Faux Facts
An editorial in The Charlotte [NC] Observer (Oct. 17, 2004), while detailing very good reasons why these former supporters [i.e., the newspaper] of Bush will support Kerry in this election, makes the following statement:
The president's tax cuts, combined with increased federal spending,
did help the economic recovery.
Stop press! I know that newspapers like to deal in facts (although they frequently find ways to finess the issue–another essay topic), and this looks like a fact, but it is not. Despite its appearance of scientific certainty, it is neither certain nor even a scientific question.
It is, in fact, an undecidable question. With only one US economy, and one tax cut made at a singular point in history, there is no experiment in progress whose outcome can determine whether the alledged cause–the tax cuts–had an actual effect–economic recovery. NB: this observation has nothing to do with misdirections, say, like arguing whether we've actually had a "recovery". It is simply a statement that this proposition is, in principle and in fact, unknowable as a statement of truth, and it might be better not to present it as though it were.