The presidential champion of the progressive movement in America at the turn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt, had rhetoricized about health care. The original debate to drive home a political point in an America that was very divided among the very wealthy and the rest in an era of tycoons from Vanderbilt to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, who were building industrial America was that health care was a right and not a privilege. And it appears that that byline uttered by the most famous last president to grace Rushmore is driving President Obama’s agenda on health care reform.
If the Bill of Rights were enacted into law along with the Constitution, why was not health care? The doctors could argue the Democrats to argue that medicine was not as developed then. Even George Washington was bled before he died in because of pneumonia in 1799. But given the level of medical knowledge at every point in medical history since Hippocrates, administering medicine to cure, as all physicians aver before they graduate with their medical degrees, cannot be denied if the patient cannot pay because health care is a duty of the supplier and a necessity of the consumer, not a right of either and the privilege of none.
The rising cost of health care in the United States is because of the Hippocratic oath that governs the practice of medicine. Doctors who need to get paid for their services still provide those services to those who cannot pay themselves, only to be paid by someone else by redistribution through the rising insurance premia, whether that be the safety net of Medicare and Medicaid through taxes and national debt or privately provided health care.
In the modern economic analysis of pure public goods, even if health care is made a legal right, it would first be redundant given the obligations involved in medical education and second, horses even if given the legal rights, can be taken to the pond to drink, but may not choose to do so. The existence of rights does not automatically imply their use and in the case of health care, the mitigation of its use if diseases can be prevented through better behaviors or preventive medical interventions. And therefore, the case for the government provisioning health care on the grounds that it is a right is even flimsier. Health care is a pure public good only in the event of a contagion, which, in and of itself, in the emerging world of genetic treatments and drugs, can be eminently preventable.
From the consumer perspective, because health care is a necessity for every man, woman and child from conception to death ― a very highly inelastic demand curve ― similar to clean air, clean water and nutritious food, the role of health care policy becomes one of ensuring equal access to all people, citizens and non-citizens on U.S soil, to health care that meets certain minimal quality standards at an affordable price. Similar to food stamps, those who fall below a certain percentage of the poverty line must be provided direct government assistance through the social safety net. The goal of health care reform must be health stamps.
The only privilege granted to the human condition is to work. And the United States must work to rebuild itself and in the process fix health care.
This week in the magazine, Larissa MacFarquhar profiles the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. In this video, Loudon Wainwright III performs “The Krugman Blues,” a song he wrote about the Nobel Prize-winning economist. Wainwright sings, “Sometimes when he’s on the TV, in the background you can spot his school logo. Paul teaches at Princeton U, so Krugman ought to know.” “The Krugman Blues” is on Wainwright’s new album, “10 Songs for the New Depression,” which is available for sale on his Web site. Watch the full performance below.
Two of my former high school debate friends, Sharon Traiberman and Jimmy Li, have graduated college and have started a blog. I highly recommend it for people interested in good analytical arguments, particularly with regard to economics and ethics.
On an aside, Sharon Traiberman remains one of the people I felt were truly treated unfairly by the the politics of Missouri high school debate. He has always been a brilliant thinker and unfortunately innovation outside of the narrow political box of Missouri high school debate has never been consistently rewarded.
The meeting will build a community of environmental scholars interested in working in the intersection of law, economics, and environmental or natural resource issues.
For more than a decade BA has been struggling to compete against the likes of Virgin, Ryanair and EasyJet who pay their cabin crew much less, operate with far lower costs, and have far greater flexibility. The fact that it has managed to survived is due to its hugely profitable trans-Atlantic routes, and the high fares traditionally paid by business travellers. Since the credit crunch, that side of the business has been devastated and chief executive Willie Walsh simply has no choice but to cut costs. Yesterday, the fantasists at Unite claimed that the cabin crew strike was essential if BA remained a “premier airline”. Actually, premier airlines put their customers first and try not to cause havoc to the plans of hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers and business travellers.
Well the calm at the beginning of the week did not last very long. Although the overnight price action can hardly be labelled as panic given both FX and equity volatility remain relatively well behaved, there is no doubt that worries are creeping back into the market psyche. It seems that markets are once again trading on each piece of news and for the most part the news is not encouraging.
A plethora of disappointments will set a negative tone for markets today. Risk has come off the table in the wake of the worse than expected February German IFO business confidence survey and US Conference Board consumer confidence. Cautious comments by Bank of England Governor King in which he kept the door open to further quantitative easing and a ratings downgrade of four of the largest Greek banks has added to the damage.
The German IFO was likely dealt a temporary blow by severe weather conditions. The 10.5 point fall in US consumer confidence from an already relatively low level had no mitigating factors however, and revealed a deterioration in job market conditions, which combined with renewed weakness in jobless claims, does not bode well for next week’s US payrolls report, pointing to a decline of around 40k in February payrolls.
Overall, the market mood has darkened and there is little to turn sentiment around in the near term. In prospect of likely weak reading for US payrolls next week and continuing worries about European fiscal/debt problems any improvement in risk appetite is likely to be limited. This will help bond markets, the USD and JPY but most risk trades will face pressure.
It is still worth being selective in FX markets. The EUR remains the weak link and is set to struggle to make any headway, with upside likely to be restricted to resistance around 1.3747. Similarly GBP is set to struggle in the wake of King’s comments as well as ongoing economic and deficit concerns, with GBP/USD vulnerable to a drop to around 1.5293. In contrast, Asian currencies and commodity currencies look far more resilient.
I was advised a bit ago that I needed to make great opening paragraphs, something to catch the attention of those who visit here). I assume that means headlines, too. It was good and sound advice. Thanks, Lloyd.
When the message is grim, what constitutes an attention-grabber, though?. . .
I am not into alarmism, so I won’t go around yelling “The Sky Is Falling!” Even if it is, what good would yelling do? Better to just share thoughts and perhaps some of us will find common ground and a way forward. My two sons are having to try to find work in this economy, and so far it is not pretty. I am free-lancing in mechanical engineering, and as closely as engineering is tied to manufacturing, that is not a nice place to be, not early in the year 2010.
So, on with the post. . .
…This morning I found Who Broke America’s Job Machine? by Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman – at Washington Monthly, one of the Progressive sources I like, even though they go overboard a bit on slamming all things Republican or conservative.
The job machine is broken? No Duh. Go figure.
If it took this long for a non-MSM to figure this out, we are in bigger trouble than even the authors think.
But, more important, there is more to it than the top-down activity the two authors point to. That, of course, would be the Progressive slant on things: Big is evil. Bigger is more evil. Really big is heinous. I am here to tell the readers/visitors here that it happened at all levels of our manufacturing economy. The big boys get noticed, but – with 90% of new jobs always being created by small businesses and over 50% of our overall economy being small businesses – the real meat and potatoes of The Great Job Killing was on Main Street, not Wall Street.
Yes, as they point out, many companies were bought up. I know. I was working with companies who got bought up. The buyers I was affected by, though, don’t show up among those the authors list: ITW and Triangle Industries. Most people have never heard of them.
America’s job machine being broken – that is something that is off the map, as far as the authors are concerned, though, in my own experience and from my own observations, its seeds were planted long ago. It didn’t start in the robber baron days of Rockefeller and Morgan. There have been iterations then that separate the present from them. The only continuity from that time is the mentality (that the authors did note) of the powerful wanting to be even more powerful. No, the beginning was of its own making, after the war, and it had to do with the rise of the accountants.
Jobs had always been an outgrowth of any economy, yet were a feedback mechanism that – through a form of resonance or chain reaction – had the capacity to take an economy and turn it into a self-sustaining engine. But the self-sustaining part of that engine was not a given; it could be killed off. That is what happened, and it wasn’t the actions of a few at the top – although the GOP economic philosophy has certainly contributed to it.
The Beginning of the End
All this was obvious more than 15 years ago. The direction things were headed then, if not halted, had to end up here, sooner or later.
The arbitragers of the 1980s started it (with groundwork laid by the accountants of the 1970s), thanks to REAGAN and the message he brought. THAT part the authors got right. And trickle down was never going to reach down to Main Street; it was all a scam, part of killing the unions, the real engine of the middle class. It took another 10 years to pretty much have run its course, but it didn’t get noticed until the tech bubble burst. Overlooked by Lynn and Longman is how important an engine is the American consumer, and the part that the higher union wages played in driving the most prosperous economy the world had ever seen.
Products are only made when there is a market. A market doesn’t exist unless there is money in the hands of some number of buyers. One could even arrive at a rule of thumb: The more buyers, the bigger the market. The tricky part of that rule is the term “buyers.” There were essentially the same number of people in 1950 as there were in 1938, yet the number of buyers had increased immensely. Buyers are people with money, looking to spend it. When there are buyers (money in the hands of people wanting to spend), there is a market. Buyers seek out sellers, and sellers seek out buyers; where they collide, that is a marketplace. And America was a marketplace like none, ever. The world was in awe of America, because of that marketplace where everything could be bought, where everyone seemed to have money to spend. (Yet it was also a time when a great deal of saving was going on. Buying and saving – it was an almost perfect blend. But not forever…)
The Role of the Unions – Perhaps the Worst PR People in History? One Wonders. . .
