Per messages 44 and 45 in the True Classics thread. rojse: "I like the idea of anti-recommendations for SF books in general. Perhaps someone should start a thread about it."

I'm underwhelmed by Neuromancer.

Didn't see the point of Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil.

Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker. Magical insomnia cure.

Heinlein's Number of the Beast is execreble. Dave Langford: “Our only way of registering protest is not to buy this terrible, terrible book.”

One person even argued that the profound shortcomings of this novel were deliberate. I fail to see the humor; that cheats the person who buys it.

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 10:49am.

As to profound shortcomings being deliberate: do you remember a book back in the 60's or 70's written by a number of authors, each taking a chapter, who wrote the book under one assumed name to prove how silly the best seller list is? The book got on the bestseller list and proved their point.

So Heinlein could well have done it on purpose, which seems an arrogant thing to do, but his writing often did seem that way to me. His characters thought well of themselves.

I think some SciFi writers are like that sometimes because they write to impress other writers in the same way that political reporters aim their choicest use of words at their brethren to show how smart they are.

I've not heard of that book, although a group of authors did something similar a year or two ago to prove that AuthorHouse (I think) were a vanity press and would take anything that was submitted to them. Could it be that you're thinking of?

L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. Ten books to avoid in one simple anti-recommendation. Described in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as ""one of the great embarrassments of modern science fiction."

I've always been underwhelmed by Asimov's Robot-Foundation mash-ups such as Robots and Empire. I also thought Nemesis was pretty mediocre.

I've never understood why Clarke's Imperial Earth is so well thought of. I really didn't like The Ghost from the Grand Banks, but then again, almost everything associated with the Titanic bores me.

I have found most Crichton to be very ordinary at best - and am mystified at the adultation heaped upon The Andromeda Strain.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

2> That was Naked Came the Stranger, right?

>6 I had almost forgotten this one.. And then we had Atlanta Nights a few years ago with a very similar idea.

Oh, and I liked The Number of the Beast, and thought I Will Fear No Evil was mostly okay (I have always suspected that Ginny wrote much of the book though).

I know, there's one in every crowd.

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 12:25pm.

>5
Yeah, the thing that gets me about The Andromeda Strain was how very limp the ending was.

I found The Drylands by Mary Rosenblum to live up to its name. Extremely dry and it will suck the energy right out of you.

Elmore Leonard was on Charlie Rose the other night. He told a story about a magazine editor who gave him a Tom Clancy novel to review when he was told it was 460 pages long he sent it back saying he didn't read novels over 300 pages.
I'm also reminded of his 10th rule of writing:
"My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."

So I think a general anti-recommendation would be any book over 300 pages especially if penned by an author who has been more than 20 years in the business and thinks they're too big a name to need an editor.

11> I feel validated. I've groan to loathe modern novels, that tend to run into thousands of pages or multiple volumes. I think it's one more reason why I've always loved older, 150-200 page books, and anthologies. Get to the good parts and get it over with.

12> I love that! "Get to the good part and get it over with!" It could apply to soooooo many things. I'm going to write that one down.

C.J. Cherryh was so good at getting to the good part that I often had a stomach ache from tension right from start to finish.

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 9:54pm.

3> 6> I'm sure this was way back when I was in high school. My English teacher was thrilled with this book that broke the rules. I have no idea what it was called.

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 9:59pm.

>12

very interesting, I often feel the opposite - that certain books would have been much better if the author had taken the effort and fleshed it out a little better. For really, really good books I am disappointed that the author decided to stop there instead of continuing on with the story - I often want more.

I want to really get into a story and a book that is over in 200 pages is over too quick (like wanting a candy bar and being handed a tootsie roll). Maybe this is because I read very fast?

The last example I recall of a book I enjoyed that was satisfyingly meaty (i.e. long enough) was the Otherland series by Tad Williams. (Which is really just one huge book that happened to be broken up into 4 volumes by the publishers because you can only hold so many pounds of wood pulp in your hands comfortably at one time - he does warn you about this.)

