Op-Ed Columnist
The Experience EconomyBy DAVID BROOKS
Published: February 14, 2011
...“The Great Stagnation,” has become the most debated nonfiction book so far this year. Cowen’s core point is that up until sometime around 1974, the American economy was able to experience awesome growth by harvesting low-hanging fruit. There was cheap land to be exploited. There was the tremendous increase in education levels during the postwar world. There were technological revolutions occasioned by the spread of electricity, plastics and the car.
But that low-hanging fruit is exhausted, Cowen continues, and since 1974, the United States has experienced slower growth, slower increases in median income, slower job creation, slower productivity gains, slower life-expectancy improvements and slower rates of technological change.
Cowen’s data on these slowdowns are compelling and have withstood the scrutiny of the online reviewers. He argues that our society, for the moment, has hit a technological plateau.
But his evidence can also be used to tell a related story. It could be that the nature of technological change isn’t causing the slowdown but a shift in values. It could be that in an industrial economy people develop a materialist mind-set and believe that improving their income is the same thing as improving their quality of life. But in an affluent information-driven world, people embrace the postmaterialist mind-set. They realize they can improve their quality of life without actually producing more wealth.
For example, imagine a man we’ll call Sam, who was born in 1900 and died in 1974. Sam entered a world of iceboxes, horse-drawn buggies and, commonly, outhouses. He died in a world of air-conditioning, Chevy Camaros and Moon landings. His life was defined by dramatic material changes, and Sam worked feverishly hard to build a company that sold brake systems. Sam wasn’t the most refined person, but he understood that if he wanted to create a secure life for his family he had to create wealth.
Sam’s grandson, Jared, was born in 1978. Jared wasn’t really drawn to the brake-systems business, which was withering in America. He works at a company that organizes conferences. He brings together fascinating speakers for lifelong learning. He writes a blog on modern art and takes his family on vacations that are more daring and exciting than any Sam experienced.
Jared lives a much more intellectually diverse life than Sam. He loves Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and his iPhone apps. But many of these things are produced outside the conventional monetized economy. Most of the products are produced by people working for free. They cost nothing to consume.
They don’t even create many jobs. As Cowen notes in his book, the automobile industry produced millions of jobs, but Facebook employs about 2,000, Twitter 300 and eBay about 17,000. It takes only 14,000 employees to make and sell iPods, but that device also eliminates jobs for those people who make and distribute CDs, potentially leading to net job losses.
In other words, as Cowen makes clear, many of this era’s technological breakthroughs produce enormous happiness gains, but surprisingly little additional economic activity.
Jared’s other priorities also produce high quality-of-life gains without huge material and productivity improvements. He practically defines himself by what university he went to. Universities now have nicer dorms, gyms and dining facilities. These improvements have not led to huge increases in educational output.
Jared is very health conscious and part of a generation that has spent much more on health care. This may help Jared lead a vibrant life in retirement. But these investments have had surprisingly little effect on productivity or even longevity.
For Sam, income and living standards were synonymous. But for Jared, wealth and living standards have diverged. He is more interested in the latter than the former. This means that Jared has some rich and meaningful experiences, but it has also led to problems. Every few months, new gizmos come out. Jared feels his life is getting better. Because he doesn’t fully grasp the increasingly important distinction between wealth and standard of living, he has the impression that he is also getting richer. As a result, he lives beyond his means. As Cowen notes, many of our recent difficulties stem from the fact that many Americans think they are richer than they are.
Jared is also providing much less opportunity for those down the income scale than his grandfather did. Sam was more hardhearted, yet his feverish materialism created more jobs.
Jared worries about that. He also worries that the Chinese and others have a material drive that he and his cohort lacks. But he’s not changing. For the past few decades, Americans have devoted more of their energies to postmaterial arenas and less and less, for better and worse, to the sheer production of wealth.
During these years, commencement speakers have urged students to seek meaning and not money. Many people, it turns out, were listening.
Showing posts with label Civil Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil Society. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Another Good Anticipatory Piece -- On Viewing Reagan
Reagan and RealityBy BOB HERBERT
Published: February 14, 2011
Early in Eugene Jarecki’s documentary, “Reagan,” you hear the voice of Ronald Reagan saying, “Someday it might be worthwhile to find out how images are created — and even more worthwhile to learn how false images come into being.”