One of the things overlooked in all the economic histories of the 20th century is how important a role was played by unions, in terms of putting more money into the hands of more people. The free-marketeers look at everything from the perspective of the oligarchs and the wealthy. Their perspective always read into it that unions were (yes, pretty much past tense, now) parasites – takers who gave back as little as possible (hence all the nightmare anecdotes about union workers in plants who wouldn’t lift a screwdriver/hammer/wrench/screw because it was against union rules).
But the real truth of it is that the height of the unions was also the height of American prosperity. The mean per capita income in 1968 has been in decline ever since.) Much of that prosperity overflowed into the coffers of the corporate moguls than any time in their lives, including the boom times of the 1920s. More people having more money meant more sales, and the corporations were expanding hand over fist. The American consumer was the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg. The good times were rolling. But that wasn’t good enough for the oligarchs. They looked at the wages being paid and saw it as money stolen from them at the point of a government gun. Beginning in the early 1970s efforts were undertaken to reverse all that, and over the course of the next 40 years those efforts pretty much succeeded. Number one on their list targets was unions. Unions drove other wages up, so even non-union plants were paying more and putting more money into the hands of workers. All of that was good for the overall economy, but the oligarchs couldn’t see that some of that money was coming back around to themselves. All they could see was the wage differential, which they saw as money they had never had to pay out before. They wanted that money back in their own pockets, not the pockets of their workers.
One of the other outflows they didn’t like was in benefits packages – primarily in retirement funds. That will be dealt with farther on in this post. .
The Road to Oblivion
So, how did we get from 1968 to now? How did we go from American consumers being the engine that drove the world economy to the present, in which the job economy is broken?
The programming was step-by-step. First they had to get us to buy what we hadn’t earned enough to pay for. Then they had to get rid of the credit limits on cards and loans. Then they had to have the MSM convince us that union workers were a bunch of parasites. Then they had to get us to believe that our kids shouldn’t be working with our hands was dirty. Underlying it all was the “American Dream” of “everybody should own their own house.
“The Bean Counters are Going to Be the Ruin of us All”
In business, it all began – certainly by the 1970s – with the idea that accountants could make more money for manufacturing plant owners by manipulating funds, that taking the long view was pretty stupid. Many a person in that decade declared that bean counters were going to be the death of us all. Every one of them was right. Engineers, who had built the American manufacturing juggernaut, were increasingly excluded from the inner circle, because what did engineers have to do with moving money here or there?
All the consolidation talked about in the article was a later-comer to the picnic. First it had to be beaten into the American manufacturer that the quick buck was better than the slow grind of actually making their product. The move in retirement plans from profit sharing and other entitlements (necessary in the 1950s and 1960s just to entice workers, who at that time were the engines of profit) brought on an increased knowledge among owners of the power of large sums of money – the money that was just sitting there, waiting for workers to get old. Those large entitlements were also money out of the pockets of the owners, so devices had to be invented and popularized, with which the owners could get out of the cradle-to-grave business on behalf of their workers. And the accountants were exactly the people to do it, to show them how it could be done. Retirement plans by the late 1970s and early 1980s were replaced by IRAs, and later on, 401Ks. And the onus of running those fell not on the businessmen, whose accountants could maximize ROI, but on the individuals, who had no sophistication or knowledge of how to do anything but what their parents had done: Put money away in something “blue chip” and let it do its thing. And the “smart” thing to do was to diversify. But since individuals had no expertise in even picking one stock, placing hedge bets was way over their heads; they all needed help.
Enter the money market managers, who found themselves with billions and billions of dollars to play with. These were more accountants, the ones who really drove the race to the bottom, while stuffing their pockets to bursting.
The excess money that had been sitting in corporate coffers was now freed up to chase whatever higher stock was hot for the moment. The days of money manipulation began in earnest. The idea of getting something for nothing (as oppose to producing something people wanted and going through the gymnastics of connecting buyers and product) began to take off.
How the Stock Market Distorts Business – and not in a nice way…
And no one was more affected by that dynamo than business CEOs. Once money started chasing short-term gain, with a vengeance, corporate boards began to hold CEOs accountable for each quarterly report being rosier than the last. Once that kicked in, CEOs couldn’t take the long view, even if they wanted to, even if it was better for the company in the long term. Considerations for the workers and the community went right out the window. The power shifted to stock owners, and they enforced it with a vengeance.
But who were the stock owners? With money market funds, owners were anonymous, and were anything but Mom and Pop plopping down savings in blue chips. Blue chips had to contend with start-ups and their rocketing short-term profits, so blue chips became passé. When money market managers used their increasingly sophisticated programs to decide what to buy and when – and (most important to the process of killing the American juggernaut) when to sell.
American business power passed from manufacturing owners to CEOs to accountants to money market managers to stock trading programs.
The programs are not people. Like the recent SCOTUS decision, people have long been declared to be superfluous. That decision is actually behind the times. Effective ownership of all publicly-traded companies is now in the hands of computer programs. Trigger points have been set – originally by humans, but certainly by now it is now in the hands of the programs themselves, to make decisions on what stocks to buy and sell, but what are the buy-and-sell points. Humans take little part in the process, other than to take credit.
Those trigger points decide where money flows, and where money flows, CEOs are happy – because “stock owners” are happy. And money market managers are happy because their creations are making money for their “customers” – supposedly Moms and Pops all across our great land.
But, as Elizabeth Warren has shown us, savings in America is essentially zero percent (down from 11% in about 1970). So, who owns those stocks then? Corporations do. Anyone and any THING (sorry, SCOTUS, but I still insist on calling corporations “things”) can buy into money market funds.
So now we have a situation where corporations are investing in each other, in order to grab quick profits and then get out. They have cannibalized each other, and they continue to, to this day.
Jobs? We don’t need no stinkin’ jobs!
The American worker – excess and unwanted baggage (even though our buying was the true engine that drove it all) – is now the bum in the back alley, with skills that aren’t really wanted, skills for jobs that the corporations only begrudgingly offered in the first place. Jobs are the first things to go, when the money flow heads elsewhere. “Trimming the fat,” it is called.
Who needs workers, when the salaries and wages can be better spent “investing” in some other sucker company that still hires people. And since there are so MANY “other companies” in the world, why not invest in those where labor is cheapest, where profits are highest, and things like OSHA and EPA don’t apply (and don’t cut into profits)?
The only thing really understood here is that it will be a long, long time before things are ever really good again. One could argue that America’s time has come and gone. One would certainly hope not. There will be islands of prosperity, in fluff industries mostly, still selling American elan or playing off the American idea of strong individualism with slick ads and hot chicks.
We are still on the road to the bottom. We will not know when we have gotten there, not until some time after we are on the way back up.
But the way back up? That is for another post. I DO actually have thoughts on that, and I see others out there getting a glimmer of what it will take. . .
Two types of chickens are used for egg-production purposes in small flocks: the dual purpose and the egg producing breeds.
Egg producing chickens have been bred for maximum egg production rather than meat yield, and can produce up to 300 eggs per year. They have a mature body weight of 1.8-2.0 kg (4-5 lb). These chickens are usually of the White or Brown Leghorn type. They lay white eggs.
Dual purpose chickens are often raised in small flocks for both meat and egg production. They are smaller than commercial broilers, but reach a mature body weight of approximately 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) for females and 3.0 kg (6.5 lb) for males. The hens will produce 200-250 eggs per year. Common breeds include Rhode Island Red crossed with Barred Rock, Columbian Rock, or Light Sussex. These hens are brown egg layers.
Brooding and Rearing
If pullets are purchased just prior to laying, it is important to obtain information on the management procedures used. This includes lighting program, feeding program, vaccination program and any disease exposure. This history will aid in planning flock management and assist in determining causes of any production problems. Pullets should weigh approximately 1.3-1.55 kg at the start of egg production.
Lighting
Proper light management is important when raising pullets in order to obtain maximum egg production. Lighting will stimulate egg production and help to synchronize the pullets so that they start to lay at approximately the same time.
If pullets are raised in a windowless barn which is light-tight, the daylengths should be controlled with a time-clock. During the brooding and rearing period (1-20 weeks), the daylength can be held at 8-10 hours of light or gradually reduced from 12-13 hours of light per day to 8-10 hours by 6 weeks of age. To bring the pullets into production, the light should be increased abruptly to 12 hours/day. It can then be gradually increased to 16 hours. Once egg production has been stimulated with increased lighting, the day lengths should not be reduced, or the hens will lay fewer eggs.