OTOH - I also like anthologies - but will often read a half dozen or so back-to-back til I am over my SS kick.

On NOB and IWFNE by Heinlein: as a die-hard Heinlein fan I like them all (excluding certain final chapters) I tend to read all of Heinlein at one fell swoop at least once a year - except Grumbles from the Grave (reading what authors thought they were writing about is inevitably disappointing).

Message edited by its author, May 28, 2009, 10:39pm.

Thanks for setting this thread up, Carnophile. It's nice to see that it has some interest.

Over-rated:
- Anything written by Ayn Rand (which is sort-of-kind-of SF, even though I wish it were not). I have only read her novel Atlas Shrugged. Pity Rand didn't know about the tenth rule of writing. Or the other nine. Repetitive, bad characters, not to mention that I disagree with her philosophies on a multitude of levels. I want all those hours of my life back.
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I've said my opinions about this one often enough before.

I've no doubt that I will be reminded of more as this thread continues.

#1
I hardly think that Stapledon can be considered over-rated - Star Maker is owned by 376 LT members, and Last and First Men is owned by 336 LT members, so there isn't too much hype surrounding him.

And Stapledon has had quite an influence on the genre of SF, too - having read his novels, you can see his influence in a variety of authors.

#4
Thanks for warning me; I picked up those ten books at a book sale for thirty dollars. I thought it might be a nice way to introduce myself to Heinlen.

I've probably been more wrong than that prior to this, but I can't think of any particular episode.

>17 rojse
Mission Earth ain't Heinlein! Heinlein only nearly started a religion with Stranger in a Strange Land, Lron gon' an' went and dun it!

The entire oeuvre of Ayn Rand and L Ron Hubbard and Kevin J Anderson, definitely. A lot of Heinlein's and Asimov's books are also way over-rated. The same is true of van Vogt, but his books are bonkers and I do have a soft spot for them.

I'd also encourage people to avoid military sf. There are perhaps three good military sf novels, but a few hundred thousand appalling ones. Best to avoid them all together.

You can't leave it like that Ian, which three military sf novels?
Starship Troopers?
Ender's Game?
Dorsai!?
The Hunt for Red October?

All of the above could be valid here as anti-recommendations as well!

I haven't found them yet :-)

No, but seriously... definitely not Starship Troopers. And while the the Dorsai trilogy has its moments, it's only good if you're about 13 years old.

The Forever War is perhaps one, although I'd have to reread it to make sure. Also Life During Wartime by Lucius Shepard. I quite like Richard Fawkes novels, and SN Lewitt's early novels. Dancer of the Sixth by Michaelle Shirey Crean is also quite good. And, um... I'm stuck.

Would you consider Morgan's Broken Angels mil-SF?

Being a 20-year-man, my expectations and enjoyment of military sf probably differs from non-vet sf fans. That could be a whole 'nother thread.

I actually did enjoy Starship Troopers (not the movie, though) for the concept of respect vis-à-vis citizenship through military service. Some of the hardware was interesting as well.

I'm struggling with Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham though. Lots of 'hard' sf but surely not everybody in 1942 was such a racist, sexist, bigoted, prejudiced arsehole? I wasn't quite around then, but my 'elders and betters' (at least the ones I respected) weren't like that.

ps. Not advocating citizenship through military service at all!

Starship Troopers: I hated the book, but loved the film.

I had the same reaction to Weapons of Choice too.

#22 Not sure. Not read it . Only read his Altered Carbon and Black Man - altho I do own Broken Angels. (And The Steel Remains too.)

consider phlebas and the rest of culture- very overrated.

Heinlein - some more than others, but stranger in a strange land I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Left hand of darkness ditto. It was probably groundbreaking when it was writen 40 years ago, but it's just dull and meaningless today.

Don't know if Stephenson's baroque cycle really counts as SF, but it bored me completely. So much so that I don't intend to try Anthem which might be better.

