I'm reading a book entitled ONE NATION UNDER DEBT: Hamilton, Jefferson, and What We Owe, by Robert E. Wright, Ph.D.
A paragraph on p. 2 explains his research:
"Why do women in Japan live 84.41 years on average, while those in Mozambique average only 31.63 years? Why do 72.8 percent of the people in Mali live on less than $1 per day while almost nobody in OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries has to get by on so little? Why is the average annual income of people in Luxembourg $66,463.78 while that of Burundi is $84.29? 'The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these,' Nobel laureate Robert Lucas once wrote, 'are simply staggering ... Once one starts to think about them,' he added, 'it is hard to think of anything else.'"
Wright's thesis is already presented just after the previous question: "...what really matters when it comes to economic prosperity is good governance, trade, and incentives. Adam Smith succinctly stated the Enlightenment view in his 1755 Lectures on Jurisprudence,
'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical'" (2-3).
I have new glasses, and with these has come eye strain. I'm not sure if my eyes were misdiagnosed, or if I am just getting used to the new glasses. So I will have to keep this brief.
But Mr. Wright (who teaches financial history at NYU and is a curator of the Museum of American Finance) argues that culture (Protestant or not), doesn't matter, education doesn't matter, good genes (Caucasian or Asian doesn't matter), natural resources don't matter, and even stability isn't such great shakes (Cuba is quite stable, but is dirt poor, whereas Japan has few Protestants but is rich).
Away from the Romantic philosophers of wealth such as Marx, Wright believes that Enlightenment Smith had the answers. At any rate, I'm only on p. 3.
I have some tests to grade, then I hope to read another page of this 350-page volume, or get one of the neighbors to read it to me, while I close my eyes and lay cucumber slices on the half-burnt orbs.
59 comments:
Happy Easter to all.
Christus resurrexit!
Vere resurrexit!
Happy Easter to you, too, Buster!
Charlie Brown Easter, with JDL "Pasquale Florida" and Kirby O
jeez loo-eaze
Hamilton and Jefferson.
Interesting men, with good ideas.
Is everything they believed and advocated relevant to today's world?
Well, something happened.
The 19th and 20th Centuries happened. The Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, mass media and mass propaganda happened. African Americans were freed. Women got the vote. Blitzkrieg and the atom bomb happened.
We don't live in the world of the 1770's. And a good thing, too.
On the theoretical side, much of what the Founding Fathers advocated and believed is still relevant today. How much, Kirby, do you think it would cost today in tolls, if all our roads were privately owned and maintained? How much would water cost if our dams and distribution systems were privately owned? Without police and county sheriffs, who would keep order (and who would pay them to do it)? Who would protect you from invading foreigners if you had no army, and how would you pay for that?
In their isolated and remote condition of the 1770's, Americans probably felt they were on a separate planet. An illimitable expanse yawned westward, and it was only inhabited by "savages." Roads were unpaved, there was little law, and men had to be self-reliant, or willing to pull up stakes and try other options. The world lay before them, uncharted and unclaimed.
Fast-forward 250 years. How is our world similar to theirs? What would you be willing to relinquish in the interests of a government of the kind we started with in the original 13 colonies?
My guess is that you'd be begging to pay taxes to have all the things you now enjoy. Or maybe not. You might be one of those who'd prefer to live in a world like that portrayed in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Societal chaos, every man for himself. Uncontrolled "freedom"--permanent, all-encompassing crime. Not a very pretty picture.
Frontier justice. Have you taken your son out to the firing range, lately, Kirby?
Curtis, check out Hamilton more thoroughly. He argues for national taxation, and to get this, he also wants us to assume a national debt. He does this in order to finance the American Revolution (costly). He's very interested in things like national roads, and he wants things like national industrialization. He argues for setting up Paterson, NJ (WCW's turf) along the lines of an industrial center.
Hamilton had grown up in the West Indies where the wealthy sugar plantation owners got all their plates, clothes, and other fineries from industrial centers, which in a strong sense sent their capital to other areas.
Hamilton argued that America had to establish its own native industries and not outsource.
Hamiltonian thinking is behind the rise of Japan and South Korea. Both countries consciously studied America in the aftermath of WWII and realized that it was Hamilton that made this country function. His thinking is very much still alive today, and still very relevant.
Marxism is killing the countries that have adopted his thought. Marx's thought just doesn't work out in praxis.
Well, at least it doesn't work for humans. It does work for hives of ants and bees who don't really have individual thinking, but who have one matriarchal tyrant who does all the thinking for the rest.
For better or worse, humans are not hive animals.
We perhaps could be if we were replaced by robots. the left would like us to do everything for the hive. But we're individualists, and are thus more like Oscar Wilde's characters than we are like the hive creatures that Marx imagined for us, and which the left imagines for us.
Hamilton was rejected by Pound and Williams in favor of the Jeffersonians. Obviously, the other altnerative (Hamilton) is far better.
Blade Runner was about a future world in which replicants who had been made for work in menial or dangerous jobs on outer ring planets had come illegal back to earth to find work and pleasure.
I have no idea why you think that would appeal to a Lutheran surrealist.
First, I believe in laws.
Secondly, I believe in souls.
The entire world of the Blade Runner film made me sick at every level.
the basic problems of the film had to do with illegal aliens, and how to track them down and destroy them.
Some, of course, were sympathetic to the aliens' plight.
I hate the whole idea of androids.
Kirby, how do you see yourself--as a sort of smart tea-partier?
Why, if someone rejects unbridled capitalist enterprise, must they be "Marxists"? This is a dumb deduction.
Keynesian capitalism acknowledged the power of entrepreneurial incentive, but postulated the need for guidance when entities became too large and too powerful. It acknowledges that there will be booms and busts, and proposes mitigations to even these bumps out.
Kirb, you're so defensive and obsessed about socialist theory, that you're almost blind to other views of reality. Your shrill indignation is beginning to seem a little peculiar.
I think you need to read some literature and take a vacation.
You seem in Silliman's terms to be a weird kind of Quietist, Curtis.
The tanks are rolling into the city and your job is to pacify the occupied. I dislike this.
I refuse to suck literature as if it's some kind of pacifier.
Of course literature implies an economic and political dimension. Even the way a person says hello has an economic and a political as well as a religious dimension.
Be realistic, be impossible.
Impossible?
I thought I was.
You too.
Touché!
Kirb:
To get back--
The title of your post was "What We Owe"--which I presume was meant to refer to how much we should expect to pay in taxes.
The notion of "owing" something to the government is one you probably feel uncomfortable with. Hardly anyone sees a direct relationship between what they pay to authorized recipients of our non-voluntary tithing, and what we may have wanted our government to do for us at some point in the past. There's a clear disconnect between what our representatives and elected officials do, and how any one of us thinks about public policy and the law. Most of what we live under, we've inherited from previous generations of lawmakers. That disconnect has become more pronounced over time, to the extent that lobbyists and special interest groups have more influence over policymakers than the people they supposedly represent.