Often with smaller flocks, pullets are raised in barns with windows or are outside during the day and are subject to natural daylengths. They are also usually hatched in the spring. In this situation, by the time they reach 19-20 weeks of age, the natural daylengths are decreasing. Increasing the daylength with supplementary lighting will help bring them into peak production, and synchronize the flock into similar egg production cycles.
Light intensity should be held at 5 lux (.5 foot candles) in the barn, if possible. At this intensity it is still possible to read a newspaper, but with some difficulty.
Hours of Light to Provide by Age of Chicks
0 to 7 days—– Lights should be on 24 hours/day
1 to 6 weeks—–Lighting can be: a) 8-10 hours/day or b) 12-13 hours/day, gradually reducing to 8-10 hours
6 to 19-20 weeks—–Lighting should be held at 8-10 hours/day
19 to 20 weeks—–Lighting should be increased to 12 hours/day (egg production stimulated)
20 weeks—–Gradually increase from 12 to 16 hours/day
Nests and Perches
If hens are to be kept in litter (straw) pens, or outside during the laying period, nest boxes should be provided. One nest (30 cm x 30 cm), should be provided for every 5 hens. They should be placed approximately 60 cm off of the floor, with perches to help hens reach the entrance. Nesting material, such as straw, should be placed inside the nests and replaced regularly.
Hens will sit on perches if they are provided, especially at night. If perches are provided, hens will also be less likely to stay in the nests at night. This will help to keep the nests clean.
Perches made of a hardwood are easier to clean and disinfect than those made with a softwood. They should be approximately 33 mm wide at the top. If perches are too wide, they can cause breast bone deformities. The perches should be deep enough so that the hens cannot puncture their own footpads by curling toenails around the bottom. Rounded edges at the top are also recommended. It is recommended that 12 to 15 cm of perch length be provided for each bird.
Temperature
A temperature range from 12-26 °C is suitable for hens during egg production. Hotter temperatures may decrease feed intake and therefore reduce egg production. Hens will increase feed intake in temperatures colder than 12 °C in order to meet energy requirements. Colder temperatures may decrease egg production, and in extreme cases freeze combs and feet. Temperatures should never go below freezing.
Nutrition
Nutrient recommendations for egg-laying chickens are illustrated below.
Laying hens should always have ready access to feed. They will eat from 100 to 120 grams of feed each day. Feed consumption is affected by temperature, age of bird, and water availability (should be constantly accessible).
Calcium
Calcium intake is very important for laying birds, because the egg shell contains a great deal of calcium. It is also important in the pre-lay period (2 weeks prior to egg production), because this is the time period in which the pullets build up their medullary bone to enable them to manufacture egg shells. A deficiency in calcium can lead to skeletal problems, reduced egg production and thin egg shells. The main calcium source for laying hens is limestone and/or oystershell in the feed.
Yolk Color
Preference for yolk color varies. Some people like the pale yellow color, while others prefer dark gold yolks. Yolk color is influenced by pigment content in the feed. Essentially, if the hens have access to greenfeed, alfalfa or corn, the yolks will be darker.
Egg Handling
Eggs should be collected regularly and nesting material kept clean in order to avoid bacterial contamination. Eggs should be allowed to cool gradually prior to refrigeration to avoid sweating (which could also lead to contamination). Eggs are normally stored for 3-4 days at temperatures of 10-13 °C before marketing. Albumen (egg white) quality will decrease as the length of storage increases.
If eggs require cleaning, they can be brushed off with sand-paper or washed. If washing, a water temperature at least 12 °C higher than the eggs themselves should be used. A sanitizer should also be used in the water (not dishwashing liquid). Water with a high iron content should not be used. Eggs should be rinsed and then completely dried prior to storage.
White Leghorn Rooster
Poor Egg Production
A problem often encountered with smaller flocks is poor egg production or sudden drops in production. There are many possible causes for low egg production, and often it is a combination of a few different factors. These factors may also influence egg size and shell quality. The items discussed below should be examined and corrected if necessary.
Feed which is poor in quality, with nutrient deficiencies and imbalances, can lead to reduced egg production. Protein, energy, and calcium are the more common culprits. An extra calcium source, such as oystershell or limestone, is usually required with diets made up of poultry supplement and grain. Also, if hens run out of feed or water, a drop in production could result. Toxins contained in the feed may also cause a drop in egg production.
Lighting programs which are not appropriate may cause problems. Low production may result if the pullets are reared with daylengths that are too long, or there is no proper increase in daylength to bring them into production. Daylengths which are too long may result from sunlight coming into barn windows. Hens may stop laying eggs if daylengths are decreased at anytime during the production period.
Sudden changes in temperature can affect egg production. Hot temperatures may cause a reduction in feed consumption, leaving the hen with insufficient nutrient intake to produce eggs. Both sudden increases and decreases in temperature will stress hens, and could adversely affect production.
Poor ventilation may cause a build-up of gases which might cause a drop in egg production. High stocking densities will also adversely affect egg production.
The age of the birds will also affect how many eggs they produce. Commercial pullets begin laying eggs at 19-20 weeks of age, and peak production occurs around 24-26 weeks. The hens in smaller flocks may not start until later. Production begins to drop slowly after the peak and by 72 weeks of age is down to 70% of the hens laying in a given day. The hens will eventually cease to produce and go into a moult (lose and replace feathers). Following moulting, hens will lay eggs for at least a second year. Egg production after a moult will be approximately 10-15% lower than the first year.
Various diseases will cause a drop in egg production. These include infectious bronchitis, mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) and avian encephalomyelitis. Parasite infections such as coccidiosis and mites can also cause a reduction in production. If a disease is suspected to be present, a veterinarian should be consulted.
Disease
Nutrient deficiencies, cannibalism, parasites and cage-layer fatigue are specific diseases affecting laying birds.
Cage-layer Fatigue (osteoporosis)
Cage-layer fatigue, as the name implies, is typically found only in hens housed in cages. Inadequate dietary calcium, phosphorus and/or vitamin D can, however, can lead to the disease in hens housed on litter floors.
High levels calcium are put into each eggshell, and this calcium is removed daily from bones. Normally the bone is replaced, but in situations of nutrient deficiency (calcium, phosphorus, and/or vitamin D), the hen is unable to do so. Poor skeletal development and lack of exercise (especially in cages) are also causative factors.
Hens with cage-layer fatigue have lost a significant amount of bone and will go out of production. Other signs of the disease include paralysis, fragile and deformed bones, fractures, and weak egg shells. In extreme cases, hens will die.
Treatment by removing hens from the cages and placing on the floor with easy access to feed and water may be effective. However, prevention of the disease is much more important.
Good nutrition during the rearing and pre-lay periods is essential for good skeletal development. Proper levels of calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D are important during the laying period. In small flocks it is common to supplement the diets with a calcium source (oystershell, limestone) that the hens can obtain free-choice.
This post continues the discussion of America’s philosophical decisions about our future as a nation – the “inner life” – with a focus on the need for conservatives to recognize the essential optimism of our ideas, and why that’s a valid and advantageous perspective. For my previous posts on optimistic conservatism, see here and here.
As America faces her great historic crossroads, one of the most important advantages conservatism brings to the table is its inherent optimism. I think even Churchill, who famously said conservatives are pessimists, would agree with me on this. Because the optimism of conservatives isn’t about what government-enforced collective projects can achieve – it’s about the inherent benefits, and the predictably superior outcomes, of liberty.
Churchill’s characterization accepted the definition of moral and political optimism that was pervasive in the West of his time: an optimism that was about great corporate enterprises for human improvement, based on universalist abstractions that ignored big chunks of human reality. Redesigning mankind, managing him through bureaucracy and technology better than he could manage himself: these were the parameters of “optimism” against which Churchill opposed the greater realism of conservatives.
But while I agree that it is inherent in conservatism to be realistic, I disagree that realism is inevitably pessimistic. The context in which I make this judgment is precisely the one that matters to the main dispute between conservatives and leftists in America today: that is, the dispute over the size and proper scope of government. In this dispute, conservatives are by far the more optimistic faction regarding the features and prospects of human life.
Conservatives don’t get up in the morning thinking, “If only the government were punishing X, subsidizing Y, and regulating Z, I might have a chance today. But since government hasn’t gotten on the stick about that, I’m screwed.” Conservatives don’t think in terms of the deck being stacked against them or others – as an inevitable condition of existence – unless the state is intervening in various activist ways to restack it. Conservatives, in short, have a whole dense, varied, and meaningful concept of “life” that doesn’t depend on institutionalized coercion of others as a bulwark against scary monsters hiding under the bed of human existence.
