Op-Ed by Congressman Ryan (updated)

One thing I noticed as I skimmed Ryan's budget/tax proposal was that it bordered on "hyperlogic," i.e. his suggestions sounded reasonable...but strangely too reasonable to be practical.
A good example of hyperlogic is this: the easiest way to cure AIDS would be to test everyone on earth and round up all the people who test positive and kill them. You'd eliminate the HIV virus from the human population forever. And it'd be cheaper than developing a cure. But it's not practical, nor humane. Nor legal.

Ryan's tax/budget proposal seems to follow the same route. It's incredibly simple, with cute tax brackets and an "opt out" option for people who don't like the standard taxation method. But it's really not practical, or realistic. I don't really think he intends it to be, however.
What he wants is to propose something that people say "yeah, that makes sense" because it does, but they don't analyze it enough to realize the impracticality of expecting decreased revenue to somehow magically increase revenue. Then the Republicans hope people will say "why don't the Democrats do what Ryan proposed? It makes sense..." and they have then undermined the Democrats larger, more realistic budget proposal.

If all goes well, the Republicans hope, in 4 years the economy won't be doing much better, and they can parade around the op-ed piece, saying "le sigh, if only you people had done it our way, things would be so much better..."

See Ezra Klein's comments here, I basically agree.
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