Bad Metaphors?

I wrote a previous post about metaphor use in politics. So my question now is, what constitutes a good or bad metaphor?

Here is an opinion piece by Paul Krugman. One of the metaphors in politics right now is "the economy is a stalled engine." The implications are that we need to jump start the engine, give it a quick burst of energy, and everything will be good again.

Well, first I suppose I should say my piece about the Obama -McConnel tax cut deal. It's great that they're trying stimulus, but the tax cuts for the wealthy are a terrible idea. MPC decreases as you deal with people who have higher and higher incomes, since there just isn't as much stuff for them to spend their new tax break money on, which means that the tax cuts on the wealthy won't actually generate much more spending. Tax cuts for the poor, who actually do need to spend a larger portion of their income in order to continue with their daily lives and thus have a higher MPC, will result in a larger increase in spending, since the poor are more likely to spend any money they would receive from tax cuts.

Of course, simply giving the wealthy tax cuts wouldn't be that much of a problem... if it wasn't for the deficit. Both the Democrats and Republicans use deficit reduction to support their arguments, but so far all we've seen is increases in the deficit. This tax cut on the wealthy simply serves to pile onto that deficit. Now, in my opinion, we shouldn't be so concerned about the deficit right now: Japan was worried about their deficit, and raised taxes too soon; they went into a recession and haven't come out for 20 years. We should really be trying to fix the recession first, and then later try and solve the deficit. Of course, that doesn't mean that we should pile onto the deficit; we should, however, as Krugman says, get the most bang for our buck. Tax cuts for the wealthy aren't the way to go for that.

As for the simulus itself, what we need right now is increased spending. Stimulus spending, or government spending, is spending. Therefore, it's good, and it's what we need right now. However, as Krugman says, we do need more spending, not the miniscule amount we're getting now.

So, anyway, the metaphor. So far I've mentioned immigration as dangerous waters, medical care as war, and the economy as a stalled engine. Which metaphors are good, and which ones are bad?

Well, in my previous post, I basically said that immigration as dangerous waters was a "bad" metaphor, since it skewed peoples perspectives on immigrants. All metaphors skew perspectives, since they are representing things in terms of other things. Political metaphors, especially, are designed to skew the perspectives of voters. Does this make all political metaphors bad?

Paul Krugman thinks that the economy as a stalled engine metaphor is a bad one. After all, the economy is not a stalled engine, and should not be given a jump start like a stalled engine. Krugman is right; the economy needs more, longer lasting stimulus spending, not a short boost. However, this argument can be applied to most metaphors: A is not B, and A should not be treated as B. So what differentiates good and bad metaphors? In the end, all metaphors fall short in some aspect, since two unlike things are necessarily different, and thus a metaphor will not be a perfect comparision in at least one way. I believe that the quality of a metaphor is entirely reliant on how people use it, and how people interpret it. I think the economy as a stalled engine, then, is a fine metaphor: sure, the economy needs more than just a jump start. But you know what? With the congress we have now, we're not going to get much more. So let's get a jump start: it's better than nothing.

Dichotomy

We're stuck in a recession, countries are defaulting on debt, China is buying up our debt, global warming is threatening to kill us all, Iran may be going nuclear, and North Korea is stirring something up-maybe.

No big deal.

Right?

Well, I mean, the US isn't really taking any sort of action, so these issues are probably small and will probably away.

...No.

We're on the brink of disaster (or perhaps we've already fallen off the brink), and our government won't do anything. Why? As you probably know, we have a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. And that's about it. We're done.

Democrats have one set of policies, goals, and ideas, and Republicans have an another set of goals (which involves blocking anything that Democrats stand for). As that stands, nothing is going to get done, because Republicans can use their majority in Congress to block anything from getting passed. No tax increases on the wealthy, no more stimulus, no nothing. To be fair, the Republicans have been making suggestions. These suggestions involve the removal of policies that Obama has put in place. Suggestions that were supposed to help us.

Obama has tried to compromise with the Republicans (or so it appears, anyway, although Obama isn't rolling back his previous policies, that's for sure). This compromise results in watered down bills that won't do much to help the economy. It appears as though his compromising and policies, while not really gaining Republican support, are alienating some of his Democratic base.

In short, the split between the two parties is so large, the animosity between the two parties so great, that even when they claim to have the same goal (i.e. help America), they beat each other up and block each other's actions. And we are desperately in need of some Federal action at this point (the Federal Reserve can only do so much; interest rates are already basically at zero, and the Fed is buying bonds to inject money into the economy. There's not much more that can be done with monetary policy. We need some fiscal policy now.). Otherwise, we're goners.