Pangloss

Pandering to them won't win their support either. Just the opposite, in fact. What actually generates good economics are sensible policies applied logically and consistently over time -- something the "elite" can bank on because it will continue to be in place later when it comes time to reap the rewards of the investment. When it comes time to invest, they're not actually interested in conservative agendas any more than they are liberal agendas.

You're joking, right? Here's a list of Financial Services subcommittees that Maxine "It wasn't a riot, it was a rebellion" Waters, who never met an industry she didn't think needed nationalizing, sits on: * Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity (Chair) * Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit * Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations * Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade, Technology She's called for investigation into why the bailouts "did nothing for the poor" (as if that was ever their purpose to begin with), and lead the charge for investigation into why the banking bailouts did not "pay off all the toxic loans" (as if that would be a good thing to do). As for Michael Moore, he's been a point man for that same fight. Like it or not, there is a push from the left to use these bailouts as social tools.

Up to a point, at least. There is a lot of pressure from the left to turn this into a country where $350,000 homes are a right rather than a responsibility. It's not about equalizing the classes, it's about stimulating the economy, but if Maxine Waters and Michael Moore have too much influence on these decisions then we're going to see a very different economic outcome than the one we're being promised.

Come on now, let's get back on polite footing please.

Well he is most definitely raising taxes. The new budget proposal (which came out a lot earlier than I was expecting) repeals the Bush tax cuts and adds another $300 billion or so in new tax hikes as well, mainly from eliminating the deduction for charitable giving and off changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax (if memory serves). There are also some big cuts in discretionary spending, a surprising amount of which is outside of defense spending (non-defense discretionary has grown to be basically as large as defense). But we'll see what Congress has to say about it.

I think that may be what's really bugging the peaceniks who are objecting to Obama's plan -- the idea that we're just going to build in in Afghanistan now, and potentially face off against Pakistan or Iran. And Obama's using some of the same rhetoric that Bush used during his tenure that so annoyed them all the time, in talking about realities and so forth. That's what the cynical side of me most loves about politics -- when you give a group of people exactly what they want, and they suddenly discover that, to quote Mr. Spock, having is not the same as wanting. What's REALLY entertaining is to try to explain to die-hard conservatives that the far left is unhappy with Obama's Iraq plan. They think you're joking and simply refuse to believe it. It's really quite amusing.

You do seem to have a bug in your computer that randomly deletes a word every few sentences.

Security regulations do get a bit silly sometimes. There's a bit of a spat going on in the general aviation industry at the moment over the proposed imposition of airline security rules on small aircraft operating out of small GA airfields. Basically Sean Penn and John Travolta will soon have to doff their shoes off before getting on their privately-owned Gulfstream Vs just like you and I do before getting on American Airlines. There seem to be two objections in the opposition. Some opponents are focused on the intrusion into a private matter (it's not as if they bought a ticket from a company; to which others point out that a fully-loaded GV still represents powerful kinetic energy weapon). Others complain about the lack of security personnel at small airports, or the potential impact on the aircraft manufacturing industry, which is already hurting due to the faltering economy (but is having to take off their shoes REALLY going to prompt them to want to change planes in Atlanta with all the little people?). And there's an interesting sub-argument about the accommodation of Air Marshals (would Travolta and his family really not notice if a stranger were to sneak on board a flight?). All of these matters will likely be debated during the public comment phase of the rules changes. But that's big government for you. They've got a big job to do and it's a little hard for them to focus on the small details.

Actually that Washington Post article (linked as the source for that $496 billion figure) calls it a $19 billion stimulus plan. I think what may be happening is that they're talking about the same second-half-of-the-year omnibus spending bill that we've got Congress debating right now. There must have been a Clinton attachment of $19 billion for "stimulus" purposes. That would have come up right about the time they they're talking about -- early 1993. An eerily similar set of circumstances, isn't it? Politically speaking Bascule's point is a great one -- the parallels are really interesting. I was just aghast at the thought that there might have been a multi-hundred-billion-dollar emergency/unbudgeted spending bill 16 years ago! Edit: Just to reiterate that point in support (I feel bad about interrupting with my confusion over the amounts), I think this chart does show that Democrats have been more willing to compromise on this issue than Republicans: And since Republicans spent the farm when they were in charge, it's not about ideological differences, it's about having a hate-on. This seems to support the general complaint about Rush Limbaugh leading the party, doesn't it? Obviously this doesn't hold true for ALL Republicans, but it does feel like a demonstrable trend in party leadership.

Wow, that suggests that they haven't even budgeted the $56 billion that they'll need to start giving to students immediately after the budget is signed. Perhaps it's in there somewhere else, like on the entitlement side instead of the discretionary side. The main concern I have is that this is a massive growth area, which means massive spending growth -- that pot could double in size MANY years before we start reaping benefits in decreased servicing costs and repayments from newer "growth" students. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedEdit: I wonder if this might be a good opportunity for a new Savings Bonds-type program. Fixed rate of return, long duration, money specified by law to go only into the federal student loan program. Just a random thought.

Er, what $496 billion stimulus package from 1993? The economic bill from 1993 that is usually cited with references to unilateral Republican opposition is the Deficit Reduction Act, which I don't think was a stimulus bill -- it was mainly about spending cuts and tax increases (this is the raise in Alternative Minimum Tax and the increase to 39.6% for the highest bracket that the Bush tax cuts rolled back). I've seen quotes from that battle used to show hypocrisy in Republicans' current statements regarding the new stimulus bill, such as Newt Gingrich saying that it would lead to recession, when of course what actually followed was a nice boom and a temporary surplus (which was not in the least bit explained by a few billion in spending cuts and a massive tax hike, but that's politics for you). Some of those quotes are quite amusing and fun to watch in action. But if there was a near-500-billion-dollar stimulus plan 16 years ago that I'm just not remembering, by all means share. That would be quite an oversight in the recent public debate -- you'd think something like that would have come up before!