But the direction our representatives are being pulled these days could hardly be said to be in way of the benefit of the people. Senators and Representatives are mostly thinking about the needs of business and minority voting blocs these days, because those are the forces that exert the most pressure on them. And this is more true today than at any other time in our history.
What do I "owe" to the Federal Government? How much have I paid in taxes in my life, and what have I gotten back? Of every dollar I've paid, how much has gone to buy weapons, pay welfare benefits, build roads and bridges, or pay interest on debt held by the Chinese or Saudis? Have I gotten my money's worth? Have you?
Kirby believes that that which is to his left is all Marxist...
This is the fundamental flaw in Kirby's thinking that I've been trying to bring into the light of reason for years.
He actually pretends to believe this.
I don't think he really, deepdown, does, but it makes for more active comments-boxes... That's what I tell myself when I need a sunshine ray of hope:-)
But in certain parts of his social circle, Kirby is exposed to the extreme left.
He then hastily-generalizes this to include all those in gvmt who are to his left.
It's obviously fallacious..and we all know that he's smart enough to see the inherent wrongness/fallacy of his approach...yet he still hangs onto it.
That's the frustrating part.
Sure, he's not as derpy as a birther (Birth Certificate released, over/under on the birthers still claiming a conspiracy?), but he expresses the same basic conclusion: "communist!"
This sort of 'if you're not Republican, you're a Commie" thinking is usually relegated to the same minds that place Obama as a Kenyan-born Muslim.
Why it exists in the mind of someone as smart and reasonablewhenhewantstobe as Kirby without causing shrieking cognitive dissonance is beyond me...
Actually, I teach at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD now. I mention it only because it is an ELCA member and your blog is entitled Lutheran Surrealism.
'twould be near impossible to speak of my adventure
and i mean it as no disgruntlement or doubt it is just that time is of the essence or something like that and i've been strapped for time and that's the way it goes and i've barely got a chance to read any of the witty comments of you blokes so cog blog cognitively contained in the rain that falls upon the plain
which when mixed with caca makes for good soil
but the topics are good the eagleton piece elicted some interesting spiels of thought some spools of thread some foolish blather all the same all great for the focus on the issues
marx knew he was a clown
people probabaly took him way to seriously
even he'd be amazed
hamilton and jefferson may well be aghast at having to witness the wreck we've made of a good idea
the containment of culture in the form of electronic and visual distraction the constant feeding of the greed belly the more more more of the near ecstatic paroxysm of faith in coapitaloaismo
ouch
you guys argue finely no doubt
when i attain to computer status when i don't have to sneek into rooms with computers and spark a few words when i have computer access i can call private whihc may be never i will return to the banter of this stream the burbling blithe blubbering bifurcative verbiage of this almost very important blog
never forget that kirby is playing us all along in his mad efort to establish lutheran surrealism as a workable social form
the fact that it is a complete failure thus far does not seem to deter him in the least
and the rest of us are being carried along in a flurry of surrealistic madness almost as if we cannot think rationally anymore but only in distorted dreamlike images
well we somehow knew it would come to this
the guitars are out of tune
and nobody seems to mind anymore
au revoir'!
jh
the stone which the builders rejected
alleluia
Hamilton approved of the old British banks, the estates, and the Inns of Courts. Jefferson didn't. Now, maybe you can infer something from that (As Pound did).
Neither of them was a biblethumper.
To J: Both Jefferson and Hamilton thumped one another with the Bible from time to time. Hamilton's last act (firing into the air over Burr) was a Christian act. He said as much as that it was turning the other cheek. He should have been a Lutheran and remembered the Two Kingdoms' motto. Do unto others as you are afraid they will do unto you.
When did the law on dueling appear? (It's no longer legal, although J periodically eggs us on to meet him in a pugilistical or shooting match, it's never clear.)
This blog is as close as I hope to ever get to J.
To Brett: I do suspect that communism is behind all Democratic thinking. It's a kind of slope, at times steeper than others.
To Robert Wright: welcome to our madhouse. What do you teach at Augustana? My grandmother went there in about 1925. Oh wait, you're at Sioux Falls. She was at the one over in Moline.
To JH -- yes, LS is the stone that was rejected upon which the entire future will be built once Christ returns to claim us as his own.
Maybe.
We can always dream, right?
To Curtis: your addition on a pragmatic scheme doesn't add up, because how can we know? Government, like family, are gifts from God. Kennedy said to ask not what the country can do for us, but what we can do our country.
That's the last time a Democrat made sense.
Robert e. Wright is an economic historian (remember we said we needed one of those -- ask and ye shall receive), and he has several books, including one called Fubarnomics. OMG, we will have to up the level of economic discourse around here. We shall have to wonder about his tendency, and see if he joins JADL and I in our endless attempts to unsettle the leftists about, or whether he is yet one more in the tag team that attempts to nail JADL and I once and for all.
Let's start by asking him to explain the parable of the talents as he sees it. I say this means pure capitalism, baby.
Oh, this is the author of the book I'm reading: Robert E. Wright. Weird! He's actually the author of the book on Hamilton!!!!!!
I didn't put that together at first.
Good gravy, he's Lutheran, although he belongs to the other synod.
Should I have said the ENEMY synod? I probably shouldn't have, but it's what came first to mind. First thought, best thought? I decided to err on the side of politesse, an unusual diplomatic nicety on my part! But I wonder. Still. Has that synod gone over the boundary that separates church from brothel?
Kirby
Should I have said the ENEMY synod?
No, because doing so would show a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the ELCA and LCMS as sister denominations in tradition, and one in the unity of the Christian Church. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism," remember? Then there's that part
I probably shouldn't have, but it's what came first to mind.
I'm glad you thought it through. Might I point out that the estimable Dr. Wright is a guest here, and that you have obligations as host. How exactly do you reconcile your duties as host with framing your guest as an enemy?
First thought, best thought?
Not this time.
I decided to err on the side of politesse, an unusual diplomatic nicety on my part!
Actually, you erred on the side of hospitality. Too bad that instinct didn't stand up.
But I wonder. Still. Has that synod gone over the boundary that separates church from brothel?
Of course not. And your behavior here notwithstanding, the LCMS has not crossed the line between conviction and idiocy, either.
He's teaching at a Lutheran college but this doesn't mean he's Lutheran. Their employment application doesn't require any adherence to Lutheranism of any stripe. In fact, they are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of religious orientation, so it's hard to understand if there are any Lutherans there at all. At most of the ELCA colleges there is very little Lutheran presence. At Muhlenberg, you are more like to get a Wiccan prof than a Lutheran. At Wagner, there are still some crosses around, but I don't think anybody knows what they're there for. You don't have to take any core religion classes. There are some Missouri Synod schools where there is still a core of Lutheran classes, and where they make sure you're Missouri Synod before you're hired.
