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Reader question: Please explain “Trump’s tax cut snake oil”. Snake oil? My comments: Yeah, snake oil, oil made from the fat of snakes. Snake oil is one of many forms of voodoo medicine, which is believed to be effective but people seldom fully understand how it works. In traditional Chinese medicine, for example, snake oil is believed to be able to relieve pain and work many other incredible wonders. Incredible is the right word here (in the sense of impossible to believe) because the medicinal effectiveness of snake oil has always been dubious, doubtful and questionable, especially in the West. In the West, where any medicinal cure has to go through vigorous scientific proofs and checks, privately concocted remedies such as the snake oil are necessarily controversial. And, thing is, whenever someone sells you a bottle of snake oil, he is never modest about its efficacy. He does not say it relieves pain and generally makes you feel better and leaves it at that. He almost always touts his snake oil as a miraculous cure-all, curing anything and everything, from pain in the neck to liver cancer. Another thing about snake oil is, of course, that it may not even be made from snake oil at all. It could be anything but snake oil. It’s kind of like many medicines purportedly made from tiger bones. Even though tigers have largely been driven to extinction in most parts of the world, we still hear tiger bone this, tiger bone that – as often as before, if not more often. | 