Wow. He's really standing in the way of investigation, isn't he. Somebody ought to dig around in there and see if there might be eighteen or nineteen minutes of semi-used mag tape lying around.

I see your point there. But does it really seem like we're all destined for the poor house? Really? I mean I guess it's possible, but it seems more likely to me that we're looking at an extended period of slowdown more than anything else. There will be plenty of examples of individual suffering, I'm sure, but, for example, is that the majority or the minority? And what was the percentage of "people who were really suffering" during the Great Depression -- the majority or the minority? It might be an interesting question to explore. Maybe my impression of the Great Depression has always been wrong -- maybe the majority of Americans were really "okay" during that time, just careful about not losing their jobs, saved their money more than usual, and didn't go to the movies quite as often.

I wonder if there's a risk here in calling it a "depression" when the standard of living remains so high for most people. This situation may actually not be all that different from the 1930s, relative to technology at the time, but it certainly doesn't seem to "jive" with my school-educated and Hollywood-modeled view of what life was like during the Great Depression.

Abosutely.

Amen!

That's another tough call. If you ever get a chance to see Errol Morris' amazing documentary The Fog of War, which is basically an extended interview with Robert McNamara, it's worth seeing. McNamara is mostly known for his activities as Defense Secretary during the Vietnam era, but as it turns out he was also a mid-level officer working under Curtiss LeMay, enacting the order to firebomb Japanese cities in WW2. His rationale and analysis of results and moral implications is absolutely fascinating. Another good source on that subject is Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank. Frank spends considerable time analyzing the production numbers of the Japanese manufacturing sector before, during and after the firebombings. It's not well known in the west, but the Japanese manufacturing sector was organized in a very different manner from that of the west. Their factories were right in amongst residential buildings, the latter of which were made out of wood and rice paper. But every one of those houses would have a coal-fired smelter inside, making the sludge that would be turned into steel at the local factory (or however it's done; going off the top of my head here). So if you look at ground-level photographs after an incendiary attack, the only way you can even tell where the houses were is the row upon row of little black smelters. But that's how their manufacturing process worked. And if you adopt the concept of "total war", meaning you're considering the manufacturing of war products to be a legitimate target, then that means attacking those residential districts. And incendiary devices were the only way to demolish that manufacturing capacity. How can you take out smelter capacity when it's spread out over literally millions of places? Which does not, however, eliminate the moral grounds for objection. In a way it makes it even tougher.

Both of those things -- central banking and separation from the gold standard -- enabled the modern economy as a matter of historical fact, not conjecture. I suppose it's still theory in the sense of (as I said before) gravity or evolution or any other well-established theory. And economics is not a precise science, so such things are always at least a little more interperable than established scientific theories. But I won't support the reduction of historical facts to the level of "interesting theories" in order to legitimize an ideological agenda. Anything along those lines can expect a reply from me just as it did here. If you want to prosecute those facts with opposing evidence, you can start a thread on that. 'Nuff said, let's move on.

So Amnesty International has NOT been making statements of opposition to the use of white phosphorous in Gaza?

I'm sorry, I knew that, and I shouldn't have said "apply to me". I'm just wondering how that article informs us that Amnesty International must be right with its view about the use of white phosphorous in Gaza?

You're the one making sweeping, all-inclusive statements based on specific examples. I never said that Amnesty was always wrong -- in fact I agree with them quite often, and yet you saw fit to respond with the following: Maybe they do, I've no idea. But the above sure as hell doesn't apply to me or to the discussion we were having.

I don't think I've been disrespectful at all. Ecoli simply made an misleading (or perhaps misunderstanding) statement and I corrected it. I'm not marginalizing your opinion about the value of free-market economics. I'm simply responding to it with a different perspective. My personal opinion is that free-market has a useful place in the modern economic discourse. So does socialism. I view them as absolutes, and I believe they have a place in that they remind us of our options, allowing us to sway this way and that on specific actions, in order to find the right middle course from A to B, which in my opinion is the best way to go. But that has nothing to do with my response to this post from ecoli: What bascule posted about the non-gold-standard-based leveraging approach used to build the modern economy wasn't an "interesting theory". It was a history lesson. He posted fact based on more than a century of economic growth and development. It's you Austrians that are carrying on about an "interesting theory" (just as I am when I rant about centrism). Like I said, I don't stand on academic arguments -- I think this is a matter for gut-punching realities. But if you're going to take a stand on academic grounds and stake a claim of objective truth, then you can expect to be held to the same standard as anyone else.

What did you all think of the President's pullout schedule, announced today? It apparently calls for a pull out of major forces by mid-2010, which is a bit longer than the 16 months he promised (but in direct response to input from commanders on the ground, which he pledged to listen to). I thought it was interesting that the plan seemed to get support from the right and criticism from the left. McCain was "cautiously optimistic", for example, but many House Democrats were critical of the plan not being fast enough and still leaving troops in the country after that time (supposedly all would not be removed until something like 2013). I've seen several articles on this but they vary so much I think I'll just leave it without a link for the moment and see what people can add with their own links. In terms of my own opinion I think this is a strong step because it's measured, gradual, and reflects the realities of the situation. What do you all think?

Wouldn't you have a problem with any phrase that began with "Gravity is an interesting theory, but..."? What the hell is that "but" doing in there, why is "interesting" being used in a belittling manner, and what's the point of even reading the rest of any statement that follows an opening like that?

I agree. And while I'm greatly concerned about the "dumbing down" of undergraduate education, it seems clear that more education is almost always better, and not just for the student.