Pangloss

I'm not sure, and I think it's a great question. I wonder if the answer has something to do with contrast being more important than reflectivity, since the latter could cause reflections that distract and/or fail to convey the presence of the markings they cover. (But perhaps something more like a Fresnel lens might work, if such could be found in a liquid form.) BTW, that's why they put down reflectors along with the paint. But I've always felt that reflectors are an imperfect solution to the "wetness" problem, since they seem to become damaged more quickly than paint wears out. And sometimes they don't use them, which I assume is a function of budget compared with traffic level on the road in question.

Great piece today from John Avalon. Avalon is a senior editor at The Daily Beast, which was started by conservatives but has columnists from both sides and a serious focus on a more common-sense approach to governance, elimination of corruption, and a return to centrism in America. Avalon is best known as the author of two books: Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics, and Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. As you can see from the cover, conservative though he may be (he's married to Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover), he has no trouble aiming his shots at the right. Anyway, let's take a look at what he says: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-22/opinion/avlon.jon.stewart.rally_1_campaign-rally-stewart-and-colbert-media-manipulation?_s=PM%3AOPINION Huzzah! ABC News' Diane Sawyer called the Stewart rally "his answer to Glenn Beck", and that may well be accurate, but I think it misses a key point -- this is not a case of tit for tat! This is not an angry reaction of the kind that the media so badly wants to fawn over and splatter all over our televisions. It's really the opposite of that. As Stewart put it so well last week, this is about "bringing it down a notch". I think the decision to have Colbert "oppose" the rally with his fight to "Keep Fear Alive" is not only comic genius, but political genius as well. Colbert can stand out as a pitch-perfect example of what's worst about current American politics, which Stewart can then answer directly without having to worry about whether he's offended a Beck supporter, or a Palin supporter, or a Moore supporter, or a Maddows supporter. What do you all think?

A federal judge ordered the military to take back a lesbian nurse today, citing that both sides seem to agree that her presence doesn't disrupt the unit, therefore it's not a violation of an earlier court finding that removals can only come if the military meets a test of disruption. This comes following a setback for gay/lesbian community last week, when Republicans blocked a bill ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, pushing its consideration until after the election. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jIWJ1V2EsAQ8O7sPsyfXG0OAQTBwD9IEJH380 I think this is an interesting case. It may ultimately become a sidebar if Congress does the right thing soon, but since that issue (like so many others) has become so politicized it may be that further court efforts are the only way to resolve the issue. What do you all think?

The Democrats got blasted for their Stephen Colbert testimony today, but Republicans may have spent some pretty dubious and questionable time before a Congressional committee today as well. I'm throwing this out there to update the thread, but I believe it has to be taken with a skeptical eye. The new testimony today came from a current Justice Department official named Christopher Coates. Of primary interest for our purposes was his claim that evidence existed which covered the missing bits of the story, as we discussed earlier in this thread. No evidence was presented by Mr. Coates, however, he just said that it existed at one time. (See Washington Post article.) Coates' point seemed to be NOT that the Obama administration was biased against bringing cases against black people, but that the Justice Department has an internal bias of that type, and that it precedes the Obama administration. Coates' testimony may carry some weight due to the fact that, while he was a Bush appointee, he used to work for the ACLU, which was confirmed today by partisan-left watchdog Media Matters for America (though it went on to cite quotes from supporters for the Obama-Holder side of the dispute, who were quoted as saying that Coates is a "very different man" today) (links below). Fox News' Bill O'Reilly claimed tonight on his program that Coates was also given an award by the Georgia NAACP in 1992, though I didn't catch any backup for that point in any of the articles I skimmed on that subject tonight. Coates also spent much of his time today blasting the Bush administration for not following up on cases of voting rights abuse in Mississippi, as was detailed today by the partisan-liberal Media Matters Web site in, I believe, the first of the two links below. Associated Press story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i6PlcZeiW_Nucd6_I72lQV6BEi4QD9IEJLK00 Washington Post story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092403873.html?hpid=topnews Media Matters Page on the story today: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201009240035 http://mediamatters.org/research/201009240053

Yes, I agree with that. I've advocated raising prices on services in the US that are typically fulfilled by illegal immigrant labor. I could easily afford $200 for lawn care instead of $50.

Lol, whatever, I guess I'm just not man enough, then. That must be it. But hey, it sure beats the silent treatment -- I'll take an active and crude iNow over a sullen and submissive one any day. Thanks for trying, Skep. Was nice of you to do that.

