Tuesday, May 29, 2012

EU Looks to the Future - Real Effect ON TARGET

It appears that our ceti eel investment has paid off in spades, behold the EU appeal to the future!!! -
Herman Van Rompuy

Change is the only way forward. If we want to shape our future we must embrace change. This is true for all European countries #cyprus
The Real Effect
Longtime readers of TRE will remember the following from the 2011 predictions-
But the call out of Belgium isn't about revoking the Euro, rather about the preservation of the European Union and the need to 'pull together'. I would expect that we could begin to see propaganda calling for a United Europe in the face of "x" (economic crisis, terror, war).
And from the 2012 predictions -
The mantra "The future is our hope" begins to become center to the recovery.  What is lost on everyone is that in order for this concept to work, you have to sacrifice now. You can't borrow from tomorrow at an inflated rate (interest) and expect tomorrow to be better when the underlying fundamentals have NOT changed.
Overall, this is a common technique used to demonize those who criticize a given platform. Rather than allow the merits of the idea to sell itself, the adherent makes an emotional plea to 'Think of the ....(Fill in the blank)"

To teachers and many wives, the blank becomes children.
To doctors, it becomes your health.
To theorists, it becomes the future.

This is the desperation tactic of an argument that is failing usually quite miserably and cannot possibly survive the onslaught of an actual discussion of facts. Typically I have found that this is used in response to a 'scarcity' argument. For instance, let's examine a common argument for property tax increases -

Pro - We want to raise property taxes by 30% to fund education. (To an obscene level basically)
Anti - The free market cannot sustain that level of taxation, this will mean less jobs and unemployment. (A static fact)
Pro - Well, our (bogus) numbers indicate that (myopically) we NEED more money.
Anti - It doesn't matter what your numbers say to do, this will destroy wealth and people.
Pro - Well, you just don't care about the children or their future.

Now this is an extremely simplified version of this argument but this is being carried out everywhere as we speak. Republicans ignoring the national debt via wartime spending, Democrats and their pet projects, Keynesian spending, you name it, it ignores the larger issue of real sustainability.

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