I'm fine with pluralism, and think it's better in the public sphere. But we can't assume that Robert E. Wright is a Lutheran. He could be an atheist, or an Episcopalian (some would say that it's hard to differentiate, but then, don't we just hate that kind of incivility and divisiveness?). I know I do.
I really am meaning to get further in his book. I will probably read at least one more sentence this evening. I can hardly wait in fact, but have to go and vacuum the car (speaking of hospitality) since my Finnish brother in law and his Irish wife are due in tomorrow at Newark, and I don't want to offend them with my slovenly attitude toward crumbs and paper products stacked toward the ceiling.
I hope Robert E. Wright will give forth more comments here as to his tendencies and rationale for his book. It's a very good book, so far. I'm hoping to get at least one more sentence in this evening!
2:48: Code Duello did not lack for honor, however sanguine the results might have been at times. Ham. accepted the terms of the duel with Burr. That meant like potentially being shot.
The story that Ham. shot high on purpose--probably bogus (bogus as like Kirby's claim to be a surrealist.) Burr had good cause to blow the Tory POS away--Ham. had talked trash about the Jeffersonians and southerners for years, for one (and Ham. hardly some pious christian either...probably more of a skeptic than TJ).
I was just watching Greta von Susteren and she had on a woman from the College Republicans at the U. of Iowa. They had sent out an email called Coming Out Week for Conservatives, and had received a note from a woman in Sociology named Ellen ? Lewis, was I think her name. She wrote back simply, "F+_$% you, Republicans."
This struck me as uncivil, but there is an asymmetry in our relations in which the left is permitted to say things like that, I guess. No one blinks.
Still, it just isn't matey.
How uncivil did our Founding Fathers get toward one another when issues of financial and religious difference split them and divided their viewpoints irrevocably?
I think the beginnings of the country were sound when the Protestants thought that consciences were bound to differ. Now, there's a new sense that everybody should absolutely agree with the party line. I find it frightening, and repellent.
Maybe that's just me.
Wright has his own Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Wright
He's a deist, it says. And he's crazy about Hamilton.
I read the second chapter this evening. He claims that Holland had a huge public debt for its war against Spain. It's hard to explain in a sentence but most countries just stole from their citizens whereas the Dutch honored their borrowing, and those who borrowed became engrossed in defending Holland, a symbiotic and functional relationship. I think he's going to claim we were next up to borrow the Dutch system.
Debt and deficit spending, and big govt. eh? Plus a lover of judiciary.
So Hamilton was sort of like Keynes--ie, liberal-statist. Rah-thurr
Wright makes the claim at the end of the chapter that Hamilton is NOT like Smith, and that there is a real difference between the two. I'm not there yet, but peeked ahead to see the last paragraph. I'm about two-thirds of the way through the second chapter.
I'm no Hamiltonian scholar, but I don't think it makes sense to equate Hamilton with Keynes. Keynes' basically took the position that government spending, and only government spending, could maintain economic stability in a free market economy. He was pushing off of a sequence of boom/bust business cycles of increasing severity, punctuated by the Great Depression.
The essential complication here is that government revenues are tied to the business cycle, and so revenues fall during depressions/recessions, at exactly the time when government spending needs to increase. So public debt is not a goal of Keynesian economics, but rather a means. My take on Keynes and public debt is that he took the long view —it is important that the government's income and expenditures be in reasonable balance in the long run, but that taking on debt during a depression/recession and then working it off during the subsequent boom is proper policy.
As history developed, WWII hit while the world economy was still digging out of the Great Depression. There are a lot of ways to analyze the economic impact on the US of WWII, but I'll take the position that the the government incurred a large debt to fight the war, and that this debt was over and above the business cycle debt that Keynes envisioned. The economic policy of the US during the Truman and Eisenhower years included very high tax rates, especially on the wealthiest. These high rates represented a de facto surcharge to pay down the war debt, and one can understand Kennedy's subsequent tax reduction as a reflection of the retirement of war debt. The debt/gdp ratio had fallen from a war-time high of 122% in 1946 to 54% in 1961, which is roughly comparable to the 1940 debt/gdp ratio of 50%.
I'd argue that the US continued followed a Keynesian model until the Ford administration, but has been following non-Keynesian policies to its disadvantage since, with the notable exceptions of the Clinton and Obama Administrations. [I'll note to those keeping score at home, that I'm, contrary to partisan expectations, putting Eisenhower, Nixon in the "good" camp of Keynesians, while I'm putting Carter in the "bad" camp of non-Keynesians. Reagan is something of a special case—I'd argue that he was an intuitive Keynesian, but he was misguided in the actual execution, and this created substantial policy problems for his successors.]
Hamilton did not have Keynes' experience of business cycles. His thinking was driven by the Revolutionary War debt, and his desire to make infrastructure improvements (i.e., road and canals) that would facilitate national economic growth. Renouncing the war debt would have put the government in the position of a bankrupt person seeking a mortgage. Accepting the war debt made further borrowing possible, and with it the economic expansion that Hamilton envisioned.
But while Hamilton's view of the government as an economic agent was a bit of a proto-Keynesian feel to it, it's really quite different at the core. Hamilton was viewing government as if it were a business, and an economic agent in a market with other economic agents. Keynes' view was quite different. To him, the government wasn't just a player, it is the market maker, and so has a unique role as steward of the economy.
Oh, and evidently Kirby doesn't know about the hair trigger on Hamilton's pistol. It's probably not knowable whether nor he used it, but the actual events suggest that he did, to his disadvantage.
I've been googling Hamiltonian Economics, and its apparently the basis of the American System of Economics. Here's more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)
This policy built America into a superpower. Since the 1940s when Roosevelt got in the economics has been shifting toward government control of the markets, or government manipulation of the markets, apparently, following Stu's model of endless meddling.
I haven't got far into Wright's book, yet. Some claim that the post-Mao Chinese adopted Hamilton's model which is now making them into the world's superpower, while we fall apart.
I don't know. It's worth looking at further. I'm going to try and finish Wright's book in the next month or so.
A lot of people think that when the government dumps more money on a depression to kickstart the economy (Keynes) it just causes the business cycle to wait out the problem even longer. Amity Shlae argued that in her book on the Great Depression, and I assume that's what WRight is going to argue, too. But I'm not sure how Hamilton fits into the scheme.
Kirby,
've been googling Hamiltonian Economics, and its apparently the basis of the American System of Economics. Here's more:
This policy built America into a superpower.
Let me express profound skepticism here. America was not a superpower prior to the second world war. Great Britain, sure. France? Arguable. But America? A superpower prior to 1940? The first keel on an Essex class carrier wasn't laid until '41, and it didn't come into commission until the end of '42. We didn't have them in quantity until mid-44, and the Shokaku's were better. Likewise, I think it's fair to argue that we were at best qualitatively competitive in the air war against Germany, and relied tremendously on quantity and borrowed British cryptanalysis.
Rather than looking to economic policy, it's fairer to lay the credit for America's emergence as a superpower post-WW II on physical isolation. There's much to be said in favor of not getting bombed.
