is as stupid clueless as those economists peddling the mind-bendingly stupid conceit about the perfectly rational markets. 

Considering all the evidence, we here at The Hourly G have decided: Mish Shedlock is so blinded by ideology, so foolish in his idée fixe, so entrenched in his blinkered world view, that he leaves us no choice:

Congratualtions, Dungeon Master Mish! You are officially a Grade-A Idiot!!

Now go back to your wood-panelled basement to finish painting your lead figurines, and let the grown-ups discuss the news.


Addendum: A while back, Mish Shedlock was publicly challenged to debate deflation vs. hyperinflation. He dodged the challenge—then wrote a poison-pen blogpost, severely distorting positions he disagreed with, in order to score points without any opposition, thereby “proving” that he was right, and that the “flat-earthers” (as he referred to inflationists) were wrong.

In contrast to Shedlock’s pettiness, in this post, there hasn’t been any distortion of his position: The comment quoted above was the entire comment he wrote. And anyone even vaguely familiar with his rants about unions being the root of all evil will know that the characterization of him is accurate—to a T.