Indeed. The image that many, perhaps most, Americans have of the nation’s 40th president is largely manufactured. Reagan has become this larger-than-life figure who all but single-handedly won the cold war, planted the Republican Party’s tax-cut philosophy in the resistant soil of the liberal Democrats and is the touchstone for all things allegedly conservative, no matter how wacky or extreme.
Mr. Jarecki’s documentary does a first-rate job of respectfully separating the real from the mythical, the significant from the nonsense. The truth is that Ronald Reagan, at one time or another, was all over the political map. Early on, he was a liberal Democrat and admirer of Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan’s family received much-needed help from the New Deal during the Depression.
It is well known that Reagan was the head of the Screen Actors Guild. And though he was staunchly anti-Communist, he did not finger anyone when he appeared before the rabid House Un-American Activities Committee. But Mr. Jarecki learned that at the height of the Red Scare, Reagan had been secretly cooperating with the F.B.I. He was registered officially as Informant T-10.
No less than other public figures, Reagan was complicated. He was neither the empty suit that his greatest detractors would have you believe nor the conservative god of his most slavish admirers. He was a tax-cutter who raised taxes in seven of the eight years of his presidency. He was a budget-cutter who nearly tripled the federal budget deficit.
The biggest problem with Reagan, as we look back at his presidency in search of clues that might help us meet the challenges of today, is that he presented himself — and has since been presented by his admirers — as someone committed to the best interests of ordinary, hard-working Americans. Yet his economic policies, Reaganomics, dealt a body blow to that very constituency.
Mark Hertsgaard, the author of “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” says in the film, “You cannot be fair in your historical evaluation of Ronald Reagan if you don’t look at the terrible damage his economic policies did to this country.”
Paul Volcker, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve during most of the Reagan years, commented in the film about the economist Arthur Laffer’s famous curve, which, incredibly, became a cornerstone of national economic policy. “The Laffer Curve,” said Mr. Volcker, “was presented as an intellectual support for the idea that reducing taxes would produce more revenues, and that was, I think, considered by most people a pretty extreme interpretation of what would happen.”
Toward the end of his comment, the former Fed chairman chuckled as if still amused by the idea that this was ever taken seriously.
What we get with Reagan are a series of disconnects and contradictions that have led us to a situation in which a president widely hailed as a hero of the working class set in motion policies that have been mind-bogglingly beneficial to the wealthy and devastating to working people and the poor.
“It is important that we stop idolizing our public figures, lionizing them,” said Mr. Jarecki, in an interview. He views Reagan as a gifted individual and does not give short shrift in the film to Reagan’s successes in his dealings with the Soviet Union and other elements of what Mr. Jarecki called “the positive side of Ronald Reagan.” The film also has interviews with many Reagan stalwarts, including James Baker and George Shultz.
But when all is said and done, it is the economic revolution that gained steam during the Reagan years and is still squeezing the life out of the middle class and the poor that is Reagan’s most significant legacy. A phony version of that legacy is relentlessly promoted by right-wingers who shamelessly pursue the interests of the very rich while invoking the Reagan brand to give the impression that they are in fact the champions of ordinary people.
Reagan’s son, Ron, says in the film that he believes his father “was vulnerable to the idea that poor people were somehow poor because it was their fault.” A clip is then shown of Ronald Reagan referring to, “The homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
“Reagan,” an HBO documentary, will be shown on Presidents’ Day to U.S. military personnel on the American Forces Network. It will be available soon in theaters and home video release. It is an important corrective to the fantasy of Reagan that has gotten such a purchase on American consciousness.
Published: February 14, 2011
Early in Eugene Jarecki’s documentary, “Reagan,” you hear the voice of Ronald Reagan saying, “Someday it might be worthwhile to find out how images are created — and even more worthwhile to learn how false images come into being.”
Indeed. The image that many, perhaps most, Americans have of the nation’s 40th president is largely manufactured. Reagan has become this larger-than-life figure who all but single-handedly won the cold war, planted the Republican Party’s tax-cut philosophy in the resistant soil of the liberal Democrats and is the touchstone for all things allegedly conservative, no matter how wacky or extreme.