Reading fox, Anathem may or may not be better than the Baroque Cycle - hard for me to say because I loved them all, but it is extremely different. You should at least pull Anathem off the shelf in a bookstore, open it to the middle and read a few pages just to see.

>16
Thanks for setting this thread up, Carnophile. It's nice to see that it has some interest.

No prob! Thanks for the good idea.

On Rand, I'm a fan, but when the characters start speechifying! Oh when they start speechifying...!

By the way, her The Romantic Manifesto has a very good essay called "Basic Principles of Literature." It's a clear and brief piece on the integration of plot, characterization, theme, and style. Usually, IMHO, she practiced what she preached (except when her characters were preaching).

There are those who disagree with me.
One poster in that thread:
“If only all of her idiotic followers were also dead. Sharpen the guillotine I say!” Goodness! Those tolerant lefties!

Iansales, try reading the essay I mentioned. There's no politics in it, btw. She discusses topics, e.g., abstractions and details supporting each other, etc., that I wopuld imagine would be useful to any writer.

On Heinlein, I have a collection by him in which lists some rules for professional writers. One of them is actually this:
Refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order. Aargh! This approach is what leads to, e.g., the clunky prose at the start of Stranger, which someone on another thread ripped into recently.

Message edited by its author, May 29, 2009, 3:52pm.

>6
Naked Came the Manatee is an amusing little piece in a similar vein.

#28

Rand is one of the worst authors I have read. Whatever her writing principles, she never kept them. Her characters were two-dimensional, either mouthpieces for her philosophies, strawmen for her to refute and feel smug about it, or empty names and empty faces. Repetitive writing, repetitive... well, everything. Rand is an author who could have benefited from an editor of some description.

Oh, the speeches. I remember looking at one chapter in "Atlas Shrugged," where one of her mouthpieces, John Galt, goes into his rant supporting Rand's view of philosophy and the economy. For sixty pages. No rebuttals of her ideas (not even the strawmen that Rand so often loved to use) just Rand telling everyone why her philosophies are right.

Sorry if that has went on slightly long, but anyone who has read/endured/perservered through that book deserves the right to complain vociferously.

The world of "Literature" can keep Rand.

#17, 18

Sorry for confusing Hubbard with Heinlen. Quite embarrassing. Admittedly, not had much to do with either author, but still.

Message edited by its author, May 29, 2009, 10:15pm.

Yay, I'm happy to have inspired a thread :)

So, more anti-recommendations...

* everything by Gentry Lee (maybe he wrote good books. I haven't read a single one of *those* and several of the bad ones), he should PAY for what he did with the Rama sequels.
* I second L. Ron Hubbard ;P (I even read some of his... uh... "nonfiction".)
* Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, I couldn't slog through it for the life of me. I loved the preceding books in the series but this one turned me off of it for good. Maybe I should give it another try... but it's not too high on my priority queue to say the least (especially since my brother also gave up on the series at this book).

I have "disappointing" and "slightly_disappointing" and even "very_disappointing" tags in my catalog. (I'm not that picky! I have the opposites too, like "pleasant_surprise", etc. And I don't like spaces in tags, I know, I know.) Let's see what those yield...