The basic idea of life in the mind of the conservative is an optimistic one. It is optimism that says all you need is opportunity, and if you work hard you can have as much as you, personally, want. It’s optimism that says it matters if you exercise discipline and self-control, because you can set yourself up for good things later, instead of bad things. It’s optimism that says we hold the means of happiness in our own hands; that no condition of poverty or lowly position is or must be permanent; that the successes of others are not losses for us, and indeed may often enhance our own prospects for success. It’s optimism to recognize that human existence is not a zero-sum game, in which we start out with a finite “pie” and are fated merely to spend eternity refining our rules for carving it up.
Understanding that the pie is constantly enlarged, refreshed, assembled and baked anew by the sum total of lives being lived around us – that’s optimism, and it is integral to the conservative mindset.
The progressivist left, by contrast, is profoundly pessimistic about human life, at least to the extent it is lived without the intervention of state-imposed collectivist rules. The left takes every snapshot in time as an enduring and changeless reality that will do nothing but fester if it is not addressed by centralized state action.
It sees, for example, young adults starting life with low incomes, little or no savings, no credit history, and very little in valuable property, and it is horrified that people have to live that way. In fact, this reaction is emblematic of the abstract obtuseness of the left, because very often its public voices excoriate “poverty” without realizing that most people in it are in a transient state, and are already progressing out of it without help from the “government.”
I venture to suspect that just about everyone reading this post has been a young adult before, squeezing every penny from a tiny paycheck, living on ramen noodles, doughnuts, and overripe fruit from the break room at work, and hoping the car isn’t going to break down somewhere today. Many have been young parents whose income would afford a much more comfortable lifestyle if they weren’t raising children. Some have been through divorces in which their incomes and lifestyles suffered major setbacks in mid-life. Others deliberately chose to seek professional qualifications requiring years of low income and accumulating debt. Still others lived with amazing frugality on unimpressive incomes in order to be able to start businesses of their own and work for themselves. And others still decided at some point that their calling in life involved volunteer or missionary work, perhaps going overseas to serve the world’s poorest, or joining the clergy in places where they make little money but are happy and fulfilled.
People in all these conditions could fall under the US government’s official poverty line – without any of them being in a grinding, systemic poverty that justifies either them rethinking their priorities from top to bottom, or mankind rethinking his social organization from stem to stern. The people actually in each situation see – have a vision for – their goals, their opportunities, and their prospects. They see their present state as a waypoint, not an end-state, and see their lives as their lives, and not as a social or political problem to be solved.
It is characteristic of conservative realism to understand that. Indeed, focusing on the trajectory of the typical American life over time is a good way to reveal the deepest chasm between conservatives’ realistic optimism and the deep, abstract pessimism of the left. The conservative doesn’t assume that everyone is either victimizing others or being a victim, that the deck is permanently stacked against whoever hasn’t bustled his way to the head of the line at a given point in time, or that whatever we can see before us on 21 February, 2010 (Happy Birthday, Sis!) is all there is and all there ever will be.
It’s in the conservative mindset to suppose that discovery and invention will continue, for example. So far they have never ceased, nor has man ever hit the brick wall he so regularly predicts in the earth’s ability to support an expanding human population. Every month brings a new discovery, a new understanding of our physical universe, and new recognition that something we thought before was wrong. We have never yet known enough to be correct about humankind outgrowing the earth; assuming that we now have reached that remarkable state is an attitude with no empirical justification – it can only be an article of faith.
History suggests we will adapt to new conditions with ingenuity and optimism. There is absolutely nothing in human history that would validate the pessimistic view of the left: that the glass is half empty, and now is the time to seize control of the glass, and start rationing the water and picking winners and losers by force. Similarly, in the matters of prosperity and poverty, history is on the side of optimism. Humans improve their lot, both individually and collectively, without being directed to that end by central governments. To be pessimistic about non-centrally-directed human outcomes is to ignore the evidence of our past.
When Churchill spoke about conservatism and pessimism, the lives of his era encompassed two world wars and the Great Depression, the onset of radical progressivism and the rise of ideological dictators. What that age had not yet seen was the immense difference between the economic and political power of the United States and that of all the other nations of the earth. It had not, in short, yet seen the true measure of the fulfillment of the promise of liberty. While Churchill was in many ways more aware than others of that promise, and of how it was being fulfilled through the life of England’s one-time colony, the sense of “American liberty” being no longer an experiment but a standard had yet to become widespread. Churchill was an Englishman, and the trajectory of his own life dovetailed so well with the demise of the British Empire that his philosophical thought was always oriented on, and even bounded by, that phenomenon of chronology.
The political expression of Western conservative optimism had to wait for another of the last century’s unique political leaders. I’m not sure we today understand the extent to which Ronald Reagan endowed us with that perspective. In a historical sense, I think whoever was going to do it had to come to public leadership after WWII and our recovery from the Depression: before those developments, America was still hanging on the edge of global power, and was not the center of global finance and commerce that we became after them. But Reagan was unique among even the big-name conservatives of the movement that paved his way.
William F. Buckley, Jr., for example, founded National Review explicitly to stand athwart history yelling “Stop!” Barry Goldwater rightly insisted that government was getting way too big, and that the Soviets had to be stood up to. But what Reagan made his name for was believing in the power of liberty: the inherent ability of a free people to do well – to outperform all other standards – on their own. He didn’t just want to roll back the weight of government, or decry the onset of a culture of dependency: he was after the increase in liberty because of the good increased liberty does for us, individually and collectively.
Where others issued warnings, Reagan pointed out incentives. By the time he was campaigning for president in 1980, he had gotten to where he spoke mainly of the positive consequences of the people being free. He could get lightly over the ground of criticizing big government – talking about its negative consequences – through one-liners and gentle jokes. Anyone who studies his earlier rhetoric from the 1960s, and his radio talks from the 1970s, will see that he spent a great deal of time explicating the intellectual case against big government during those periods. There was nothing shallow about his understanding of the relevant propositions. But his great power as a persuasive leader lay in his uniquely positive outlook about what the people, acting in their private, individual capacity, can accomplish. No one else of a similar stature in the last century made that his signature emphasis.
Conservatives should never lose sight of the fact that when we want liberty for the people – liberty from government intervention, government regulation, government direction, government taxation – we want it for a good purpose. We are not merely worried that entitlement dependency produces public debt and private sloth: we are concerned that it actively discourages the better consequences people create for themselves – historically, empirically, observably – when they have more liberty. The consequences of liberty are the good things people want.
We need never fear that by promoting liberty and opposing enlarged government, we are proposing a discouraging and difficult road for the people, one that’s all about withholding something good from them in the interest of an abstraction. What the left accuses us of wanting to withhold is no one’s to “give” or withhold anyway – it can only be produced and earned by individuals. The amazing truth is that if they have liberty, the people will produce and earn.
That is the optimistic perspective we have to keep in mind. Being pessimistic about government’s ability to transform mankind through coercion is simply evidence of sanity; it’s not a basis for hope or a positive outlook on the future. But we do have such a basis. The key is that our hope doesn’t lie in government, which has repeatedly proven it cannot make our lives better. It lies in the awesome power of political, religious, and economic liberty, which have proven that they can.
Has it occurred to anyone gold is fully vulnerable to market manipulations, just as with any other “money”?
Let’s start at the beginning. Humans have basic needs: water, food, clothing, shelter, etc. For now, the first on that list is not a global problem. But we have to find something we can eat, then we need something to cover us against the climate and conditions, then we need a safe place we can sleep. It’s altogether possible each of us could find a way to provide with our own hands sufficient to get by. But if any one of us becomes particularly talented at one thing or another, we are in a position to trade with others who may have a different talent. We end up both having a little bit more. What matters is the stuff we use, not how we get it.
With more people, we gain a more complex menu of things we can trade. Distribute the various tasks of producing between a larger group and we can get much greater output for the same amount of effort, which equals more stuff distributed between the same number of folks. Add transportation and we extend the size of our trade base. But when direct exchange becomes too complicated and time consuming, we all agree upon some item of exchange. At some point in human history, we adopted gold for that, but just about anything will do if we can convince everyone else to use it.
But before you take it any farther, the point is not the means of exchange, but the stuff we all want and need. We’ve been using paper money and coins which have no intrinsic value, and it has come under a lot of attention as the source of trouble. So we have endless advertisements, sometimes disguised as article, about buying gold, silver and other precious items. But you can’t eat gold. You may believe the historic value of gold, jewels and other high-value durable items will protect from total loss of your accumulations in the coming economic troubles, but the same folks behind the manipulation of the markets and debt can manipulate gold. You’ll still have it, and your immediate neighbors may be willing to accept it at the high value, but only as long as everyone has stuff to exchange. If everyone is scratching for the same small pile of necessities, your gold will lose its value. And if the manipulators suddenly dump a bunch of gold onto the same market, you really will be hurting.
It’s a trap. Gold bugs, knowingly or not, are trying to sucker you into sinking your accumulated wealth into yet one more manipulable medium of exchange. If you are going to buy something compact and high-value, how about arms and ammunition? They at least have a use.