Mr. Jarecki’s documentary does a first-rate job of respectfully separating the real from the mythical, the significant from the nonsense. The truth is that Ronald Reagan, at one time or another, was all over the political map. Early on, he was a liberal Democrat and admirer of Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan’s family received much-needed help from the New Deal during the Depression.
It is well known that Reagan was the head of the Screen Actors Guild. And though he was staunchly anti-Communist, he did not finger anyone when he appeared before the rabid House Un-American Activities Committee. But Mr. Jarecki learned that at the height of the Red Scare, Reagan had been secretly cooperating with the F.B.I. He was registered officially as Informant T-10.
No less than other public figures, Reagan was complicated. He was neither the empty suit that his greatest detractors would have you believe nor the conservative god of his most slavish admirers. He was a tax-cutter who raised taxes in seven of the eight years of his presidency. He was a budget-cutter who nearly tripled the federal budget deficit.
The biggest problem with Reagan, as we look back at his presidency in search of clues that might help us meet the challenges of today, is that he presented himself — and has since been presented by his admirers — as someone committed to the best interests of ordinary, hard-working Americans. Yet his economic policies, Reaganomics, dealt a body blow to that very constituency.
Mark Hertsgaard, the author of “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” says in the film, “You cannot be fair in your historical evaluation of Ronald Reagan if you don’t look at the terrible damage his economic policies did to this country.”
Paul Volcker, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve during most of the Reagan years, commented in the film about the economist Arthur Laffer’s famous curve, which, incredibly, became a cornerstone of national economic policy. “The Laffer Curve,” said Mr. Volcker, “was presented as an intellectual support for the idea that reducing taxes would produce more revenues, and that was, I think, considered by most people a pretty extreme interpretation of what would happen.”
Toward the end of his comment, the former Fed chairman chuckled as if still amused by the idea that this was ever taken seriously.
What we get with Reagan are a series of disconnects and contradictions that have led us to a situation in which a president widely hailed as a hero of the working class set in motion policies that have been mind-bogglingly beneficial to the wealthy and devastating to working people and the poor.
“It is important that we stop idolizing our public figures, lionizing them,” said Mr. Jarecki, in an interview. He views Reagan as a gifted individual and does not give short shrift in the film to Reagan’s successes in his dealings with the Soviet Union and other elements of what Mr. Jarecki called “the positive side of Ronald Reagan.” The film also has interviews with many Reagan stalwarts, including James Baker and George Shultz.
But when all is said and done, it is the economic revolution that gained steam during the Reagan years and is still squeezing the life out of the middle class and the poor that is Reagan’s most significant legacy. A phony version of that legacy is relentlessly promoted by right-wingers who shamelessly pursue the interests of the very rich while invoking the Reagan brand to give the impression that they are in fact the champions of ordinary people.
Reagan’s son, Ron, says in the film that he believes his father “was vulnerable to the idea that poor people were somehow poor because it was their fault.” A clip is then shown of Ronald Reagan referring to, “The homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
“Reagan,” an HBO documentary, will be shown on Presidents’ Day to U.S. military personnel on the American Forces Network. It will be available soon in theaters and home video release. It is an important corrective to the fantasy of Reagan that has gotten such a purchase on American consciousness.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Wall Street's Dead End
This article caught my fancy. Why? See the first bolded paragraph.
Wall Street’s Dead End
By FELIX SALMON
Published: February 13, 2011
THE stock market has been big news in recent days. Last week’s report that Deutsche Börse, a giant German exchange, intends to buy the New York Stock Exchange, creating a company worth some $24 billion, arrived shortly after the Dow broke the 12,000-point barrier for the first time since before the financial crisis.
These developments drew headlines because they seemed to exemplify significant trends in the American economy. But look at America’s stock exchanges more closely, and there’s less to them than meets the eye. In truth, the stock market is becoming increasingly irrelevant — a trend that threatens the core principles of American capitalism.
These days a healthy stock market doesn’t mean a healthy economy, as a glance at the high unemployment rate or the low labor-market participation rate will show. The Tea Party is right about one thing: What’s good for Wall Street isn’t necessarily good for Main Street. And the Germans aren’t buying the New York Stock Exchange for its commoditized, highly competitive and ultra-low-margin stock business, but rather for its lucrative derivatives operations.