* Man in the High Castle by PKD (Can I say "overhyped"? I think he wrote some egregiously bad novels, some of which will be listed below, this one is simply disappointing...)
* Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff
* Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock
* Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson (It wasn't actually bad, it was just much worse than the hype surrounding it I guess.)
* Childhood's End by A. C. Clarke (I'll probably catch a lot of flak for this :p )
* Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps by J. Gregory Keyes (the other Psi Corps novels were much better though.)
* Dr. Bloodmoney by PKD
* DiLEMmas by Stanislaw Lem (nonfiction) (His late nonfiction by and large is awful and falls into the "get off my lawn" genre. At least the collections I've read. *sigh*)
* The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin
* Factoring Humanity by Robert J. Sawyer (Augh! Some really neat ideas, but botched execution.)
* Guide to the Perplexed by Gilad Atzmon (really awful. But more like near future political satire than actual SF)
* Martian Time-Slip by PKD (oh no, this one even has autism. Though to Dick's defense, autism wasn't fashionable yet back then.)
* Jack of Eagles by James Blish (SOOO disappointing!)
* K-Pax by Gene Brewer (I'm told the movie is much better)
* The Saddest Little Robot by Brian Gage (Illustrated children's SF book. this had a lot of hype in Hungary, believe it or not)
* Man Plus by Frederik Pohl
* The Masks of Time by Robert Silverberg (I wrote a scathing review of this in Hungarian which ended up being quite controversial)
* Slan by van Vogt (I mentioned this in the other thread too)
* Startide Rising by David Brin (one of my biggest SF disappointments, ever. I did not even finish the book)
* Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
* This Immortal by Roger Zelazny
* The Vision by Dean Koontz (also The Door to December, gwah!)
* Lucifer's Dragon by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
* The Stone Gods by Jeannette Winterson (a really insidious specimen, the literary novel which "discovers" third-rate SF clichés. OMG-so-wonderful!!! Not.)

There's probably more, I've started using this tag fairly recently... hmmm....

* The Songs of Distant Earth by A. C. Clarke (I tried reading this so many times because I like the Oldfield album inspired by it. But I could not force myself to finish it, gwah.)
* Imperial Earth by A. C. Clarke (I tried this one quite recently...)

Anti-anti-recommendations (stuff that was mentioned above but I like it):
* The Left Hand of Darkness
* Consider Phlebas

So, who will be the first to come up with anti-anti-anti recommendations? :D

I've always thought Bester's The Demolished Man was overrated. Not bad, mind you, but overrated.

Message edited by its author, May 30, 2009, 9:09pm.

Please keep this going. I'm getting a lot of ideas for my TBR list. :-)

#32 Ditto. I love The Stars My Destination but think The Demolished Man is rubbish.

Once I've started a book, I'll read it to the end. I've broken this rule on a handful of occasions, but the one that sticks in my mind (and my throat) is Vellum by Hal Duncan. Truly, truly awful apart from a couple of lucid chapters.

I'm another who will stick up for Consider Phlebas (one of my all-time favourites) and The Left Hand of Darkness (one of my all-time favourites ... as well).

Thanks for reminding me Noisy. I'm like you, I read to the end even if it's crud. Sometimes, very rarely, I'll chuck a book aside because it's really crud. Sometimes, if a book is out of my favourite genre (Science Fiction in case you couldn't guess), and is going nowhere, I'll put it aside and come back to it sometime later.

The most notable exception is The Eighty-minute Hour by Brian (sometimes W.) Aldiss. I have started that book maybe ten times and never gotten more than a third of the way in. It doesn't get me in, and I can't seem to get it.

It's been a few years now, maybe I'll try again - can anyone give me a little encouragement? Is it worth it?

#35 I liked Vellum, although I've yet to get round to reading Ink.

>37

Why? Why did you like it? It was so artificial and boring! The same thing repeated time after time. Some of the writing was good, but other bits were dire. I gave it a fair bash - two or three hundred pages - but my mind was just numbed waiting for something to happen.

I've heard of plenty of people who bought it expecting a more traditional fantasy narrative. Which it certainly isn't. It's the bastard love child of Clive Barker and James Joyce, and I thought it very cleverly done. But then I've known Al for years, so I came to it with a pretty good idea of what it was.

SF books that one would be prone to read based on presence in the library or in one's mind as "SF classics?"
---
Rand hardly counts as SF so she can be tossed out some other window.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Time enough for Love, the cat who walked through walls.

Niven/Pournelle collaborations. One was plenty.

The last two volumes of the baroque cycle. Neal Stephenson. And i really like his books up till that point.

Robert Anton Wilson. If you want conspiracy theory SF try Jack Womack, going, going, gone.

Sometimes i like vurt and Noon's books in general and other times i think - god, what self important psychedelic blathering. At the moment i have him in the "blather box."

argh. that's enough mind detritus.

