December 21, 2010
Okay, I was going to ignore this one. After all, it is in an opinion piece in the Washington Post, so a lot of leeway is granted, but give me a break.
This sentence is given as an example of “obfuscation through language distortion,” in a column by Kathleen Parker. She goes on to say:
“Pardon? How does money in someone’s own pocket add to another’s debt?”
Umm, is this one really hard? I owe my bank $200,000 for my mortgage. I don’t pay the money. Is it hard to understand that my decision to keep the $200,000 in my own pocket adds to the bank’s financial woes?
More practically, the deficit is the difference between spending and tax collections. Anything that reduces tax collections adds to the deficit just as anything that increases spending adds to the deficit. We all may not like certain taxes just as we don’t like some areas of spending, but that doesn’t change this accounting identity.
One would hope that accounting identities held true even on the opinion pages of the Washington Post, but apparently not.
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