A lot of people think that when the government dumps more money on a depression to kickstart the economy (Keynes) it just causes the business cycle to wait out the problem even longer. Amity Shlae argued that in her book on the Great Depression, and I assume that's what WRight is going to argue, too.
No doubt Amity Shlaes has her followers, but more among the political chattering class than among mainstream economists. There is no doubt that her theories are mighty convenient for those who opposed the Obama stimulus, but that it itself it telling.
But let me take this in a slightly different direction, first by revisiting Reagan's economic policies, which were distinctly debt-driven -- debt/gdp grew from 32% in 1981 to 52% in 1989, and this was during a period when there were no sustained wars. In part, this came through tax cut, and in part through expansions in spending, especially on the military. The good news in this is that the military spending increases were easy enough to bring down, c.f., Clinton's "peace dividend." The bad news is that the tax reductions, which went too far (in that they resulted in debt expansion even during good times) were much harder politically to reverse, even for Reagan and George HW Bush. This is why the debt/gdp ratio continued to increase, even during economic good times, and it wasn't until the Clinton administration that the revenue issue was addressed.
Then we get to GWB. In a few ways, he played the Reagan card -- tax cuts that would result in debt/gdp growth during good times as well as bad -- but he did much worse, because he also pushed unfunded spending increases in entitlements (which are very difficult politically to reverse_, as well as one hugely expensive and unnecessary war.
The fury of the right over Obama's stimulus is a direct correlate of their culpability in creating the economic disaster that made it necessary. Don't blame us, oh no. Blame *them*. And the real tragedy if this ploy succeeds, your side will be constrained out of hubris and embarrassment to do the same, stupid, destructive things again, expecting a different outcome.
Shlaes blurbed Wright's book, so I think there may be a continuity between their viewpoints. Not sure yet. I did finish the second chapter but all it said was that Smith's book Wealth of Nations was huge for such a giant tome (1400 pages of tiny print), but that Hamilton was one of the few to express reservations. However, Wright has not yet told us about these reservations. Strangely, I looked in the index, and there are few further citations of Smith. I hope that that comment on Hamilton v. Smith is not the end of the story, and that this is a bridge to nowhere.
I think Stu's notion that throwing money at depressions to kickstart the economy is probably the prevailing norm, and it has resulted in the bailouts under Bush Baby and later, Obama.
But Shlaes' book argues that when first Hoover and later FDR did this it stalled the economy because it blurred the true prices of things, and business owners had to wait for the mirage of prosperity to clear before they knew how to get back into the game.
I guess it would be something like pumping gas into a stalled car. It might not be what the car needs. Too much gas can be a bad thing.
Hamilton was apparently a protectionist. He wanted to keep out products with stiff tariffs so as to build up our own industries. This has largely fallen by the wayside as we now massively import cheap junk from all over, especially from China.
I try not to buy their junk.
Every time you buy something from China, you are poking a stick in the eye of a Tibetan monk.
And we're also keeping money out of American pockets.
Why, to line the pockets of Maoist scum in Beijing? I don't see it.
Kirby,
I think Stu's notion that throwing money at depressions to kickstart the economy is probably the prevailing norm, and it has resulted in the bailouts under Bush Baby and later, Obama.
Throwing money at things is a stupid strategy, and it's certainly not what Obama tried to do with the stimulus, which started out with a Hamiltonian focus on infrastructure improvements (bridges, roads, high speed rail), but which ended up diluted by tax cuts. The problem that Obama faced in terms of a broken economy was much more dire than what Reagan faced, because interest rates were high at the beginning of the Reagan administration, meaning that monetarist policies (i.e., lowering interest rates) should have been effective. He went for deficit spending/taxing anyway -- a quicker fix, albeit with longer term consequences.
The "Bush bailout" was TARP, and this was a very specific injection of US capital into the financial system. I'd argue that this came closer to "throwing money," but for the uncomfortable fact that it looks as though the government is might end up showing a profit on it. I read an article about the folks who are closing down AIG's mortgage backed securities division. They're saying that the original trades were sound, and will show a profit in time, but they didn't account for liquidity problems on intermediate time scales. This has the ring of truth, if only because it doesn't fit anyone's political narrative.
But Shlaes' book argues that when first Hoover and later FDR did this it stalled the economy because it blurred the true prices of things, and business owners had to wait for the mirage of prosperity to clear before they knew how to get back into the game.
It's a pretty silly argument. The problem of the depression wasn't turbulence, it was the absence of demand. If there's no demand, the factories are closed, the workers aren't getting paid, so they have no money to spend, and so there's no demand. It's a self-perpetuating problem, and hard to get restarted. After all, modern economies rest on some stunning shared myths, e.g., that little scraps of paper, or numbers maintained in an account, can somehow obligate work and resource transfers in the future. When those myths break down, rebuilding confidence is really, really hard.
The economy worked out of earlier depressions because there was some sort of new resource to exploit -- gold in North Carolina, or later California. Oil in Pennsylvania, and then Texas. The problem in '32 as well as '08 is that there were no new western lands to open, and no new resources to exploit.
But Shlaes has a bigger problem. From 1807 until 1941, there were four depressions: from 1807-1814, 1837-1844, 1873-1879, 1893-1898, and 1929-1941. That means an average of 24 years from the end of one depression to the start of the next. There have been 70 depression-free years since 1941. Shlaes hypothesis, if it is to have any meaning at all, is that Keynesian economics is a drag on the economy, and so it will decrease the mean time between depressions. Let's say, for the sake of argument, to an average of 15 years from the end of one depression to the start of the next. But that's a problem: the probability of observing 70 consecutive depression free years given a 15 year mean time between depressions is less than 1%. That's a serious prediction failure.
Hamilton was apparently a protectionist. He wanted to keep out products with stiff tariffs so as to build up our own industries. This has largely fallen by the wayside as we now massively import cheap junk from all over, especially from China.
True enough, at least about Hamilton. Of course, taxing imports was also a major revenue source for the new nation, since the personal income tax didn't come into existence until the civil war. So high tariffs provided two wins so far as Hamilton was concerned -- faster internal economic development, and greater governmental revenues.
Steep tariffs make sense to me. It protects our own work force, and also, as Stu said, helps pay up our tax base. Why were they abandoned? Clinton put in NAFTA so that anything made in Mexico and Canada can come in free. This has the immediate effect of having many companies move to Mexico (even a lot of our armamentation is now in Mexico -- which is to say, our bullets are made in Mexico). Is that a net good in some way for America?
I can imagine that importers are making a profit, but what about exporters, and those who once actually made products for Americans in America?
Baseballs are now made in Costa Rica.
The only problem with making things elsewhere that I can see is that other governments are likely to fail, or nationalize industries, leaving companies bankrupted. That probably won't happen in Mexico or in mainland China.
So I guess they're safe for industrialization to go over there.
I don't know the history of why we started outsourcing, and stopped using tariffs. What's the problem with wanting them back? If we did want them back, would there be some political group in either the Democratic or Republican party that would back this?