The stock market is still huge, of course: the companies listed on American exchanges are valued at more than $17 trillion, and they’re not going to disappear in the foreseeable future.
But the glory days of publicly traded companies dominating the American business landscape may be over. The number of companies listed on the major domestic exchanges peaked in 1997 at more than 7,000, and it has been falling ever since. It’s now down to about 4,000 companies, and given its steep downward trend will surely continue to shrink.
Nor are the remaining stocks an obvious proxy for the health of the American economy. Innovative American companies like Apple and Google may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but most of them don’t pay dividends or employ many Americans, and their shares are essentially speculative investments for people making a bet on how we’re going to live in the future.
Put another way, as the number of initial public offerings steadily declines, the stock market is becoming little more than a place for speculators and algorithms to compete over who can trade his way to the most money.
What the market is not doing so well is its core public function: allocating capital efficiently. Apple, for instance, is hugely profitable and sits on an enormous pile of cash; it is thus very unlikely to use its highly rated stock to pay for any acquisitions. It hasn’t used the stock market to raise money since 1981, and there’s a good bet it never will again.
Meanwhile, the companies in which people most want to invest, technology stars like Facebook and Twitter, are managing to avoid the public markets entirely by raising hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars privately. You and I can’t buy into these companies; only very select institutions and well-connected individuals can. And companies prefer it that way.
A private company’s stock isn’t affected by the unpredictable waves of the stock market as a whole. Its chief executive can concentrate on running the company rather than answering endless questions from investors, analysts and the press.
There’s much less pressure to meet quarterly earnings targets. When the stock does trade, the deals can be negotiated quietly, in private markets, rather than fall victim to short-term speculation from the high-frequency traders who populate public markets. And companies love how private markets allow them to avoid much of the regulatory burden of being public.
That burden comes largely from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was created in the wake of the 1929 stock-market crash to protect small investors. But if the move to private markets continues, small investors aren’t going to need much protection any more: they’ll be able to invest in only a relative handful of companies anyway.
Only the biggest and oldest companies are happy being listed on public markets today. As a result, the stock market as a whole increasingly fails to reflect the vibrancy and heterogeneity of the broader economy. To invest in younger, smaller companies, you increasingly need to be a member of the ultra-rich elite.
At risk, then, is the shareholder democracy that America forged, slowly, over the past 50 years. Civilians, rather than plutocrats, controlled corporate America, and that relationship improved standards of living and usually kept the worst of corporate abuses in check. With America Inc. owned by its citizens, the success of American business translated into large gains in the stock portfolios of anybody who put his savings in the market over most of the postwar period.
Today, however, stock markets, once the bedrock of American capitalism, are slowly becoming a noisy sideshow that churns out increasingly meager returns. The show still gets lots of attention, but the real business of the global economy is inexorably leaving the stock market — and the vast majority of us — behind.
Felix Salmon is the finance blogger at Reuters.
Wall Street’s Dead End
By FELIX SALMON
Published: February 13, 2011
THE stock market has been big news in recent days. Last week’s report that Deutsche Börse, a giant German exchange, intends to buy the New York Stock Exchange, creating a company worth some $24 billion, arrived shortly after the Dow broke the 12,000-point barrier for the first time since before the financial crisis.
These developments drew headlines because they seemed to exemplify significant trends in the American economy. But look at America’s stock exchanges more closely, and there’s less to them than meets the eye. In truth, the stock market is becoming increasingly irrelevant — a trend that threatens the core principles of American capitalism.
These days a healthy stock market doesn’t mean a healthy economy, as a glance at the high unemployment rate or the low labor-market participation rate will show. The Tea Party is right about one thing: What’s good for Wall Street isn’t necessarily good for Main Street. And the Germans aren’t buying the New York Stock Exchange for its commoditized, highly competitive and ultra-low-margin stock business, but rather for its lucrative derivatives operations.
The stock market is still huge, of course: the companies listed on American exchanges are valued at more than $17 trillion, and they’re not going to disappear in the foreseeable future.
