Frank Lasee Hates Me

He must've read my previous post about how hard it is to criticize him when he goes hardcore spreadfire dbag on us, because he came up with another doozy today. He went out and listed all of the taxes that weren't there 100 years ago:

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world.

Dr. Nugz and I, in response, decided to brainstorm a list of other things that weren't there 100 years ago that we think are more responsible for our downfall from prosperity that Franky is lamenting:

(1) There were no internets, so our politicians were forced to spend their time making legislative decisions and designing policy instead of posting chain letters on their blog.

(2) Our country was hella racist, and, unlike the goddamn lawyers that protect civil rights, simply not hiring black people is quite efficient.

(3) We were still riding the wave of maintaining slavery for about 100 years longer than comparable nations.

(4) We had no telephones to tax, and therefore the people were richer than God. By the way Frank, I assume you haven't read Harry Potter because it's a book, but do you think phones work by magic?

(5) We weren't bombing numerous countries, nor providing for the mass transfer of funds from legitimate organizations to companies run by the Vice-President.

(6) Women were property, which would have mitigated the court-time necessary for Lasee's bitter divorce. The courts were therefore less clogged and we didn't need bullshit legislators calling the whambulance on the state bar.

(7) The government wasn't concerned with product safety: Allowing the market to determine the demand for lead paint and Chinese dog food, rather than supplanting our decision-making processes for theirs, at great regulatory financial expense. Also, we locked blue-collar workers in big buildings and forced them to work insane hours in shitty conditions. The economy was flowing like wine.

(8) The US used to be a production-based economy, and we've gone service-style over the last century. This transition occurred, obviously, because of dickhole legislators like Lasee that refused to look out for the interests of the middle-class laborers.

(9) Frank Lasee was not in office.

So Frank, I think reasonable people could certainly differ over whether your reasons or our reasons are responsible for our economy's decline. Well, unless we had only left it at 8: It seems to me like the fact you weren't in office 100 years ago (when things were good) but are now (when, according to you, things are bad) is pretty cut-and-dried proof that you, not taxes, are the primary cause.

Isn't the ability to take correlation and assert causation awesome?!