So do tools and various types of hardware and supplies for building, farming, fixing, etc. The most valuable thing you could possess is some skill which can be used as a survival advantage when things are really tough. Writing computer code, analyzing stock trades and writing ad copy won’t be worth much in a world where most people are scratching to eat. Skills first, then the means to employ them, are more valuable than gold.
- inflation – rise of price of goods. rising prices reduce value of future interest and divident payments together with the real value of investment.
-disinflation – decrease in rate of inflation/during recession
-deflation – opposite of inflation
Inflation Measures
Retail Price Index (RPI)
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Like the RPI, the CPI measures the average change from month to month in the prices of consumer goods and services bought by consumers within the UK, but it differs from the RPI in respect of the households it represents, the range of goods and services included and the way in which the index is constructed.
The RPI is still published alongside the CPI, and continues to be used for increases in pensions, state benefits and index-linked gilts.
The CPI does not necessarily measure the actual inflation rate experienced by individuals. People whose incomes are fixed in money terms suffer most from inflation, as a given sum of money will buy less than it used to if prices have risen.
Business Cycles
-Recession
-Recovery Expansion (output growth accelerates and company profits rise while inflation and IR is low)
-Boom (economy is growing above average output. inflation rises and IR increase by regulators)
-Contraction (output growth slows, infation is high, regulators hesitate to cut IR. level of GDP falls compared to previous quarter, contracting economy)
-Recession (output growth is sluggish and company profits are weak and inflation and IR is falling. 2 successive quarters of declining GDP occurs)
Short term Interest Rates
These are set by relevant country regulators and is used by them as form of control over the economy in order the meet the govt’s inflation target which is aimed at maintainiing low in flation rates. long term interest rates are influenced by investor’s expectations of inflations in the long run
PNSCR
A vital component of GDP is govt spending on both current and capital expenditure. The difference is between govts expenditure and revenues is known as public sector net cash requirement(PSNCR) as per uk. This indicates the extent to which the public sector needs to borrow from other sectors of the economy and from overseas.
The Obama administration is dangling $4.3 BILLION in education money (Race to the Top), and California hopes to get $700 million of that – but first it must reform certain education practices – including linking teacher evaluation to student scores.
Many large school districts are refusing to sign on, including state’s second largest, the San Diego Unified, and, naturally all of the teachers unions.
The last thing in any ‘educators” mind(sic) is the word “accountability.”
The head of the California Teachers Association (340,000 members — and that number alone should make you think “Greece”) sent an e-mail to local unions urging them not to sign onto the Obama plan.
This morning’s headline over at Huffpo: “It Worked, Every Major Economic Research Firm Says Stimulus Added at Least 1.6 Million Jobs.” Right now It links to a N.Y. Times story that say 2.5 million jobs were added.
No Kidding. Of course it worked. When 800 billion dollars are spent on a wide range of projects it is going to create work. It does not matter who spends it.
When faced with the real numbers repub/cons will claim that those 2.5 million jobs are not “real jobs”. The will spout dogma that goes like this: “Government jobs are not real jobs because once the government money runs out the jobs are gone.” Put an other way impermanent jobs are not real jobs. According to this “logic”any job is not a real job, not just government jobs. But it would be especially true of nonstandard jobs. Construction workers don’t really have jobs because once the construction project is done their job is gone. In fact according to The Iowa Policy Project, a nonpartisan think tank, 26 percent of the U.S. workforce had jobs in 2005 that were in one way or another “nonstandard.” and impermanent. That includes independent contractors, temps, part-timers, and freelancers. (pdf here) According to Republican math, that totals about 36 million jobs that are not “real” jobs.
The sister repub/con dogmatic denial of reality slogan is “Government has never created one job”. This is favorite slogan of Republican politicians, Senators, Governors, and House reps, who receive a government pay check. (Just once I would like to see one of the media’s talking heads ask a repub pol if his job is a real job.) The government employs over 4 million teachers in “fake” jobs. The post office employs 650,000 people in “imaginary” government jobs. On top of those the Feds employ 2 million more people and State and local governments cut pay checks for 8.3 million more. In all the government directly provides at least 15 million jobs, that according to Republicans can not exist. Add this 15 million to the other 36 million jobs that Republicans say can not exist and we get 51 million impossible jobs!
So now you understand the some of the “thinking” behind why repub/cons do not believe government spending creates jobs. And why despite what the numbers tell us, and despite what any reputable economist says, the government can not create real jobs. And 2+2=5.
Now if we could just get the “liberal” Media to stop repeating that 2+2= 5 we just might start getting more of the jobs spending we need.
Because even though the stimulus spending worked it was not enough, Unemployment is still at 10%, and it is running out.
I was reading a short interview with economist and author Jeremy Rifkin in new scientist which focused around the thesis of his new book “The Empathic Civilisation” (amazon) and it reminded me of my own thoughts about the future. Rifkin talks of modern civilization being near it’s “endgame” and suggests we are going towards a new industrial revolution. He suggests that the communications revolution on the internet is beginning to converge with distributed renewable energy and when this happens this will bring us together, increasing empathy without further increasing entropy.
Whilst I find what is said by Rifkin very interesting and do agree that communication and computing technology, particularly centralised cloud computing facilities, are converging with renewable energy I don’t know if I completely agree with him. I have felt for some time that we (western industrial society) are pursuing a totally unsustainable economic model and that sooner or later it will collapse, possibly slowly , possibly quickly and messily. The big ideas encompassed in environmental degradation, overpopulation, economic growth (capitalism), climate change and non-renewable energy use (oil particularly) are all linked and affecting what is going on today and I do feel we are in times of change. Unfortunately for us, in my lifetime I do expect to see extremely difficult change occurring to our civilisation that will include real hardships. Westerners are used to observing others around the world suffering though natural disasters, war etc. , but we will be facing very real hardships before long. Many of us probably believe our wealth, technology and scientific knowledge will help cushion us and that may be true to some extent, but given our wealth is founded on paper and electronic transactions that often have no basis in the real world I think we are in for a shock.
I don’t like to be a doom and gloom monger, and I do see positive changes all around, but is it too little too late?
In Pittsburgh (and in Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and Boston, just to name a few), it works something like this. First, you spend the an hour or so shoveling the freshly fallen snow (if you’re lucky) or the hardened, impossibly heavy slush (if you’re not so lucky) to carve out a parking space for your car. Then, when you need to leave the spot, you take an item– perhaps a chair, but trashcans, traffic cones (I’m still puzzled as to how so many of my neighbors just have these lying around at their homes), and even ladders will suffice– to place in the spot as a way of claiming it while you are away. When you return, your spot is (generally) still there.
This logo (via wearpittsburgh) captures the sentiment nicely, and in a tasteful black and gold, might I add.
How and why, exactly, does it work this way? You don’t have to be a lawyer or a property law scholar to know that a street parking space is public property and cannot be converted into private property through the strategic placement of a lawn chair. But, legal niceties notwithstanding, the custom of recognizing “claimed” parking spots is alive in well in a number of Northeastern cities. There’s even a Wikipedia entry on the “Parking Chair.”
But there’s debate to be had. Prof. Michael Madison has a nice summation of both sides of the debate (“pro-chair” and “anti-chair“). The pro-chair argument basically tracks the argument for the traditional labor theory of value, famously articulated by John Locke. This argument says “I shoveled the spot; now it’s mine.” Adding to that argument, you could argue that without the resulting property right people wouldn’t have an incentive to shovel out parking spaces. The anti-chair argument basically says that people are going to shovel out parking spots no matter what, so there is no need to provide an incentive to do so. Prof. Madison focuses on the nasty self-help remedies (e.g., keying someone’s car or heaping snow on top of it when they “steal” a parking spot that was previously claimed) as one factor that favors the anti-chair camp.
So who’s right? Boston has attempted a compromise somewhere in the middle, which I think makes sense, at least in theory. The rule in Boston is that you can keep a spot once you shovel it out and mark it, but you only get to keep it for 48 hours. The Boston Rule agrees with the pro-chair camp’s basic point– people won’t shovel out spots (or at least as thoroughly) if you don’t give them some sort of expectation that the spot will be there when they come back. But the Boston Rule (again, at least in theory, because no one in Boston seems to be following it, according to the article) also recognizes that, unless people have to give up their spaces at some point, the city will remain filled with mounds of snow where decent parking spots used to exist. This is a great argument from an economic efficiency standpoint– and it’s probably the best argument for the anti-chair camp.
In any event, the parable of the parking chair offers a couple of important lessons. First, property rights matter. No matter how you shape them in terms of breadth and scope, property rights at some basic level are essential to getting things done, be it the creation of a parking space or the development of intellectual property. Second, custom is sometimes more powerful than law. Many of us will take a calculated risk when the risk that’s being taken is only a parking ticket. But how many of us in, in Pittsburgh or in Boston, really want to take the risk of moving some guy’s carefully-placed lawn chair?