You can't enjoy Wilson if you take him seriously. His entire oeuvre is just meant to entertain and shake up your head. He'd be horrified to learn that anyone took the conspiracy stuff seriously. If you already knew that, then, er, never mind.

I'm confused about whay people categorize the Baroque Cycle as SF. Other than one accomplishment which could be magic or super-science, it's straight-up historical fiction.

11: This coming from the man who wrote Maximum Bob, quite possibly the worst book of that genre. Thankfully, as the author apparently noted, it was short.

Elsewhere: Also, I going to have to support the anti-rec for The Left Hand of Darkness. I'm sure the book was influential and groundbreaking when it came out but after hearing so often how important it was as a gender study and a classic of the genre, I got slightly more than halfway through it and gave up. The gender issues were only a footnote at best (at least as far I got) and the rest... meh. Plot was dragging, characters were flat.

24: Ian, you're right about that! One of the only times where the movie was better than the book. Maybe because the film didn't take itself so friggin' seriously? I'm pretty sure I never laughed reading the book.

oh, i know RAW wasn't being "serious" - just dull. And from a very small N there's a strong overlap between RAW and DaVinci code groupies.

Did you find the Illuminatus! trilogy boring?! Or are you talking about his stuff like the Illuminati Papers?

Edit: This sounds like I'm being critical. I'm not, just curious.

Message edited by its author, Jun 16, 2009, 7:31am.

Not true SF (as in spaceships and alien) but in scientifical fiction i liked Der Schwarm by Frank Schätzing a lot. That is before i came to the end of the book.

It starts out with a lot of interesting concepts but after 3/4 of the book it turns into a rather hollywood style ending that smashed the mood of the book quite final for me.

Rand is definitely SF. Everything she writes is set in some alternate world where people all live in boxes with names like "creator" and "leech" and "pirate" and "government". Her world and ours share no relationship beyond being populated with twisted conceptions of what it is to be human.

Not to go OT, but... I see the Illuminati mentioned, but whatever happened to the Tri-Lateral Commission?

You're looking in the wrong direction, Gene. The important point is that the Federal Reserve System controls the commies, and the commies control NASA! Wake up, man!

Rand's Anthem is definitely SF.
One could also make a case for Atlas Shrugged, due to the engine that Galt invents and the superweapon the government invents.

Message edited by its author, Jun 16, 2009, 12:39pm.

#48

Classic fiction can keep Rant... er, Rand.

Message edited by its author, Jun 16, 2009, 10:25pm.

Anti-Rand-ers:

Wow, I know I've seen these posts around here before, but I don't remember her books being that terrible!

Although I haven't read them since college/high school some 12 years ago. Maybe I will have to go back and check them out again? Or would that mean the pro-Rand-ers win? Is there even such a creature?

#50

I don't want to suggest reading them again, because I'm not that cruel.

And yes, there are pro-Rand people out there.

I'm one.

Just skip Galt's looooooong radio speech.

i really did get bored by the Illuminatus trilogy, despite my (local) reading friend, from grad school to the present, Mike, more or less making me read it. But he loves conspiracy novels and while i don't dismiss them out of hand, i don't like a novel just because it's based on some long term sacred secret. The only reason i read the DaVinci code was at Mike's insistence. On the other hand i read Herodotus at his urging as well as a lot of other excellent books.

#53

I take it no one has tried to indoctrinate you to make you become irrational simply reading the word fnord, then.

#31 - I liked Startide rising - not brilliant but enjoyable enough, and a good concept. Certainly I'd anti-antirec it.

#40 vurt I've not read, but I loved the short stories in pixel juice how would you say they compare?

Some more in my Rubbish Collection:
empyrion by Lawhead. He's written a decent fantasy trilogy and everythign else I've tried from him has been tosh

Saga of exiles by May, I was intially reccomeneded this from this very group IIRC, but very disappointed in it. The general universe maybe concept wasn't bad, but the pre-history was terrible.

