by SASKATCHEWAN KOLONOSCOGRAD, Alternate Reality News Service Fairy Tale Writer
Once upon a time, there was a great country named the United States of Vesampucceri. It was great for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that its citizens owned more hats, per capita, than people in any other country in the world; its roads were paved with honey to attract the dwindling bee population away from other countries, and; it's dad's army could beat your dad's army in a fair fight (and really slaughter your dad's army in an unfair fight, which, admittedly, it preferred).
For purposes of our story, what really made Vesampucceri great was the way that basic mathematics, which most people in other countries thought was thoroughly understood and was used the same way everywhere, transformed into something new and wondrous (and thoroughly unrecognizable to people from other places) in the heads of its politicians.
"Vote for me," said Reduhblican candidates. "If elected, I will cut your taxes and increase your social programmes and reduce the country's deficit. It truly is a bright new dawn in Vesampucceri!"
Seeing that this made Reduhblican candidates quite popular, Dumbopratic candidates soon started making similar arguments. "If elected," they said, "I will cut your taxes more and increase your social programmes further and reduce the country's deficit faster!" Politicians of either persuasion who knew that this was not possible - rare and beautiful creatures now believed to be extinct - said nothing, a position that historians would come to label the "chicken in every potted district" policy.
And, time passed, and the national government's deficit skyrocketed. One trillion. Two trillion. Three trillion. Four trillion, and counting. But, this did not disturb the people. As famed science fiction writer Arthur W. Lemarkebradellov once offhandedly remarked, "Any sufficiently advanced budget number is indistinguishable from magic."
And, to reduce the deficit - which they hadn't caused and, therefore, didn't really exist - members of both parties agreed to cut funding to government programmes. The Reduhblicans slashed and burned, the Dumboprats snipped and bobbed, but the result was the same: they had said that they would increase funding for programmes, so they couldn't possibly have cut funding for programmes.
That's simply not the way fairy tales work.
This is the way fairy tales work: because the people believed the politicians who told them programmes would not be cut, they hooted and hollered and moaned and mimed and panted and pouted and sobbed and sadsacked and otherwise bitched to high heaven when programmes that benefited them actually were cut. So, the cuts tended to be made to programmes benefiting mutes, or, more often, shallow, which tended to increase the deficit even further. Which the people didn't believe was increasing, in general accord with Bowcampengparkson's Law, which states: "Understanding of economic issues is inversely proportional to the amount of money involved."
"I don't understand why Vesampucceri is still solvent," said token smart person Wicked Witch of the Southwestern Conference Amy Sheshutshotshitbam. "After 30 years of fiscal mismanagement, I would have thought the International Monetary Ferkers would have sent advisers to Washburningdington to measure us for an economic straitjacket. The IMF is not known for showering gentle loving caresses on governments."
The fact that international trade was based on the Vesampuccerian dollhead may have had something to do with it; like an octopus with tentacles on everybody's private parts, if the Vesampuccerian economy collapsed, it would take every other economy on the planet with it. But, uhh, this comes dangerously close to actual economic analysis, so let us say, instead, that pixie dust blinded international bankers. So, the situation was allowed to continue because of...magic.
In the meantime, the Reduhblican noise machine said loose talk by the Wicked Witch of the Southwestern Conference was killing jobs. In their calm, deliberative way, representatives of the Dumbopratic Party quietly pooh poohed what she had said, claiming that the WWSC's statements merely killed hope, and, you know, in its own way, that's kind of worse.
"But...but...but, they don't even live up to their own rhetoric!" Wicked Witch Sheshutshotshitbam argued. "They increased taxes - only, they didn't call them taxes, they called them "fees for services -" and cut programmes for poor and working people and allowed the deficit to skyrocket. With all due respect to former President Potganreabumbom, the truth is that the worst thing a person can hear is: ‘Hi. I'm from the government, and I'm here to kick you in the teeth!' And, hey, why am I the villain just because I tell the truth?"
Because truth is the enemy of magic, Amy. Truth is the enemy of magic.
And, thanks to the application of magic to the otherwise rational field of mathematics, the wealthy lived happily ever after.