Anybody know if this is true or not? It's certainly repeated often enough, and certainly some of the war estimates are pretty astronomical, but I can't help but wonder what the need estimate is based on. As far as I know the US grows all that stuff internally. So it's just your country's fault! There's imported stuff too, of course. I'm already paying more for Juan Valdez's coffee than the stuff that's grown in California (by a different, less famous, Juan Valdez, I suppose). Money always seems to come up as the root of all 3rd-world evils, but everyone seems to be too busy blaming the west to take a hard look at irresponsible behavior in teh 3rd-world countries themselves.

Cool, thanks for digging into this. I'm a litle confused about their math -- 186x5=930, not 980, right? -- but they might explain that in the full article (and hey, what's $50B these days anyway? <grin>). It's pretty staggering to think that we might need $186 billion every year for five years just to fix everything. That's a whopper of a sum -- more than the second stimulus bill. Holy cow.

I didn't say that. It isn't fact-pointing that makes you come across as a jerk. Some overlap? Not only is that what they teach there, but that's the theory that their graduates go on to support and advocate in the field. How do you know that all 23 recipients aren't Austrian-style economists? The familiar story is that the University of Chicago's School of Economics produces Austrian-style economists, which is why they call it the "Chicago school" of thought. I have no reason to believe otherwise. That having been said, perhaps we have some common ground here. There are certainly some economists who focus more on politics than economics, and, like that Wall Street Journal example I gave earlier, spin the numbers to frame an ideological message. You wouldn't know anybody like that, would you? Say... perhaps a certain Nobel Prize-winning economist who works for the New York Times and who frequently comments (e.g. Sunday talk shows) on political events that have nothing to do with economics? At any rate, if you want to say that some Austrian-type economists push agendas, I have no beef with that. What I have a beef with is your assertion that they're like creationists. Regarding the rest, numbers 3-6 are not examples of you asking me to support something, they're examples of you ignoring the relevance I already provided. 3. Provided in the same post you selectively quoted. 4. Provided in the same post you selectively quoted. 5. Provided in the same post you selectively quoted. 6. Provided in the same post you selectively quoted. And I don't appreciate being flooded like that. But I will answer your more reasonable questions, now that you're attempting to be more polite. 2. Do you have ANY evidence which might support this counter proposal? Any whatsoever? Now, I know you think you've provided evidence in support of point 2 above, but as I've already called to your attention, the link you shared simply demonstrates that another view exists, not what data informs that view. I'm asking you for data. What data is there that the Keynesian view of the 1937 recession is mistaken? By "opinion", do you mean this? Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976, and if he's not an example of the Austrian/market/Chicago school, I don't know what is. And the message here was clearly Austrian. Do you think he's like a creationist? But I didn't say he was right. I said that he has his view, and the Keynesians have theirs -- which opinion we get depends on which school of thought we ask. You're the one who's asking us to favor one group of scientists over another (and insulting one group by comparing them with creationists). You ask me for data, but why should I go spend hours tracking that down when I have the opinion of a Nobel Prize-winning creati- sorry, I mean economist, available at hand? Perhaps he's wrong, I readily admit that. Perhaps your guy is wrong. Whatever? You posted a more data-supported analysis? Good for you. Perhaps that does carry more weight than a mere opinion, even coming from a Nobel Prize-winning economist writing about his field of study. I'm not an economist so ultimately I can't accurately interpret your source's data either. So in the end all I can go by is their conclusion. But you haven't "established facts", you've just given us a great source. I thank you for passing along a data-supported analysis, and remind everyone that there are those who disagree (whom you say are like creationists, even though they win Nobel Prizes). 1. Sure. Let's take a look at a few quotes from the article you mentioned in the opening post, beginning with the very first sentence, which just shows that he's talking about all the of the cuts. Next we need to see support for my suggestion that he doesn't think they should be allowed to expire. We can find that in the article, in this quote here: Gosh, look at all that extra stuff about politics that has nothing to do with economics. Anyway, that bit at the start of that quote about it being fiscally irresponsible to have them (all of them) is support for my point. But he's even more direct: So he thinks the right thing to do is to allow all of them to expire, even the ones for the middle class. He does say at the end of the piece that he hopes the Obama administration stands firm against "this outrage", but the outrage he appears to be talking about there is what he calls in the previous paragraph the 'dysfunctional and corrupt political culture'. So he explicitly criticizes the administration's proposal as "expensive ... in its own right", and the tax cuts as a whole "fiscally irresponsible". Granted he doesn't directly condemn the administration's proposal, but in my opinion it seems clear that his preference is to allow all of them to expire. 7. I'll just ask you this one more time... Do you have ANY evidence which might support this point? Any whatsoever? You see... I ask, because I've shared multiple references throughout this thread which clearly demonstrate the contrary. You mean for the bit about stimulus for job creation not being a useful long-term strategy, yes? This is frequently in the news right now, citing, for example (as I mentioned earlier), the fact that Census workers only had temporary jobs, and when they became unemployed again following that job the number of unemployed in the country just went back up again. That's what I mean by not a good long-term strategy. You can put people to work building roads or taking down information for the government or whatever, but if at the end of that temporary job there's nothing waiting for them in industry, they just go back to being unemployed. So the government hasn't "created" anything, it's simply giving them a temporary safety net.