John Stossel’s article today is fantastic, and required reading. An excerpt:
Of course income is down lately, but it’s up sharply over the long run. The chart actually understates the gains because it doesn’t count benefits from new technology. A Kindle may replace a hundred books, but such gains aren’t visible in the government’s data.
As economist Don Boudreaux points out: “the government’s data also underestimates the middle-class’s increasing prosperity, for it ignores the shrinking size of households. In 1967, the average household contained 3.14 persons; in 2006 it contained 2.57 persons. This fact means that the real income for each member of the average household grew.”
Read it. Think about all the advances in technology that improve the quality of your life, and how the cost of that technology has dropped in the last 10 years.
It’s hard to choose from all those presidentiables. You’re never sure what they have in mind. You ask yourself, “Why is she running? Why is he running? Why are they running?” It’s because he wants to help alleviate poverty (yes, he can, like I can kiss my own ass). It’s because his mother died. And he does not steal. It’s because he’s a pilot and the Philippines is ready for take-off. It’s because he is for the poor (yeah, and I’m for aliens!). It’s because of all this and all that.
All for good stuff, huh? But how are we really sure that they intend to do all those? Maybe they do. But they’re all talk. How will they do those? I mean, alleviate poverty, for instance. How? Give them jobs? Give them sari-sari stores? Suppose you gave each and every single poor person a sari-sari store so they could have their own livelihood. Then who friggin’ buys from them? Who buys from Tindahan ni Manang? Definitely not Aling Nena, because she has her own Tindahan ni Aling Nena. No, duh!
Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to discuss.
Aren’t you a little bit suspicious? You’re being given this information, on what he plans to do when he wins. But is it really just that? Or is he keeping something else from you? Surely, there’s asymmetric information!
To simplify, let me give you an example. Suppose I have $300. Berto needs $300, because he’s going to a casino. He badgers me to lend him my money. But he does not tell me he’s going to gamble. Instead, he tells me he will use the money to help his ill dog. Which, we shall say, is true. But what Berto really intends to do first is gamble. Then take his ill dog to the vet using his winnings. And then pay me back. And then still have money! Now let me introduce you to Chiz E. Chiz E needs a photocopying machine worth $300 so he could start his own photocopying service. But he is so conservative in borrowing, he only borrows when he is sure he’ll generate income! So who borrows? BERTO! And who gets the money? BERTO! Because I am such a kind-hearted soul, I lend him $300. Adverse selection!
Now, suppose Dodong came along and borrowed the $3oo first so he could start his own friggin’ business. Once he receives the $300, he passes by a casino, and thinks, hey, I could actually turn this measly $300 into a bazillion, then I’d have more! Moral hazard!
So think about it. Are these presidentiables really running for the greater good? Or is there more to them than meet(s?) the posters and songs? Are they pursuing the presidential seat because they are so sure that their personal gains are high as well? Are they thinking really of the country?
So maybe they are. But what happens when they win? Will they get blinded by money?
Will this all lead to the principal-agent problem, will our next president pursue his own interests at the risk of the Filipino people?
Mickey Kaus, who has been rooting for ObamaCare to pass, writes:
Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama’s (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. There’s something to this of course–the Framers went overboard in making it hard for the government to act, for example. But in this case there’s a simpler explanation: Barack Obama’s job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed. He didn’t fail because 55% of Americans can never be convinced of anything. Happens all the time. He just failed. He tried to sell expanding coverage as a deficit reducer. Voters didn’t believe him and worried that they would pay the bill in some unadvertised way (through Medicare reductions or future tax increases, mainly). That’s not constitutional paralysis or Web-enabled mob rule. It’s just bad salesmanship.
There really is a lot to that.
Kaus, unlike those still snared in the Obama thrall, isn’t afraid to come out and say just how horribly inept Obama has been in persuading Americans of the merits of the bill. There were the lame press conferences (the red-pill/blue-pill inanity was a classic), the redundant speeches, and the media stunts (recall ABC flacking for ObamaCare for a day at the White House?) Part of the reason he was so bad at selling his bill is that he was unwilling to recognize the real concerns of critics and hence to address them head on. He never explained how he was going to cut Medicare by $500B while not impacting care. He didn’t offer a rationale for why young, healthy twenty-and-thirty-something year-old Americans couldn’t be allowed to have low cost, high deductible insurance plans but instead should be forced to purchase really expensive, ObamaCare-approved ones.
Now if Obama did not adequately rebut the criticisms of the bill because there weren’t good answers to the critics’ charges, well, that goes beyond salesmanship to the product’s defectiveness. Couldn’t it have been that voters stubbornly resisted a large tax-and-spend plan that was going to disrupt a flawed, but basically satisfactory system for the vast majority of voters who already have insurance? It seems as though Obama wasn’t all that candid about what was in the bill and what it was going to do because at some level the bill’s proponents understood just how unpopular much of it was.
In short, it’s like saying the problem with the stimulus bill was that Obama didn’t sell it well enough. No, the problem with the stimulus bill is that it was a bust and no amount of salesmanship was going to convince the voters otherwise.
The difference with ObamaCare is that widespread revulsion, Scott Brown’s election, and belated cold feet by Democrats prevented (so far) the bad bill from being passed. And for that we can be thankful.
Paul Krugman in his latest New York Times op ed “Republicans and Medicare”, eviscerates the GOP for their stunning use of doublethink surrounding medicare cuts. He points out that during the healthcare debate Repubs fear-mongered that the Democrats were going to kill granny by cutting 500 billion from the program.* Now that they have kicked health care reform to the edge of the grave, the GOP is proposing Medicare cuts of 650 billion. And they are back to proposing killing Medicare altogether. Grannies are trembling under their shawls across America.
Will the “liberal media” dwell on this the way they did when it was dems who wanted to cut medicare? Will the press brand the GOP as Grannie killers?….. No.
*( The real number was 400 billion and the money did not come from cutting services, but from ending the government give away to insurance companies set up in the Bush era medicare D legislation.)
GOP: Transparency is a Trap !
In another masterful display of doublethink, The Repubs are calling the televised health care meeting between Obama and the Repubs a trap. It is a meeting that GOP demanded ! Jon Stewart is not pleased. Watch Jon Stewart do what he does so well. It is classic.
Doublethink is a Newspeak term defined in George Orwell’s Book, 1984
“Doublethink: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself…”
The Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce today (2/11) released their compiled sales tax data report showing Charlottesville, Albemarle and Augusta have declining retail sales while retail sales have grown in Greene Louisa and Waynesboro.
From the Chamber’s media release:
Virginia Department of Taxation sales tax data compiled from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center showed that retail sales during 2009 (January through December) compared to the full 2008 year were down in Albemarle County -9%; in Charlottesville -7.82%; in Augusta County -19.54%; while retail sales in 2009 rose in Greene County, +14.47%; Louisa County, +11.99%; and, Waynesboro, +1.11%.
Albemarle and Charlottesville, the region’s retail hub, accounted for $2.08 billion in total retail sales over the full course of 2009 – down by $190 million from 2008 and lower by $233 million (10%) from 2006 levels. (The Chamber started tracking area retail sales tax data in 2006.) In addition to the loss in retail associated jobs and private investment, the decline in retail sales equates to a 2009 local tax revenue loss of more than $1.14 million for Albemarle and a loss of more than $782,000 for Charlottesville. Meanwhile the retail sales gains in Greene County represented a 2009 local tax revenue growth of $149,000 while retail sales gains in Louisa County represented a 2009 local tax revenue increase of $231,000.
In reading the report, The Free Enterprise Forum was interested how important the retail sector is to our economy nationally. According to the the National Retail Federation:
The National Retail Federation (NRF) is the world’s largest retail trade association … represents an industry with more than 1.6 million U.S. retail establishments, more than 24 million employees – about one in five American workers – and 2008 sales of $4.6 trillion.
One has to wonder if consumer confidence is critical to our national economy and retail sales are slipping in Charlottesville and Albemarle but growing in other neighboring communities, how will this shift in local consumer spending impact our overall economic health? Can the trend be changed? Should it be?
Once again we find more questions than answers.
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Neil Williamson is the President of The Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization covering the City of Charlottesville as well as Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna and Nelson County. For more information visit the website www.freeenterpriseforum.org
Will Europe come to the rescue of one its own? The markets are still not entirely convinced. Although EU officials spurred on by France and Germany agreed that some form of support was needed the lack of detail came as a disappointment. Differences in opinion on how help should be provided meant that markets had nothing concrete to digest aside from a general agreement to provide assistance if needed.
The EU validated Greece’s plans to cut its budget deficit by 4% this year but clearly backed away from committing taxpayers’ money to the country given the potential public backlash that supporting a country widely believed to have fudged its way into the EMU, would involve. The end result was a further sell-off in the EUR although equity markets showed a bit more resilience which prevented a sharper fall in EUR/USD.