#55

If you liked the stories in Pixel Juice it is well worth tracking down Jeff Noon's earlier work. I enjoyed Vurt when I read it (on first publication) but it may have been 'of its time'. I would think Nymphomation and Automated Alice are less likely to suffer from this.

i really did get bored by the Illuminatus trilogy

Interesting. You're the first person I've encountered who had that reaction.

Better make that two. I gave up after the first book.

Mark down a third. The first book was more than enough.

Three people who found it boring! I never thought I'd live to see the day!

The thing I don't get is this:

First rule of capitalism: The market determines what the buyer will pay.
Cut taxes or whatever, let people keep 100% of their production, the market will bear more, prices go up to accomodate all the new money. That's called inflation. No one is any better off than they were before and prices are higher. Makes sense to me. We see it all the time. Meanwhile, those things held in common (just don't bother, Lunar) and treated by government decline in accessibility and quality. Yup. Sounds like Utopia to me.

Gene, what's that in reference to?

62: the Rand debate previously, if I'm not mistaken?

60: Make that four, I read the trilogy in a onmibus that a friend had given me, but by the end I felt my eyes were bleeding. I'm pretty sure the only reason I finished, was that I was on vacation with no biblio-backups. :-) Sorry!

Yes, Rand. When people think they are actually going to get to keep additional money from lower taxes my eyes just glaze over. Consider the last seven years since BushCo's tax cuts. I know that put a whole ton of extra money in my pocket, how about you?

62 > Carny, I found the trilogy interesting, a friend gave to me as a present then borrowed it back and I haven't seen it since. I was in high school when I read it though, so it might have colored my view of the books.

64: So with myself not being an economist of any sort, is it a fallacy to suppose the inverse would be true? Higher taxes - lower prices - same money in hand?

(Way, way off topic here, sorry)

64: Well, it put extra money in my pocket.

The reason is that demand is not infinitely elastic. Hence, people don't expend all of their extra simply income pursuing more of the same product. There is a countervailing force to "the market will bear more, prices go up to accomodate the new money", which is competitive pressure. What you describe only works in a monopoly (i.e. the producer sucks up all of the consumer surplus).

Inflation is much more driven by the time value of money and the overall money supply than it is by the rate of taxation.

In the US, the long-run correlation between the price level and the money supply ranges between about 0.92 and 0.97. This depends on the various measures of the price level and the money supply used. Similar correlations hold up in other G11 nations, I think.

So as long-run proposition, Milton Friedman's "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" looks pretty good.

Don't forget the propensity to save. Nations with populations with a higher propensity to save generally have more stable economies.

Save? What's that. The savings rate in the US had been either verging on negative or negative until the crash last year. Now a few people save, but not many.

Competition is great when allowed to function. However, most items are a quality/price trade off. Competition isn't about innovation, it's about how crappy a product you are willing to put up with.

I stand by my point: lower taxes do not yield more discertionary income over time. All money realized from tax cuts will vanish in the ensuing inflation, while the quality of services will decline.

Message edited by its author, Jun 19, 2009, 10:11am.

Propensity to save is the ratio of saving to spending by the population. The populations of some nations don't live right up to their means like the UK and US. And because there is more money floating around in bank accounts, there is more available for them to loan out. Of course, the current crisis was brought on by irresponsible bankers, so a higher propensity to save was no real help.

I must have missed something. I always thought the Illuminatus trilogy was a satire.

If you didn't feel you were better off after the Bush tax cuts you were obviously not in the top 1% income earners deemed worthy to receive them.

>72 Of course it's a satire! A giant golden submarine. Meta-fiction moments in which characters discuss the fact that they're characters in a book. Alien invasion. The destruction of Atlantis. Etc.

Of course, the current crisis was brought on by irresponsible bankers...

No. It was caused by various government policies. Among others, regualtors forcing bankers to make risky loans they didn't want to make.

Some reading from the Pro & Con group if you're interested:

www.librarything.com/topic/45698

www.librarything.com/topic/45651

www.librarything.com/topic/46549

If you didn't feel you were better off after the Bush tax cuts you were obviously not in the top 1% income earners deemed worthy to receive them.

