Heritage Foundation reruns model - Bombing Iran might even be good for the economy

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/27/politics/animal/main3106388.shtml


Jul 27, 2007
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(Political Animal) BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN....Nils Gilman reminds me of a recent Heritage Foundation study that I forgot to blog about. Basically, Heritage decided to model the economic effects of bombing Iran and concluded that those effects would be bad (oil prices up, GDP down, employment down, recession in the offing, etc.). However, since Heritage is institutionally committed to insane hawkery, they reran their model with a few changes and discovered that the results weren't so bad after all. In fact, bombing Iran might even be good for the economy!

Now, my first thought when I read this was: holy hell. Out of all the possible things they could spend their time doing, they decided to expend a substantial effort on torturing the data to come up with some plausible way of claiming that bombing Iran would be just peachy as far as the U.S. economy is concerned. Wow. That's dedication to the cause.

But it gets even better. Guess what policy actions we need to take in order to turn bombing Iran from a net negative to a net positive? You guessed it: policy actions that the Heritage Foundation prefers in the first place. Fund the military! Ease regulatory burdens! End tariffs on ethanol! Don't raise gasoline taxes! Approve drilling in ANWR! "The results were impressive," the Heritage folks tell us, beaming with pride. "The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes from the blockade." Nils comments: "Actually, the thing I found most surprising about the scenario was that these guys didn't seem to realize that another obvious consequence of bombing is that it will require an abolition of the capital gains tax to tide us through the emergency."

[melody]

1. It's not going to help the Iranian economy ... or the Iranians

But then again this is the Heritage Foundation we're talking about here.

[ljm2002]

2. Outrageous...

..."another obvious consequence of bombing is that it will require an abolition of the capital gains tax to tide us through the emergency."

Well there ya go, guess it's time to go bomb someone so's I can git me some more o' them tax cuts.

Mental and moral midgets.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. The Heritage Foundation needs to get it over with and change its name to "2nd Nazi Party" nt