Hmm, you're right, I missed that as well.

First, thanks for reminding me that what the Wall Street Journal offered was just an opinion, based on filtering the data in a certain way. It's not a fact, as I stated in post #59 of the Ending the Bush Tax Cuts thread (here). What you've shown above is another interpretation of the data, looked at through a different filter, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do.

You shifted the goalpost in order to avoid the fact that you declared an entire group, which includes 23 Nobel Prize winners, to be without scientific merit and no better than creationists. Your problem, not mine. There are not "10 or 12" comments that you've asked me to support in this thread. There was, if memory serves, only one, and I responded to it. And I won't have a discussion with you on any basis except clarification while you continue to work in the domain of insults and logical fallacies. If you would like to have a respectful conversation, let me know. If you're just going to keep behaving badly, I have better things to do.

Incorrect. Evidence was offered in post #64. Obfuscation. The underlying principle of the Austrian school of economics originates at the University of Chicago school's of economics. Therefore a statement about the number of Nobel Prizes their alumni have won is a direct refutation to your direct statement that they're like creationists.

Whew, all that money. But yeah it sounds like a lot when you look at it cold, but I seem to recall the discussion a couple of years ago projecting a need in excess of $100 billion. It's a big country with a lot of cars and airplanes; way it goes. Thanks. The Chicago School has managed to wrack up an impressive 23 Nobel Prizes in Economics. (source) The truth is that both Austrians and Keynesians are valid scientists with valid theories. This is not evolution vs creationism, it's one kind of evolution against another. In this case the two kinds of "evolution" they support are two interpretations of a mixed economy -- one leaning toward socialism (but not socialism), the other leaning towards pure capitalism (but not pure capitalism). But they both support the underlying premise of a mixed economy, because Austrianism can't work without government intervention at some level, and Keynesianism can't work without strong, independent corporations pulling most of the economic weight. Very much like two interpretations of evolutionary theory. I have no idea if there ARE two interpretations of evolutionary theory, but I could offer perhaps an alternate metaphor: The rift in physics between Many-worlds and Copenhagen. That's probably a better analogy. Less insulting, too.

You mean the percentage rate? I hadn't thought of that. Does that come from the same Fed-determined figure that determines everyone else's interest? I suppose it does. If memory serves debt is auctioned in the form of T-Bills (?) on some sort of foreign exchange, yes? I guess they offer it at a given interest rate based on whatever the current rate is (though I don't see why they couldn't just "determine" the same rate later). Is it? That's what I was wondering, but I haven't seen any articles saying this. They seem to focus more on the politics of the proposal. But maybe I just read the wrong articles. I agree the big bill wasn't meant to solve everything, but I'm pretty sure transportation infrastructure was part of the mix.

Stimulus, general spending, whatever, the point is that the government is already spending $1.5 trillion more than it will receive in revenue this year, and you're suggesting that it spend more: As Mr Skeptic points out above, further recovery will generate more revenue, but until that deficit is wiped out we can't increase spending, or at least not without increasing the deficit. Of course this is all just my opinion and you're certainly welcome to disagree. I don't think you're ignorant or uneducated for doing so. Another insult. From a guy who knows full well how I've split my votes between the two parties over the last decade. When's the last time you voted for a Republican, Mr. "Unlimited View of Reality"? Or we plunged into a recession because we failed to present burnt offerings to purple unicorns. Do you have ANY evidence which might support this counter proposal? Any whatsoever? Sure. There's a reason some call it the "Roosevelt Recession", you know. The Austrians have plenty of evidence, just as the Keynesians have their evidence which they believe says the opposite. As you can see from this reasonably objective summary in the Wikipedia article, the Keynesian types say that cuts in spending, and the Austrian types say that it's due to a tightening of the money supply in 1936 & 1937. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession_of_1937 The article appears to be well-sourced with evidence for both points of view. Enjoy. For sure. I had no problem with the President's new $50 billion infrastructure bill in theory. I'd just like to know why those repairs weren't covered by the $900 billion stimulus bill, as I thought had been planned. That's the point Jon Stewart raised, at any rate. If we hear nothing further about it, does that mean it was just a political play that didn't reflect an actual need, and that the original $900 billion stimulus bill is still working on those repairs as planned? I have no idea, but it seems like it would be a good thing to know.