I understand that the libertarians and anarchists don't want much of a boundary at all between countries for ideological reasons. But what about in terms of economic reasons? Don't they make sense? I think Hamilton saw that they did.
Kirby,
Steep tariffs make sense to me. It protects our own work force, and also, as Stu said, helps pay up our tax base. Why were they abandoned?
As I've said before, we have two corporatist political parties. Lowering tariffs means a more profitable business environment for multinationals, and these are precisely the big businesses that have the money to make the kinds of political contributions that get politicians' attention, and to ensure that they back the winner, they back both sides.
But they do have a point. As much as tariffs protect our businesses in the US market, they make it more difficult for US based businesses to compete in foreign markets. There's a definite tit-for-tat strategy at play in tariff setting. The US economy is big, but the economy of the rest of the world is bigger, and that creates an incentive for US companies to lobby for reduced tariffs here. If you look at quintessential US companies -- GE, GM, Apple, Ford, Microsoft -- they make more money overseas than the do in the US. Welcome to globalization.
Clinton put in NAFTA so that anything made in Mexico and Canada can come in free. This has the immediate effect of having many companies move to Mexico (even a lot of our armamentation is now in Mexico -- which is to say, our bullets are made in Mexico). Is that a net good in some way for America?
Actually, it probably was, but not in the way we expected. There was huge capital flight from Mexico to the US as a result of NAFTA. I believe there's a huge sampling bias involved in these transfers. If a US factory shuts down and relocates in Mexico, folks here remember that. But if a multinational company decides to build in the US rather than Mexico, it's not seen as a win, even if NAFTA tipped the scales. And here's a question for you: how do you reconcile the belief that all of the US jobs are moving to Mexico, with the observation that all of those illegal Mexican immigrants are coming here to get jobs?
Baseballs are now made in Costa Rica.
It's not actually that simple. Various raw materials come from all around the world -- it's only the final stitching that's done in Costa Rica. I found a somewhat dated (2004) article that claims that the workers who do the stitching make less than $3K/year. Let's say that it's $4K today. That's less than $2/hour. There aren't many people in the US willing to work for so little, let alone so hard. And for the most part, US citizens don't have to. They have a decent education, a reasonable level of literacy, and more profitable opportunities. You don't need an education, or literacy, to stitch baseballs.
Kvetching about the outsourcing of lousy, low-paying jobs doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Of far greater concern is the outsourcing of skilled technical jobs to India and China.
But the up side is that since Toyota and BMW sell a lot of cars in the US, it's more profitable to build them here than to build them there and ship them, so they do. High tariffs would keep them out. Trust me, we're much better served having those jobs here and baseball manufacturing in Costa Rica than the other way around.
Indeed, there was an interesting story that came out a couple of weeks ago that should be an eye-opener. Ikea has an outsourced factory that sounds like a third-world nightmare. The workers are paid less than half of what their domestic workers make, and they don't get benefits, while domestic workers do. Worse, the factory has been the site of labor turnover and worker dissatisfaction, and this is a real embarrassment for a company that prides itself on productive labor relations. Of course, "home/domestic" means Sweden, and that third-world outsourced factory is in Virginia. Again, welcome to globalization.
--note Herr Stu, that I said Hamilton's economic ideas (ie deficit spending, govt. intervention in general) seemed "sort of" Keynesian. Not exactly. My sense is that early mercantilists, ie Jefferson & Co distrusted financial schemes of any sort, or "monetarism"--perhaps naively--but not without some classical basis (ie...opposition to usury, and a focus on agrarian society, etc. As Pound realized, however tres sauvage he seems to some).
protectionism--another liberal policy
Stu:
I think you're sitting on the fence about tariffs and employment transfers.
You assume that the forces that drive exportation of jobs and capital outside the U.S. occurs because of "natural forces" which will work "efficiently" despite circumstances. Throughout the first century and a half of America's industrial growth period, between 1850 and 1950, we made things here. We exploited our own natural resources, and imported cheap resources from other parts of the globe. We made a multitude of products, and consumed them here, and sold them abroad. Industrialization in the "Third World" was kept at bay by cultural conditions. It would have been as attractive in 1930, or 1950, for an American company to "re-locate" in Mexico as it was in 2000, so why did it take so long to happen?
Partly, it was the result of the increased liquidity of capital. And then those "Third World" economies figured out that if they courted industry, with perks and set-asides and sweet-heard labor contracts and lax environmental safeguards, they could attract lots of capital. If your people have a mean wage of .75 cents an hour, $1.50 looks very attractive. Even when folks in America are earning $50 an hour.
In the years leading up to NAFTA, the Republicans argued tirelessly for a tariff-free environment, not because it was good for America and American workers (it never was), but because their true constituency was increasingly the very corporations which would most benefit from outsourcing. They built incentives into our tax laws which favored the outflow of jobs and capital.
This is a moral issue for governance. If you favor policies which put your own people at a steep disadvantage, can you be said to be furthering the general welfare? Are you actually hurting your own nation? It looks suspiciously as if America has cut its own throat, with China taking all the industrial base, then lending the money back to us so we can prosecute foreign wars and fund vast Ponzi schemes in our banking system.
Americans pay much more for health care here, but get worse care. That suggests that someone is profiting by our ill health. But all we hear is that we can't "afford" expanded coverage. The medical industries (including doctors) don't want a more judiciously distributed medical coverage dollar, because that takes the incentive out of "competitive" delivery. But there's no competition now--you simply have price-fixing and fraudulent billing and unnecessary treatment, and all the things that go with gaming the system.
The idea that a rich nation can voluntarily sacrifice its own prosperity in the interests of "healthy" international trade is absurd. Proponents of "free trade" will argue that eventually, there'll be an "evening out" of benefits world wide, but that process could take three generations. In the meantime, our economy is devastated, and our mean standard of living drops by 50%. No amount of social engineering can fix that.
And in the end, who really benefits? If we protected our steel and wood, China's profit margin on cars and furniture would evaporate. That would be bad for China, and good for us. How would China "retaliate"? Since the embalance is all in their favor now, they would have no option but to pay our higher prices. Japan has no natural resources to speak of. What would happen if we charged what it really costs us to sell our raw stuff to them?
We've been supporting artificially low prices on a whole range of products because we want to be "competitive" on the world market. But the real costs of those subsidies are long-term devastation, which we're just beginning to experience now. If we punished companies for giving themselves away to foreign interests, we'd be leveling the playing field in our own favor. Isn't this what government should be doing, instead of designing our own demise?
The mirage of "international free trade" was never a real alternative for Americans. When we had all the leverage, our prosperity was the envy of the rest of the world. It was built out of inequalities and disequilibriums of all kinds, but it worked. Now the equation has been turned around, and we're paying "American prices" for cheap foreign goods and labor. If the system were working correctly, those goods would be so cheap, our standard would be preserved. But there's nothing "efficient" about it because the difference is eaten up by the very businesses who demand "open" borders.
