WHH on Spending

Press Secretary of the Tennessee Grand Ol' Party, William Howard Hobbs, has some interesting new economic theories:

The ability to cut one’s own taxes by shopping less (or shopping more online) is a feature, not a bug. In fact, the decline in revenue indicates that market forces are working well - people are reacting to the economy’s troubles by spending less on stuff and on government. They are, literally, demonstrating with their reduced spending that they wish for government to be smaller and less costly too.

"Hey Martha, why you buying that cheap toilet paper instead of the stuff you normally buy?"

"I'm just trying to send a message to Gov. Bredesen that I don't want him to build that bunker."

"You think a letter or phone call might be more effective?"

"No, I'm way to passive-aggressive for that..."

Update:

Incredible! William Howard expounds further:

They may not consciously be thinking about it, but when people cut spending they are making choices based on what they feel is most important to them. The result is that government gets less tax revenue. Despite an avalanche of headlines about how less retail spending means less tax money for the government, people still cut back on their spending.

Keeping government awash in cash simply isn’t their highest priority. As you put it, Bubba, people “stop shopping because they can’t afford the items they wish to purchase.”

One of the things they can afford less of these days is government.

You see, in Hobbs' world (and probably in the world of many of his fellow blue bloods), money apparently grows on trees. People purchase or don't purchase, not based on how much money they have, but whether or not they want to pay the sales tax and fund the Government.

So its not because people's wages are stagnant, or energy prices are soaring, or jobs are getting sparse; its a protest statement to the Government. Apparently Tennessee is just full of a bunch of Henry David Thoreau's, not people struggling to get by.