You misunderstand. I didn't say it was a logical argument on their part, I said it's how they will likely react. It's a little thing called "politics", and I believe the politics of your suggestion are relevant. And by the way, calling people stupid, uneducated, and unable to think rationally is just another way of saying that you know what's best for them. Of course I don't think you want to build a collective socialism -- I take people's opinions at their word, iNow, even when you don't offer me the same respect, and I'm familiar with your basic position. But I have to say calling them stupid doesn't strike me as a winning strategy in politics any more than it's a winning strategy in forum debate. Or we plunged back into a recession again because of the New Deal, depending on which of the two schools economists we ask, neo-Keynesians or Chicagoans. Huh? Leaving the tax cuts in place makes the deficit WORSE. Again you've misunderstood. What I said in the quote above is that ending the tax cuts (your preference) will indeed result in the collection of more revenue, but not (as I understand it) enough to make up for the deficit. Yes? You said earlier that the additional revenue would allow the government to fund another stimulus. But if the new revenue can't pay off the deficit and then some beyond that, and we don't suddenly discover another revenue source that puts us in the black, then logically a new stimulus would incur new debt. Yes? But if you're going to incur new debt, then why wait? So it doesn't really make sense to tie new tax revenue to a new stimulus. If you're going to do a new stimulus, then just do it. Which brings us back to the question of how raising taxes can create jobs. I understand that it can create more jobs in federal government, but there are two problems with the theory that they can more fully employ the country in general. #1) Our high unemployment rate isn't because the economy sucks, it's because people are trained for the wrong jobs. The Wall Street Journal showed, as I mentioned earlier, that if people were qualified for the jobs currently available, unemployment would only be 6.6%, fully three points lower than it is today. This suggests that if we're going to retrain them to do something different, why not make it something that's already in demand right now? #2) As far as I can tell, nearly everyone, President Obama included, feels that it's the private sector that needs to start hiring again. The tell-tale of this particular recession is that government jobs HAVEN'T solved the problem. The census workers are a great example -- they put in their three months, and then they lost those jobs, making the problem seem even worse. So unless the plan is to put everyone permanently to work for the government (ye olde socialist nirvana, which we all seem to agree is undesirable), stimulus for temporary job creation is not a useful long-term strategy. Now, unlike some people I know, I won't say that one of the economic schools is right and the other one is wrong. So I won't say that temporary workers drag out a recession/depression and just make things worse and that everything would have recovered better if left to its own devices. I believe in safety nets, and using government to smooth over these rough patches. But I won't support another astoundingly dramatic stimulus with only muddy, indeterminable, highly questionable value. I might support smaller, more pinpointed programs, depending on what their specific goals are and how they're targetted. For example, I support the president's proposal to spend another $50 billion on transportation infrastrature (even though I think Jon Stewart makes an excellent point that that was supposed to be covered by the $900B one).

Well first of all the question of whether or not Congress and the President can convince the American people to support another stimulus bill does not appear to be related to whether or not the IRS is receiving more tax revenue. They're just not going to get one, at least not in the near future. And really if it comes down to perception then it seems counter-intuitive to expect the majority in the current political climate to go along with increased taxation coupled with increased government spending. That's actually a tremendous boost to your ideological opposition's argument that you just want to build a collective socialism, in which all (or at least most) revenue is collected and distributed by People Who Know What's Best For You. This does not strike me as a winning formula, politically speaking. The American public is screaming to go in exactly the opposite direction (and the other 7 members of the G8 agree with the American public on this one.) It gets worse. The budget is, what, $1.5 trillion in arears? Repealing the tax cuts -- even all of them -- won't, I'm assuming, collect an additional $1.5 trillion next year (am I wrong?). So if you can't even collect that, then you can't also collect a significant amount of money that could be poured into a new stimulus bill. I mean sure you could ignore the deficit and spend more in arears, but then why tie a repeal to a stimulus in the first place?