We have "open trade" but our partners don't. Try investing directly in China. Good luck. Try investing in Japan. Good luck. They PROTECT their workers, and their economies. Their labor and monetary and trade policies produce favorable results for their economies, while ours don't.
Among the many ironies here is the fact that there is no real "re-balancing" of co-dependent economies. Since the real profit in globalization is in the disequilibrium between economies, preserving that disequilibrium is actually in the interests of capital. An American corporation certainly has no desire to increase wages and benefits to Mexicans--because it thrives on those conditions. The attraction is in exploiting the poor countries, while raising the prices of the rich consuming ones. It probably costs AT&T half as much to pay Indian companies to field customer calls in American markets, than it does to pay them here, but we see no advantage in our pricing structures--all that difference is taken by capital. Instead of 5000 people with good jobs (and benefits) here, that cream is scraped off the top and spent on a few investors and managers at the top--contributing to the increasing gap between the very rich, and everyone else. And "competition"? Customers have no where to turn, because all the companies are doing the same thing.
At some point, you have to factor the costs of globalization into the equation. With incentives to disembowel our own economy in place, what chance does America have to "compete"? There is no "level playing field"--if there were, we wouldn't be in the situation we are. Someone is profiting in this game, and it isn't the American people.
Stu disses both parties, in this sentence:
'As I've said before, we have two corporatist political parties. '
But he clearly prefers one of them, and I clearly prefer one of them. Curtis sees the truth about how we're giving everything that was once good in America away, mostly because we have had a series of presidents who aren't proud of America, and would prefer to be Japanese or Chinese or anything else, since they're so ethically pure.
The Obamas would never run down Japan the way they've run down America.
We now have a first family that hates America, and wants to end it.
That's new.
It's different.
It's the Democrat party, in general.
If we want to get the country going again, we need people who at least love the country, and will fight for it. Trump might do that. He might not have all the suave sophistication of the Obamas, but he might on the other hand understand the bottom line.
Hamilton understood the bottom line and he put his life on the line for America. Obama hasn't and wouldn't and doesn't. He would rather side with any group other than Americans. He would rather be a Mexican, a Canadian, a citizen of China or France. He's embarrassed by America, as is his wife, and wants to bring us to our knees so that the good Chinese will own us entirely. They are so pure, since they are so multicultural.
"Hamilton understood the bottom line and he put his life on the line for America. Obama hasn't and wouldn't and doesn't. He would rather side with any group other than Americans. He would rather be a Mexican, a Canadian, a citizen of China or France. He's embarrassed by America, as is his wife, and wants to bring us to our knees so that the good Chinese will own us entirely. "
translation
"Obama bad i no likey not sure why blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah"
How can someone whose poetry is so incisive be so vacuous and substanceless in his political discourse.
Mrs. Obama has said as much. That passage when she said, "I've never been proud of America before this day," was all we needed to know about the mentality of the First Family.
These are angry Marxist anti-imperialists.
To his credit, Obama has moved away from his Harvard brainwashing, and is beginning to try to think about business. He said recently, almost in a stupefied state of amazement, "We need banks."
I'm not enjoying having the government in his hands as he struggles between his education, and the common sense that has taught him that his education has been not only inadequate but dangerous. He's slowly waking up after the medically-induced coma of his politically correct education.
It may be just enough to keep from destroying the country.
If I could have him take one sentence seriously, and to heart, it would be Coolidge's "Business is the business of America."
Can you imagine him saying that?
I can't.
I CAN imagine Trump saying it.
Good business practice is deeply principled and should be more highly honored than it is. It's what has made America what it used to be.
"We need business."
At present, I don't think that the Obamas really understand that.
"We need the military."
"We need a comprehensive immigration system."
"We need a hard-working well-education citizenry that is capable of initiative, innovation, and taking intelligence business risks."
I wish he'd talk more like that instead of ramming Stealthcare down our throats.
There are a few pieces online by Wright such as this, which outlines Hamilton's role in the creation of the National Bank:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/910687.html
It's from another book called Financial Founding Fathers published in 2006 by U. of chicago Press.
Hamilton's National Bank is not the same thing as the Federal Reserve. Hamilton's bank was rejected by Madison, who was unable to scuttle the project until he himself became president. The current Federal Reserve (according to the Wikipedia article) was established in order to deal with bank panics.
I think it's something like the problem with lending under Fannie and Freddie in that it's meant to soak up messes created in the industry by guaranteeing everything remains afloat, while possibly sinking the nation into larger and larger debt.
Madison's first dislike of the bank had to do with not wanting one bank to chase out all others.
So, the creation of it IS SIMILAR to the creation of a national healthcare system. In that there is a fear that it might chase out private enterprise. The differences are also interesting: one is not forced to use the bank.
It's not clear to me who uses the bank in fact. I'm not sure if you can have a private account at the Federal Reserve. You could buy stock in the original National Bank, and many did. In fact, all the stock was bought up within about a day of the thing opening to stock purchasers.
Owners, it was feared, would have access to greater credit than non-stakeholders.
It's a funny situation.
Pound wrote about this whole deal in the 30s and 40s. Most economists don't take seriously anything Pound said on financial questions, and most poets don't either. A handful of cranks still listen to Pound on these questions, but probably no one inside of a college would take it seriously except as an aspect of a major poet's history. There is a book on the topic from a scholar at Muhlenberg College -- which I did read, and promptly forgot. The upshot was that Pound liked Jefferson and thought he was like Mussolini, for reasons that seemed laughable to me as I read the book.
WCW also had some pretentions to knowing something about economics.
WCW wanted free credit for everyone, or something.
Few poets put forward strong monetary policies in their poems, or even strong political policies, but there are a few cabals such as the Language poets who continue to occasionally issue edicts with regard to Pound, banking, Marxism, and social justice, but none of it ever makes a drop of sense to this reader.
I'm not distrustful toward the business community in America, nor do I think of them as squares. I think of poetry and banking and entrepreneurial activity as closely allied -- the creation of a strong image, or a powerful poem, has legs if it does something for the reader, same as any other product.
The movie INDUSTRY does similar things. It's just that fewer have a USE for poetry, or know how to put it to use, probably.
Should poets ahve an economic sense as well as a philosophical sense?
It strikes me that in Ginsberg and the like you get a powerful distrust of any kind of industrialization. Nature ni gary Snyder and others is praised as something beautiful and outside any kind of formal banking system.
But people who actually know something about nature know that there are banking and industrial systems going on between the worms, the bacteria, the trees, the birds, and the bees.
Some whole species go out of business. Others thrive. It's not as if it's a static picture.
Compassion for the poor can be strong in some poets but what about analysis of why they are poor: unmarried young women, addicted to cocaine, or young bucks going after the young women with no intention to marry them, spreading diseases, and expecting care from federal hospitals and the CDC, all on the make, versus the kind of closed capitalism of the Amish, or of the Shakers, or of the Lutheran surrealists...