Risk currencies generally are putting in firmer performances, with the AUD helped in part by the shockingly strong employment report and higher commodity prices. The AUD and to a lesser extent the NZD are likely to continue to bask in the warm glow of these factors, with AUD/USD setting its sights on technical resistance around 0.8944. EUR/USD is the weakest link and continues to trend lower, with strong technical support seen around 1.3583.
I remember years ago, when the six year old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez, the sole survivor of a tragic attempt to reach the shores of America, supposedly claimed that the dolphins had kept him safe through the ordeal. Elian’s mother died in the journey.
The story of the dolphins touched me and I can see no reason not to believe it.
Every now and then an act of another life form performing an unselfish deed comes to light, for no reason other that the animal felt it was necessary to do so. The motivation may be love or compassion.
I have been observing our dogs and I note that they too have principles and compassion in a dog kind of way.
When I was a child we had a big black Labrador named Blackie. Friendliest mutt you ever saw and a lousy watch dog.
One day a man came over and was speaking to my mom. I don’t remember what was said. I remember the man touching my mother’s arm and Blackie turned into another life form. The deep throated growls were enough to scare the daylights out of the pope.
I wonder why animals would risk their lives for humans.
Why do animals show love and compassion?
I do not think this was taught to them, but is built into them.
Like us. We are created with the ability to discern the difference between right or wrong and love and compassion from vanity and hate.
Whether we kill that within us is up to us as individuals, is it not?
This post is aimed very specifically at a particular characterisation of how government spending has ‘splurged’ since 2007. It is sufficiently influential that it must have a profound effect upon the fiscal debate going forward – and it is superficially very appealing. It goes like this:
“Before the recession, in 2005/6, government spending was already 41% of GDP. Then, the crisis hit. The Labour government lost all common sense and resurrected Keynesianism. This meant a spending splurge – as their own figures show (tables B13 and B14), spending leapt from 43% to 48 or 49% over the crisis. Cash spending went up from £627bn to £706bn in two years. If that ain’t a splurge, what is? So, the government used the cover of a crisis to relaunch defunct economic policies and takeover the economy, to the detriment of our long term prosperity. “
If you attended as many events with right-leaning speakers as I do, you would have to listen to this sort of narrative a lot. And it is difficult to refute. Cash spending has risen. The government spend is a higher ratio of GDP. It is true.
But at the same time it uses a methodology that is incredibly misleading, in terms of the stimulative effect presumed, and the extent to which fresh government spending happened. Bear in mind several facts:
Businesses and households plan forwards. And they do so in terms of nominal cash. When a large business makes investment decisions, it shoves out many spreadsheets, all of which try to anticipate how much cash spending there will be for its products and savings. Similarly, you and I, when planning whether to, say, buy a car or house or holiday, make estimations of our future cash income, and what it can buy. We may compare it to our assets and our debts – so if our house price is falling, and our mortgage debt steady, we may pull in our horns. So too for businesses.
But what we do not do is make our plans based on what proportion of GDP our spending is. If GDP expectations fall massively from £1.5trn to £1.2trn, , so that my £1500 holiday has leapt from being 1 billionth of GDP to 1.25 billionths, I do not think I am spending more.
More to the point, if a business is expecting to get paid £150 million for a piece of work, and GDP expectations fall as above, the business does not go around thinking “Great! I was going to be paid one ten-thousandth of GDP for this, now I will get 1.25 ten-thousandths of GDP! Party ON!
More to the point again: if one set of people – say, 10,000 teachers – were expecting to be paid £300m, and were basing their consumption decisions around that, the fall in GDP would not make them think they were getting more money, just because it represented a bigger chunk of GDP.
People’s current expectations of what their future incomes will be – the sum total being the economy’s expectations of forward Nominal GDP – play a dominating role in determining CURRENT spending. About a million hat-tips: Scott Sumner. It is funny how easily the Right recognises this fact when trying to use Ricardian equivalence to disprove the ability of government to achieve anything with changes in its stance.
In 2007, the government was forecasting spending in 2010-11 of £678bn. Table B11. So the latest forecast spend is £30bn higher. About £12bn is in higher debt interest; about £15bn in tax credits and social security. There has been no remarkable increase in actual public works. The ‘stimulus’ for what it is worth was on the revenue side: failing to tax spending as much as before, for 13 months.
So putting these all together, what do we get?
The boost in spending/GDP almost entirely reflects future GDP falling. This does not stimulate ANYONE! In particular, none of the sudden increase in that ratio would have fed into some businesses and people revising upwards their previous expectations of income derived from the government – or indirectly from it.
The cash increase that DID happen was hardly stimulatory. Out of work people got more benefits than expected, and our creditors got paid interest.
Attempting NOT to do these spending increases would have immediately lowered expectations of future GDP, which as they had stood would have anticipated the increase from 2007-8 of £589bn to £678bn in 2010-11 in their CURRENT plans. (This ~4.8% p.a increase was originally expected to match the rise in NGDP, incidentally)
Since the financial sector was ****ed, the lower expectations of government-derived income would not have been substituted with expectations of other incomes derived from private sources
As a result, businesses and households that were expecting incomes of a certain size (whether directly or indirectly from the government) would have had to drastically lowered their expectations of future NGDP, which would have lowered their current nominal spending plans, which would have lowered current GDP.
This is blindingly obvious: if the government had (madly) targeted the level of spending as a proportion of GDP during a nominal GDP slump, then all it would have done is made GDP slump even more. Even if it had done this at the same time as cutting taxes, because tax cuts would have gone towards groups with a lower marginal propensity to consume, particularly given the collapsing asset markets, than the recipients of government benefits and incomes.
Don’t be fooled by ratios. Yes, we need to get spending down as a ratio of GDP. yes, Brown spent too much, relying on mirage revenues. But what happened over 2007-10 is not the splurge, and using spending as a ratio of GDP is, for such situations, a lousy metric for understanding macroeconomic relationships.
Women who seek to be equals with men lack ambition.
Timothy Leary got that right. As the flurries of Valentine’s Day posts accumulate around the blogosphere like the snow in Washington, DC, and you find yourself knee-deep in bloviation on the lost art of romance, remembering that “we ain’t nothing but mammals” (unlike the subjects of the upcoming Vanlentine’s Day documentary Tyrannosaurus Sex) might ease some of that existential pain. Or it might not.
Ironically enough, the sexual paradigm I grew up with has already begun to reverse itself. The conventional image of Valentine’s Day used to be that single women would drown their sorrows of bachelorettehood in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s while their male counterparts haplessly scoured every available avenue for a potential mate who was just as forlornly unattached as they were. This whole scheme seemed to work in accordance with genetic programming and evolutionary sense; in all other mammalian communities, the females have their pick of the male litter. Males competed amongst one another to be chosen by the females, and the alpha attempts to quash all potential usurpers to his genetic throne, the females’ choices thereby effecting sexual selection. Of course, for most of the history of Western civilization, this model worked in reverse; females were forced to compete for the males’ favor and attention, the men getting their choice of mate. Feminism, then, seemed to bring the dynamic back to the equilibrium that had existed in nature, with women taking their pick of the male pack. No more.
Sexual equality and demographic shifts have begun to undermine the market for sexual partners for women amongst college-educated women in America, given that such women are now competing on relatively more levels against relatively more women.
Women have represented about 57 percent of enrollments at American colleges since at least 2000.
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Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories.
…
Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.
Since college enrollments have shifted away from male domination, if a college education translates to greater economic participation and general desirability in females, society is poised to revert back to a sexual dynamic requiring that females compete for the relatively less available male partners. For some, this shift means that the male counterparts may correspondingly revert to a less feminist approach to winning females’ favor.
Welcome to the New Paleolithic, where tens of thousands of years of human mating practices have swirled into oblivion like shampoo down the shower drain and Cro-Magnons once again drag women by the hair into their caves—and the women love every minute of it. Louts who might as well be clad in bearskins and wielding spears trample over every nicety developed over millennia to mark out a ritual of courtship as a prelude to sex: Not just marriage (that went years ago with the sexual revolution and the mass-marketing of the birth-control pill) or formal dating (the hookup culture finished that)—but amorous preliminaries and other civilities once regarded as elementary, at least among the college-educated classes.
When the supply and demand are so skewed, the synthesis of feminism and sexual selection suggests that more objectively favorable characteristics will be demanded of women, while available males may abuse their relatively increased market power by simply advertising their genetics rather than merit. Such females will be forced to choose between forgoing lifelong partners in favor of a career or “settling” for males that do not meet the lofty ideals that the historical standards of chivalry may have instilled.
Feminism gave women this sense of entitlement that we deserve someone who’s perfect. And then we meet the so-called perfect guy and he’s out of our league and has no interest in us and we tell our girlfriends, ‘He must be secretly gay’ when in fact he’s just really not that into us.
