"Well okay Bud, if you start from the assumption that we *should* spend more than we take in, and that we *should* be spending far more than we currently are, then yeah, it makes a lot of sense."
could you explain how this relates to what i was going at? i was saying that people will believe what makes sense to them, regardless of how true it is. for example, if you say that somebody drove for an hour and went 80 miles and asked an average person how fast this person was going 30 minutes into the trip, they'd probably give the answer "80m/h," which isn't necessarily true at all. but hey, it makes sense, so why use calculus? people believe that there is a certain limit to the amount of money the us can and will spend and that therefore if you increase spending on something, you decrease spending on other things. in a sense, it's true. so you have iraq and new orleans comes up. you need to borrow an extra, say, $100 billion for new orleans. you're taking $100 billion away from iraq, even though you didnt have that money until new orleans happened. and so, if you are spending, say, $500 billion on iraq, you arent spending it on new orleans, and thus are taking from new orleans, even though you theoretically could get more loans, etc. but again, the public isnt necessarily educated and wont necessarily be thoroughly informed