In Bizarro-Bureaucracy World…

In the real world, you know the difference between correlation and causation.

Correlation is a pattern of events that happen near to each other but do not cause one another. Say, the sun comes up and you go to work. They happen together, but for most people the fact that the sun rises is not not what gets you moving. You get moving because your job starts at 8:00 or 9:00 and you need to get up around 6:30 to get there in time, and the sun happens to rise about then.

Causation is a relationship between events where the presence of one event is necessary to the other. For example, your working causes your company to pay you. No work? No pay. Simple.

But in the bizarro-world of government bureaucrats the connection (correlation or causation, and the strength of it) is like the Red Queen: it is whatever they say it is, no more and no less.

That is, “everyone knows” (that is, everyone in government) that you can increase taxes or restrict people and there will be no effects like people leaving or spending less money. Then they are baffled when a modest tax cut produces the largest revenue growth for the government ever.

Or the other way — legislators see the rise in the income disparity between rich and poor, and conclude that the only possible cause is institutional racism, discrimination, and cheating. Never mind the fact that the poor make near zero, and rich people always have more that they can earn so of course the disparity will be growing. No secret causation is needed to explain this, just simple math.

Perhaps this confusion is because so few legislators have been in the real world and had to meet a payroll or family budget. Having to do those concentrates the mind greatly.

It’s just common sense.

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