Well, that's why you should ask rather than assume, lemur. As I explained to you earlier, you're expected not to read between the lines, but there's no reason why you can't ask another party what their opinion is (or to clarify, etc). If they object, then I will remind them that this is an opinion-based subsection of the forum and as such one's opinions are not only subject to discussion, but expected to appear in post content. But often, if you ask, you'll likely discover that they weren't intending to hide anything at all. They might have made an error, or perhaps assumed that the community was already familiar with their position on the issue. (Most of these folks have been posting here for quite a few years.) I'm closing this thread because it's devolved into an unproductive (and rather silly) merry-go-round. You're more than welcome to send me a private message about it if you would like to discuss it further. Thanks.

Except, this is not a fair representation of my actual point. I was talking about jobs created by ceasing the cuts. How does raising taxes create jobs?

I'm not sure how many jobs are created by extending a tax cut that's already in place. But we do keep hearing that corporations are sitting on cash, afraid to invest, so perhaps extending the cuts will add a little more certainty to the picture and free up those purse strings. (If that's the argument it's an interesting acknowledgement that Obama's policies have terrified already-skittish managers.) At any rate, I've already acknowledged swansont's point that just because 900,000 businesses are affected doesn't mean that each of them will lay off workers. Exactly right -- and I think even now, looking ahead past the election, Republicans (and many of their potential voters) are failing to realize that even if we somehow manage to cut spending we will STILL have to raise taxes or at least keep them at the present rate if we're really going to "do something about the debt". It all boils down to this: If we're going to be the nation that demonstrates the validity of the claim that low taxes and small government can work while still providing safety nets and very little/temporary human suffering (whew, deep breath), then we have to back that up by demonstrating a low taxation level AND non-deficit spending AND economic growth. We have to show that for an extended period of time, THROUGH at least minor economic downturns, while at least addressing/reducing the total debt each year rather than building it. If we can't do that then we can't make the claim that it's the better way.

On another tangent, I think the argument that our taxes are insufficiently high because the taxes of other nations are higher is far from perfect. First because it's a comparison typically made with a premise that their tax levels are somehow objectively correct (which is made without support), and second because plenty of western nations have undesirable economic situations, with problems both past and current, many of them operating in the red and often running into crises, which supports the notion that higher taxes produce unsustainable situations. Not that European taxes definitively support the argument against high taxes either, I'm just pointing out that they're not exactly a heaven-sent gift of support for aggressive progressive taxing and spending. Nor is there an objective source to say that a 30-35% high-end bracket is too low, nor too high, nor "just right". None of these things are demonstrable in any way. Not even the demand that "Americans pay too much". It's all subjective. Which I suppose probably makes taxation a local argument, with variables unique to each polity.

That's only $10 billion. According to the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, together the top 24 contributing nations to international relief already spend $104.4 billion annually. (source) And of course your idea would be a non-progressive tax, which of course would quickly be replaced by a progressive tax (because your idea hurts the 'working poor', and why shouldn't the rich pay more for this noble goal?), and the whole time it would still be just a money sink with no exit strategy. How are we going to make those countries productive and self-sufficient so they can get off the dole? That's the real question.

In general it's best not to read between the lines of people's posts here. We have a pretty diverse group of folks in this international forum, and sometimes associations that seem obvious or familiar to you may not seem that way to others. Easier for everyone if you just make your point in more independent terms.

There was a rather stunning development on this today when Senate Minority Leader John Boehner said this morning on "Face the Nation" that he would vote for the extension of just the tax cuts for those making less than 250,000/yr, if that were his only option. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/12/obama-economic-adviser-afford-tax-cuts-high-end-earners/ Coming from the GOP leader this is a huge opening for the administration, which has previously met only with resistance from the GOP on this issue. I have been guessing that they would refuse to support such a measure, hoping that the tax "increase" to middle-income earners would drive more Americans to vote Republican (opposition to the "Bush" tax cuts has been well-associated with Democrats). But I guess they ran the numbers and came up with a different result. Perhaps it's not too surprising in light of recent polls suggesting that Republican candidates aren't a whole lot more popular than Democratic ones. It's also possible that he simply did not have unilateral agreement amongst Republicans to block such a vote (currently it only takes one to give the Dems a victory if their own side is unanimous). There's still a huge cost to extending the tax cuts to middle-income Americans, but if it goes down this way I think it'll be very much better for the recovery than if they are allowed to fully expire, and I think it's even a sign of greater bipartisanship in the second half of Obama's first term.