But the glory days of publicly traded companies dominating the American business landscape may be over. The number of companies listed on the major domestic exchanges peaked in 1997 at more than 7,000, and it has been falling ever since. It’s now down to about 4,000 companies, and given its steep downward trend will surely continue to shrink.
Nor are the remaining stocks an obvious proxy for the health of the American economy. Innovative American companies like Apple and Google may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but most of them don’t pay dividends or employ many Americans, and their shares are essentially speculative investments for people making a bet on how we’re going to live in the future.
Put another way, as the number of initial public offerings steadily declines, the stock market is becoming little more than a place for speculators and algorithms to compete over who can trade his way to the most money.
What the market is not doing so well is its core public function: allocating capital efficiently. Apple, for instance, is hugely profitable and sits on an enormous pile of cash; it is thus very unlikely to use its highly rated stock to pay for any acquisitions. It hasn’t used the stock market to raise money since 1981, and there’s a good bet it never will again.
Meanwhile, the companies in which people most want to invest, technology stars like Facebook and Twitter, are managing to avoid the public markets entirely by raising hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars privately. You and I can’t buy into these companies; only very select institutions and well-connected individuals can. And companies prefer it that way.
A private company’s stock isn’t affected by the unpredictable waves of the stock market as a whole. Its chief executive can concentrate on running the company rather than answering endless questions from investors, analysts and the press.
There’s much less pressure to meet quarterly earnings targets. When the stock does trade, the deals can be negotiated quietly, in private markets, rather than fall victim to short-term speculation from the high-frequency traders who populate public markets. And companies love how private markets allow them to avoid much of the regulatory burden of being public.
That burden comes largely from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was created in the wake of the 1929 stock-market crash to protect small investors. But if the move to private markets continues, small investors aren’t going to need much protection any more: they’ll be able to invest in only a relative handful of companies anyway.
Only the biggest and oldest companies are happy being listed on public markets today. As a result, the stock market as a whole increasingly fails to reflect the vibrancy and heterogeneity of the broader economy. To invest in younger, smaller companies, you increasingly need to be a member of the ultra-rich elite.
At risk, then, is the shareholder democracy that America forged, slowly, over the past 50 years. Civilians, rather than plutocrats, controlled corporate America, and that relationship improved standards of living and usually kept the worst of corporate abuses in check. With America Inc. owned by its citizens, the success of American business translated into large gains in the stock portfolios of anybody who put his savings in the market over most of the postwar period.
Today, however, stock markets, once the bedrock of American capitalism, are slowly becoming a noisy sideshow that churns out increasingly meager returns. The show still gets lots of attention, but the real business of the global economy is inexorably leaving the stock market — and the vast majority of us — behind.
Felix Salmon is the finance blogger at Reuters.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Worth a Re-Read: The Spys Who Loved Us
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
This Friedman piece of July 13, 2010 attracted a lot of attention to this Blog. I like it too, obviously, if only because it highlights that Singapore is worth studying for its fine governance. And ministers are paid $1 million a year. So we know the best and the brightest are equal to the people they are regulating.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/opinion/14friedman.html?hp
This Friedman piece of July 13, 2010 attracted a lot of attention to this Blog. I like it too, obviously, if only because it highlights that Singapore is worth studying for its fine governance. And ministers are paid $1 million a year. So we know the best and the brightest are equal to the people they are regulating.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/opinion/14friedman.html?hp
Friday, July 16, 2010
Haven't Posted Long in a While
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
It's so easy to cut and save to one's blog a short paragraph, with the title automatically embedded so that the reader can click on the whole article.
Sometimes the comments to a Krugman piece are just as good as the Krugman piece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1279278112-1dE8WnYxO7hvuUJFT60F0Q
Thus:
Friday, July 16, 2010
OpinionWorldU.S.N.Y. /
Redo That Voodoo
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Republicans are talking confidently about the midterm elections, which is cause for concern.
Comments are no longer being accepted.