Of course, there is still the possibility that the market might simply take a bit more time and correct itself once again due to some unforeseeable turn in our evolutionary path. We are just mammals, after all.
The federal government is loosening its restrictions on importing pork rinds from Brazil. Rudolph Foods, Inc., an Ohio company, owns a factory in Brazil, and stands to benefit from the ruling.
Competitors are up in arms. Citing exotic illnesses like foot-and-mouth disease, one competitor told The Wall Street Journal, “It just takes one pig” that is infected to spread a disease… “The risk is low, but the consequences are really high.”
If that is his strongest argument, then the case against liberalization is as weak as it gets. Instead of using the power of government to hobble its rivals, this company should go out and improve its product. Make its pork rind recipe even tastier. And cheaper. Use the import liberalization to its own advantage if possible.
1. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16).
2. In Luke 6:38, Jesus issued this command, “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with what measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”
3. So, yes, God not only intends, but demands that we give unto others who have need.
4. Thessalonians 4:11 says, “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you.”
5. The Bible teaches us to provide for those in our own families who are incapable of providing for themselves.
6. The Bible teaches that the church is to provide for those in its own field of ministry who cannot provide for themselves, and who have no family to provide for them.
Hey, Hey Paula and Hi Randy, How much did your presently dying Mega-Church provide financial aid for your congregation? There are many people who are poor and less fortunate. Did you help, did you help–did ya…?
However! Is Government established as God’s own agent to carry out His assigned duties of executing justice among the people or executing the people? Wars and Control–Control and Control!
Finally! Government governs by adding more power to control people and their property. All forms of Government must adhere to its Biblically defined role. If it is not confined, people will suffer persecution and abuse at its hands. This abuse and persecution is in the past, in the present and in the Future.
So, rise-up and allow the New World Revolution to…
And let us understand and protect: Respect and Understanding and Peace and Love…Amen
According to today’s Observer, the University of Notre Dame student government has decided the dissolution of the Department of Economics and Policy Studies is one of the “issues of most pressing concern” to students, and communicated just that to a committee of the Board of Trustees.
Here are excerpts from the article:
Students are concerned by College of Arts and Letters Dean John McGreevy’s lack of transparency as he moves to dissolve the Department of Economics and Policy Studies, student government chief of staff Ryan Brellenthin said.
“The decisions were made without student input and the process was not revealed to the student body,” Brellenthin said.
“It was almost as if they were hoping students weren’t paying attention,” he said.
Students are concerned that closing the department will narrow the economics education at Notre Dame, Brellenthin said. They are also concerned that this decision sets a precedent that students will be excluded from future academic decisions.
“Very little attention has been focused on the 400 students who are economics majors,” Brellenthin said. “No efforts have been made to engage student opinion on the topic.”
Schmidt said he is an economics major, but he first heard about the plans to dissolve the department from The Observer.
“We weren’t told about it,” Schmidt said.
The dissolution of Economics and Policy Studies will be voted on at the next meeting of the Academic Council, Brellenthin, who is one of the four students who serve on the academic council, said. “We can make statements against the dissolution, and we certainly will, but it has been on the agenda to dissolve before we could put it on the agenda to discuss,” he said.
Brellenthin said faculty members are also concerned about the dissolution of the department.
“They are asking what will happen if professors who teach something that isn’t the mainstream theory are pushed out,” he said.
“The fear is that the academic council is just going to be a rubber stamp” on McGreevy’s decision to dissolve the department, Schmidt said.
One trustee expressed her surprise after Weber ranked the dissolution of the department as the second most critical issue for students, but the issue is about students’ wanting to be respected, according to Brellenthin.
Brellenthin cited reports that McGreevy described the dissolution of the department as “too sensitive an issue for debate.”
“We respect the administration and the professors as top-tier educators, but we want to be respected as top-tier students,” Brellenthin said.
The Stern Review, as you may have gathered, is a highly influential document on the economics of climate change. It came out in 2006 and was a real game changer, showing that the cost of action to prevent climate change would be less harmful to the economy than the consequences of inaction. It’s a complicated and ethically compromised piece of economics, but it made Lord Stern a key figure in the climate debate.
More recently, Stern has turned his attention to the need for a global deal on climate change, and A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How we can save the world and create prosperity is his attempt at outlining the kind of deal we need. I should start by pointing out that post Copenhagen, the book needs reviewing. It was released this year, but it would be a much better book if the publishers had delayed the paperback edition by a few weeks and brought it up to date. It was written in autumn 2008, and a lot has changed. It was written before Obama was elected, and talks non-specifically about ‘America’s new president’, for example. No doubt a second edition will emerge sooner or later, and if you’re thinking of reading this book I’d hold on for a bit.
For me, the subtitle was the main reason I wanted to read this. Stern is a cheerleader for economic growth, and sees climate change as an opportunity for more of it. “I offer a blueprint of how to build a safer planet” he writes, “or how to manage climate change while creating a new era of growth and prosperity.” Others maintain that this is a fantasy and that growth is impossible in the face of climate change. It’s an important debate – in fact it may be the key debate in the whole climate change problem.
So what’s the blueprint? Well, it’s based on the idea that climate change is a market failure, “the biggest market failure the world has ever seen” in fact. The damage that CO2 causes isn’t factored into the price of emitting it. Price it in through carbon trading, and the market will correct itself, although there’s more to do as well. Halting deforestation is a priority, along with every possible energy efficiency, an upscaling of renewable energy, and serious investment in promising technology, including carbon capture and storage. All of this should work together to keep atmospheric concentrations below 500ppm, which is Stern’s baseline.
There’s a lot of detail here about how individuals and companies would fit into the picture, and even more on the structure of a global deal – who gives what to whom, and how. It’s a maze, quite frankly. I admire Stern for tackling it and getting his head around it. I also understand much more clearly why world leaders didn’t secure a deal at Copenhagen. The whole thing is fiendishly complicated and full of pitfalls, potential inequities, or opportunities for gaming the system. It’s obvious that a global climate deal is possible, but getting there is going to require a whole new approach to diplomacy.
There’s no doubt that Stern has thought this all out very carefully. However, I have a couple of problems with his starting assumptions. After all his careful reasoning, the growth question is still the elephant in the room. “It is neither economically necessary nor ethically responsible to stop or drastically slow growth to manage climate change” he asserts, because “without strong growth it will be impossible for the poor people to lift themselves out of poverty.” I don’t doubt Stern’s commitment to the poor. He co-authored the Commission for Africa report and knows his stuff, but growth is not the best way to solve poverty. As nef have proved, growth is so unequally shared that if you wanted to lift everyone living on less than $2 a day to just $3 a day, you would need 15 planets worth of resources to do it.
The failure here is to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary growth. I agree that African economies need to grow, but why should American or European economies continue to grow? Stern even recognises that growth can’t go on forever: “a picture of indefinite expansion is an implausible story of the future” he writes, but he doesn’t go on to say when ‘enough’ would be. If everyone lived like Americans, we’d need five planets. So when is enough? Six planets, seven? It’s ridiculous to see growth in Africa growth in the West as equally good. A dollar of growth in a poor country is worth far more than growth in a rich country.
What’s worse is that Stern uses this very logic to justify ‘discounting’ the needs of future generations. We know that a unit of extra wealth means less to a richer person than to a poorer person. We also know, according to Stern’s growth assumptions, that growth will continue and future generations will therefore be richer than we are. That means that a unit of growth will mean more to us than to them. Conveniently, this means we can put our needs first. It’s economically logical, and neatly circumvents the golden rule of sustainability that requires us to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” It also shows why you should never put an economist in charge of anything that involves real people.
Interestingly, Stern hints at another way in passing. “Short of creating an immediate, major and prolonged world economic decline, it is impossible to big and sustained reductions in emissions starting immediately” he says, acknowledging that de-growth is the only immediate solution to climate change while dismissing it at the same time.
Lord Stern is obviously a highly intelligent and influential man. What if he were to able to entertain that heresy for a bit, to explore the idea that ending growth might actually be the best way to fix the climate? He could have written a book detailing how to ‘ration’ growth to countries that need it most, how to slow an economy without destabilising it, how to maintain employment, how to create new money for mortgages and pensions without the growth imperative of interest. In a world of peak oil, climate change and population growth, the notion that the future must inevitably be richer than the present strikes me as a rather rash assumption. Because of it, the message of A Blueprint for a Safer Planet is music to the ears of politicians and businessmen alike, but it is ultimately built on sand.
Neil Williamson is the President of The Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization covering the City of Charlottesville as well as Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna and Nelson County. For more information visit the website www.freeenterpriseforum.org
The Stern Review, as you may have gathered, is a highly influential document on the economics of climate change. It came out in 2006 and was a real game changer, showing that the cost of action to prevent climate change would be less harmful to the economy than the consequences of inaction. It’s a complicated and ethically compromised piece of economics, but it made Lord Stern a key figure in the climate debate.