Question: Are you sure only the top 1% got tax cuts? That doesn't sound right to me, although I can't cite chapter and verse of the releevant legislation off the top of my head. Are you counting the tax rebates of 2001, for example? Or what?

70: Inflation isn't caused by tax cuts. I think that has been made pretty clear. Inflation is a function of the size of the money supply, the fact that the money supply is increased on a regular basis (which is a function of rising population) and the time value of money. Tax cuts have nothing to do with inflation, hence a tax cut can't cause the inflation, meaning there is no reason to believe there will necessarily be "ensuing inflation" greater than there would have otherwise been absent a tax cut.

Sure it does. More money in the consumers pockets lead to higher prices. that may not be what you call inflation, but higher prices are indistinguishable from inflation from where I sit. Inflation may not be the right bucket to put higher prices due to more available discretionary income in, but my wallet can't tell the difference.

My point is, the more discretionary income generally available to the consumer, the higher prices will go, eventually (and not too eventually at that). I will be worse off than I was when my taxes were cut. I have had essentially the same level of discretionary income all my working life.

78: No, you are assuming that the tax cut creates new money. It doesn't. It simply shifts where the money is. Inflation doesn't correlate at all with tax rates - the data simply shows no link at all. The data does show a link between the money supply and inflation, and a very strong one at that. The money supply means the total money available for spending from all sources.

So, for example, if the government normally taxes $1,000 from you (a complete hypothetical), then it has $1,000 in revenue, which it spends. If it gives a $100 tax cut, then it has $900 and you have $100, and then both you and the government combine to spend $1,000. No matter who is doing the spending, the total money supply is the same, so there is no increased inflationary pressure resulting from the tax cut.

But the money supply isn't completely static. Every year there is a little more money in circulation than the year previous (the Federal Reserve has an algorithim they use to determine the optimal rate for each year). This is partly driven by the need to keep the money supply on par with population, which is always growing. This is also partly because money next year is worth less than money right now (which is part of why when you borrow money you pay interest). But none of this has anything to do with tax policy or tax rates.

You are simply working from a completely incorrect hypothesis unsupported by the available data, and as a result, reaching an erroneous conclusion.

I am working from forty-five years of close personal study. Real fieldwork. My income went up $60,000 during those forty-five years and lo and behold my cost of living went up by a commensurate amount. I don't have the same money to spend profligately now that I once had.

That may not be inflation, but it is real, and neither Reagan's nor BushCo's tax cuts did a bloomin' thing to help. I guess rather than inflation of the money supply, I would call it price inflation.

Whatever it is, it might as well be inflation. Every time someone announces a tax cut, I grab for my wallet.

Message edited by its author, Jun 19, 2009, 2:58pm.

80: Sure there was inflation during those years. But it wasn't caused by tax cuts. You are trying to connect two unconnected things.

During the last 45 years the population of the United States increased from about 189 million to just over 305 million. The money supply has increased over the same time span, which has increased inflation. But that's because we have a lot more people now than we did then. Also, the spending power of people worldwide went up considerably, which also drove inflation in the U.S. to a lesser extent.

If your income only went up $60,000 in the last 45 years, and your base salary in 1963 was more than $10,000 a year, then you haven't kept pace with inflation (check the inflation calculator here: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/) which would explain your reduced discretionary income.

You also seem to think when I say inflation I mean something other than increased prices. I don't. The trouble with your analysis isn't in identifying the fact that prices rise, it is making a connection between tax cuts and price increases.

As an example of the disconnected nature of inflation and tax rates, look at the 19th century in the U.S. The taxes (mostly in the form of tarrifs, duties, and excises) bounced up and down, but inflation remained pretty much stable over the course of the century, with prices increasing at a steady rate fairly closely correlated with population.

Message edited by its author, Jun 19, 2009, 3:12pm.

Yes, more than 1% of the population got tax cuts but only 1% benefitted from them in real (inflation adjusted) terms.