Poetry shouldn't just be all emotions and rants and diatribes. Thinking should be permitted within its domain.
Ben Franklin said that a penny saved is a penny earned. He forgot to mention he was assuming a seven percent return compounded daily for ten years. One hundred million pennies earns about $100k a year on average if all of the earnings are reinvested automatically.
Craig,
I think you're sitting on the fence about tariffs and employment transfers.
In many ways, I am. I think this may be an interesting stepping of point into reframing the usual debate on this blog.
What is it that make us Americans? These is a key question, because unless we can answer it, we can hardly be expected to argue sensibly, still less to agree, on how to go about advancing American interests.
There are a number of definitions of American. One is essentially ethnic: Americans are the descendants of Northern Europeans who stole this land far and square from it's aboriginal inhabitants and/or the Hispanics who often beat them to it. Another is cultural: this is essentially the definition that Kirby argues for, i.e., that the Americans are those with mainline Protestant beliefs in hard work, thrift, moral strength, etc. One is mythic: the Americans are those who through self-reliance, and hard work improved their place in the world. Another is political: the Americans are those who believe in freedom, self-determination, representative democracy, etc.
Let me take this opportunity to deal with other business by slamming Kirby, because his preference for the thrice-married, philandering, inherited-his-wealth, casino-building, religiously-ambiguous, oligarchic Donald Trump over the once-married, religiously committed Barack Obama, whose life is a Horatio Alger story of working his way up from being the child of a single parent, through hard work, to have become the editor of the Harvard Law Review, a highly regarded civil-rights lawyer, to having married the daughter of an upstanding Christian family, and thorough this having found the Christian faith, to becoming a lecturer at one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, a senator, and now President of the US, makes it clear that his real definition is instinctively ethnic.
I see, in a Mexican who overcomes obstacles (e.g., a dangerous border crossing, anglo prejudice, language barriers, etc.) to become an economically productive member of our society more of an American story that a Donald Trump, who inherited a fortune and has added to it by cheating and bullying others. [And no, this doesn't mean I'm arguing for open borders.]
Likewise, I see in the 1st and 2nd generation Asian families in this country an American story, much like the Mexicans, but bolstered by strong family values, which enables them to go from being from grocers to being business men, engineers, and professors in the next.
I see American particularity as being rooted, not in an ethnic entitlement, but in an educated (and therefore economically flexible and opportunistic) population, in our shared cultural values of hard work, thrift, and fair dealing, and in our political values of freedom and justice.
There are challenges here, to be sure. If we want the American Dream (that hard work leads to prosperity) to live, we have to make sure it is real. This means ensuring the availability of education, and the reality of productive, fairly compensated work. We're failing as a society in this, and it is leading to great social ills. Part of what we need to do is to recapture what prosperity means -- a safe place to life, good food, opportunity for self-development, a secure old-age. It doesn't mean owning yachts, or mansions, or servants, or having your own reality-TV show, nor casual sex, or Hummers with spinning hubcaps.
And so, tariffs. Can tariffs protect our real advantages of political freedom, education, and hard work? Not that I can see. And I don't see the world economy as a zero-sum game. To the extent that other people embrace these values, they will prosper. To the extent we forget them, we will decline.
I hate the dodge that anyone who criticizes Obama hates blacks. I rather like Herman Cain or Condoleeza Rice, and would vote for either one. Obama is a Marxist, and didn't work very hard to get where he is. He coasted up a red carpeted path that had been made for him by the sixties radicals like Ayers. He says as much in his poem to his mentor Frank Marshall Davis. He says my life wasn't hard.
The great thing about Trump is that he is a businessman, and sees life unapologetically through that lens. He's not a social activist. He's just plain business, in all its crudeness.
That's what I like about Trump.
I recognize that his personal life is full of trouble. But in two kingdoms thought, I don't think we need a saint of some kind in the Oval Office. We need someone who can attend to the nation's business, and not put crypto-communist measures through the legislature. Stealthcare is crypto-communist, and it's yet another means of spreading the wealth to the disorganized.
If the left believes in Darwin, let them at least let the fittest businesspeople rise to the top, and accept that they are hippy layabouts who really want to smoke dope, and try cocaine, and read Marx, and let them amount to a hill of beans.
Work ethic is what this country was founded on. Now government and its president are doing everything in their power to take away the last vestiges of that. Michelle Obama is not proud of the country's history. Probably her husband isn't either. Either is their sponsor, Ayers.
I am. But I think we have to recover what it was before the communists rewrote our history. We need to go back to the Founders and get this all straight.
I would like someone less crude than Trump, but anyone who's sensitive will have to walk through the mind field prepared by the left in the last four generations of college students. Anything will trip the guilt harangues of the academics of the big universities and their stooges, four generations of students who have bombs placed in their head, so that if Romney says he will hang Obama with something, everyone screams lynching, lynching, and the candidate is out.
What we really need is someone like Reagan who fought for decades with the Hollywood left before running, so he knew their discourse, and knew what scum these people were, and knew how to fight them. We may not have much like that any longer, but that's what's needed.
It may be too late. I think Huckabee is probably the best we have for trying to get work ethic rather than entitlement through victimization scenarios back into the saddle as the main legitimation of success.
Btw., on the island of Nevis, where Hamilton was born, some claim that Hamilton himself was black. I hate this kind of racial assessment, because I don't think it matters. If someone is functioning, then that's good.
Kirby:
If the Republicans nominated Mickey Mouse for President, you would find some way of supporting him.
Donald Trump?
I don't think Trump could be any worse than what we've had over the last twelve years. Mickey Mouse would have problems with the birth certificate, even if he is now over 35 (or is he stuck at a younger age?).
Perhaps we need more serious qualifications for president. But I don't think it's possible to arrange this just now. The age and the birthplace criteria are rather simple.
At any rate, I couldn't support the Mouse on the basis of the lack of a birth certificate, so, you're wrong.
I think what this whole controversy (between Democrat and Republican) is that some see the rich as evil, and some see communist systems as evil. I grant that individual rich people can be evil. But far more so are the communist systems. There has never been a worse police state than North Korea, or the Soviet Union under Stalin, or China under Mao. America has been bad at times, but never that bad. It's always been possible to have a good life here in the United States, but many communists are working around the clock to roll back our freedoms in the name of a system that will destroy the country forever.
The party that is trying to do this is itself far from blameless. Four of the five senators involved in the Keating Five were Democrats.
The only Republican (McCain) was exonerated.
It's a question of relative evils.
The Democrats have always bought votes from the poor way back to Tammany by promising them a cut in exchange for their votes. I find this unprincipled.
The Repoublicans on the other hand have attempted to make an even playing field since Lincoln. They make sense. I realize that a great number of Republicans have left the party due to the intrusion of the Calvinists and so-called fundamentalists. They don't bother me.
They have at least some inkling of two kingdoms.
IT's the Marxists that don't.
