Robots

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This guy has it exactly right. This is what I mean when I'm always saying that the right wingers always have "common sense" solutions; things that "sound right" but actually are not.

Flat tax, "balanced" use of forest resources, users fees, social safety nets framed as "paying people not to work", job creation by cutting business tax, fighting crime by promoting gun ownership, conventional prisons, the death penalty as a deterant, a "free market" solution to every single social problem, off-shore drilling the list goes on and on... All "common sense" ideas that ignore the details, ignore the complication, or ignore the just plain reality of what's been shown to work and not work, by actually trying things.

Sometimes things that seem to make sense, have been proven not to work, while alternate, progressive, plans that seem odd have been proven too work well. If you get into a debate over this the right-ist will go straight to the "common sense" argument, and point out that it doesn't make sense to go down the "soft on crime", or whatever, path, because it doesn't make sense that that would work. Yes, it doesn't "make sense", except that progressive solutions actually DO work sometimes...

To me, if I want to reduce crime or poverty, or etc... It's completely secondary *why* one thing works and one thing doesn't when we have research in hand about what will yield the desired outcome. That's why you can't even debate such people.

They're robots.