As for Trump? Maybe he's not so Christian. Who cares? Even Luther said he'd rather have a competent Turk as the political leader rather than a corrupt and incompetent Pope.
Kirby,
You seem to think that if I accuse you of anything other than being entirely color-blind, I'm accusing you of doing the full Bull Connor. Not hardly.
But you insist that Obama didn't earn his way into and through Columbia, Harvard, into the editorship of the Law Review, etc. Do you have shred of evidence for this? Of course not. Just your prior belief that he is.
As for Trump, I've seen analyses that claim that he'd be about 3x richer today than he is if he's have just invested his inheritance in Treasury bonds. That's your businessman, Kirby, someone who inherited wealth, and couldn't get an after inflation ROI of 3% out of it. Pathetic.
Herman Cain? Seriously? Look, if Obama were conservative, and all else equal, you'd be praising him to the skies, since the only qualification you give a damn about is hewing to the Tea Party line. Yet you claim to have other principles. The point behind my raising Obama vs. Trump is to show that you don't.
I think Huckabee is probably the best we have ...
Now, Hucklebee's a good ol dixie khrustian, family man, and straightshooter, and.....a ridiculous little windbag and jingoist right out of the confederacy.
Since you've gone south for a few minutes, maybe google Andrew Jackson for the traditional democratic thinking on New Yawk bankers and finance.
Well, I could reverse your own thinking, Stu, and ask why don't you love Romney since you say he has done the same things as BO. However, you don't accept him simply because he is from the other party.
These things are easily reversed.
I'm not saying BO has NO MERITS. He has them, but they are inside of a range of efforts that I find dangerous. Even Kloppenberg says that Frank Marshall Davis (lifelong member of CPUSA) "trained" BO.
I grant that Trump got a headstart, as did Bush 2. But that's fine in a sense: neither one fell too far from the tree. That's fine with me. I want someone to run the country with competence and to encourage competence.
I don't want someone handing out freebies. It's not what the government should do, it's not its job.
Anyone can give out money.
It's not what the government should be doing. That's not how the Founders set it up. It's what the Democrats have done since Tammany, and it's not sustainable. We're going to go broke. The government has to be the one to say no.
It's dangerous to change that for some crazy hope that the government can become some giant nanny. It's been tried. It doesn't work.
I don't care who's doing it, it isn't right! BO isn't that dangerous because he still has a brain, but some Machiavellian monster could use the giant tools he's setting up to destroy civil society. We have to try to stop that from happening. The only thing we can do now is vote Republican. It only slows the spread of the cancer, but at least it's a start.
I hope you'll join us, Stu.
Many people think being born into a wealthy and successful family is a huge handicap. For many, it is. It's comparatively easier to work your way up. But BO didn't entirely do that. His mom had a Ph.D. His dad was also quite accomplished in Kenya (he was from a leading family). It's just that BO and his parents had quite different ideas and ideals from the Trumps.
Kirby,
Well, I could reverse your own thinking, Stu, and ask why don't you love Romney since you say he has done the same things as BO. However, you don't accept him simply because he is from the other party.
Actually, I think Romney is the soundest candidate you guys have to offer, and I don't intend this as a diminishment. I remember his father as Governor of Michigan when I was a kid, and I had a favorable impression of him. My understanding is that Mitt Romney was an effective governor of Massachusetts, and certainly his work on health care reform in that state was a model for the national system.
Is he someone I'd support for President? Probably not. I prefer Obama to him, but I'd prefer him to some plausible Democratic candidates. I don't think that Romney would be a disaster, and I see no reason to to demonize him. There's no equivalence here Kirby, none at all.
Trump, on the other hand, is a self-aggrandizing blowhard whose standing in the polls is a consequence of his pandering to ignorance, the one topic he knows best.
We're going to go broke.
When the Republicans were in charge, Cheney said, "deficits don't matter." When the Republicans were in charge, they eliminated the paygo restrictions that the Democratic congresses and administrations worked under before and since. When the Republicans were in charge, the cut taxes on the rich without addressing long-term debt, and they set up new, unfunded entitlements. They started a major, horrifically expensive, unnecessary war in Iraq. They set up a regulatory environment that lead to the greatest economic crash since the great depression.
If you're serious about dealing with the deficit, then voting Republican makes no sense at all.
Kirby,
Many people think being born into a wealthy and successful family is a huge handicap. For many, it is. It's comparatively easier to work your way up. But BO didn't entirely do that. His mom had a Ph.D. His dad was also quite accomplished in Kenya (he was from a leading family). It's just that BO and his parents had quite different ideas and ideals from the Trumps.
Right. Being born rich is such a handicap. What a load of crap. If you really believe that, you'd support an agressive estate tax, just to free those unfortunate rich children of the burdens of their wealth, and give them a fair start in life. You've said a lot of stupid things, but this is worthy of framing.
As for Barack, you've pointed out that he came from capable people. Good, so why do you doubt that he earned his way through college and law school. You've said "he coasted up a red-carpeted path." That's crap. He had brains, but didn't come from rich folks. They had good values, and they passed them on to him, and supported him. Strange thing the American Dream: sometimes the myth is real.
And Obama's lived his life in public service. Working as a community organizer in Altgeld Gardens, then as a Civil Rights lawyer, then as a teacher, and a politician.
Whereas Trump inherited, and made a little money building casinos and becoming a reality start. And he's on wife #3. Great values you're backing there. Very different from Barack's, I'll grant you that. But whose values are closer to yours?
Let's see. One wife? Obama, yes. Kirby, yes. Trump, no. Came from an academicly accomplished family? Obama, yes. Kirby, yes. Trump, no. Has an identifiable Christian commitment that they say informs their world view? Obama, yes. Kirby, yes. Trump no. Highest earned degree: Obama, J.D. Kirby, Ph.D. Trump, B.S. Has taught at a University: Obama, yes. Kirby, yes. Trump, no. Thinks Donald Trump is God? Obama, no. Kirby, no. Trump, yes.
stu the literal argument stopping character of your final summation is something to read
my feeling is
if this country could elect george w bush then it is possible that we could elect trump or bachman or palin even
and we'd deserve what we got
i of course would head for canada
now that obama has the classic notch on his belt he's a shoe-in the republicans might as well run pat robertson
newt gingrich is a witty soul no doubt
i'd say the repub frontrunner
but no mere white idealist can contend with the high seated warrior on the white horse the eternal prince of justice come to us ona steed the chieftain of the tribal wisdom we so need so much the harbinger of things to come the great age of true enlightenment when people who read books actually run things - but of course they must read good books in order to assume leadership anyway as i was saying the brilliant and handsome eastafrican hawwaiian true blue american from who knows where our warrior prince whe reigns with truth and justice and who will support our cause with...o i got a bit out of control....sorry....preaching to the cyber vaccuum again
the perky little white smiling michelle will not usurp the more glamorous and attractive feminine spirit of practical fashion michele
o no
i think michele obama should run for president
yowzaaa
jh
jh
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