Edward Reno, NV July 16th, 2010 2:00 am
I've only taken two basic university classes in economics. I mostly read my medical journals for work and history for recreation. I do like to follow the news daily. There are a few things that are extremely obvious even to a non-expert like me! For example, that both the Reagan and Bush era tax cuts to the wealthy led to larger deficits and long term decline in growth. And, that deregulating any industry too much can lead to disasters, since the public is left unguarded against excess. What I fail to understand is this: do these conservative Congressional Republicans really believe that tax cuts for the wealthy work? Do they believe that more and more deregulation is in the interest of the nation's safety and prosperity? That is, have they missed the obvious evidence? Or, do they merely spout propaganda to mislead people so that they get the backing of wealthy donors?
Recommend Recommended by 1639 Readers
==================================================
Douglas Minneapolis July 16th, 2010 11:11 am
It would be cynical enough if it were only about pure economics. But it isn't, and it never has been. A nation in which the majority owe more than they make doesn't understand economics at any level. That cupidity makes Americans vulnerable to manipulation on breath-taking scale.
What it is about is ownership. Many fair-minded conservative Americans have been duped for generation after generation by the little club of the hyper-wealthy that appeal to the patriotism and sense of fairness of their poorer compatriots to get them to tilt the playing field ever further. Right now, about a third of America's billionaires inherited it. They didn't work for it. They didn't have to be good at something or know anything to acquire it. It was just handed over - the world's biggest welfare check. The working people who helped earn that wealth for the master in the first place certainly don't see any of it. These insanely wealthy people suddenly find themselves in charge of enormous economic power, and also with choices to make that affect millions of lives. You might as well give a six-year-old a TAC-nuke. People of this stripe lobby Congress, outsource their factories, and bank in the Caymans. They do it because they don't owe this country or its people anything. They belong to a small nation that has no boundaries, and whose passport is universally recognized.
George Carlin said it best. "It's a club.....and you ain't in it."
Recommended by 208 Readers
Jerry St. Louis July 16th, 2010 11:44 am
What is totally amazing to me is that the Republican Party has convinced so many middle and lower income groups to believe that tax cuts on the wealthy is somehow good for them and the country. Now that is Voodoo.
I have a Republican conservative friend who is constantly harping about Obama and higher taxes, and all the while this guy is on Social Security and pays no taxes anyway. Go figure! When I ask him what his complaint is he has no answer, he just hates Obama and because he believes in the Republican idea that we should not need taxes to pay for the hugh military he likes so much.
What the Democrats need is better propaganda and a boss that is a little more aggressive and willing to fight a propaganda ideology war.
Kamachanda Illinois July 16th, 2010 12:05 pm
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue"
"The Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former Bush administration economist all say that tax cuts lead to revenues that are lower than they otherwise would have been – even if they spur some economic growth."
http://www.factcheck.org/
I am so sick of the lies.
Recommend Recommended by 117 Readers Report as Inappropriate188.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) Sal AnthonyQueens, NYJuly 16th, 201012:58 pmDear Mr. Krugman,
The reason we always hear that the rate of a permanent flat tax ought to be between 19 and 23 percent is because no matter how we've tried to configure the tax system over the course of the past eighty years or so, on average, that's what we've managed to collect. This happens because the higher you raise rates, the more those being slammed find ways to avoid getting hit.
As for the Reagan years, anyone can look up the fact we collected half a trillion dollars in taxes in 1981 and nearly a trillion in 1989. Revenues doubled over the course of his presidency. That is irrefutable economic fact. That we spent more than we brought in? So what else is new? As for Clinton's mild increase in taxes generating prosperity - surely you're joking. Subtract the blowout tax revenues brought in by the internet boom on Wall Street and we're quickly back to hundred-billion dollar budget deficits.
The issue is spending. Always has been, always will be. We can debate what we ought to spend ON, and I will surely concede that I'd rather send money to the unemployed than to bail out failing banks, but playing with the tax code is where all the mischief happens, and we should stop doing it.
When you put the same rate on everyone, someone making ten times what someone else makes is paying TEN TIMES the amount of taxes. If that isn't enough for you bloodthirsty liberals, then something's clearly wrong in your moral math.
Cordially,
Sal Anthony
Recommend Recommended by 26 Readers Report as Inappropriate190.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) Nick LentoCliffside Park, NJJuly 16th, 201012:58 pmThis is a time when Democrats should be passing uncompromised good/progressive legislation that is popular with the people and that repudiates the old Bush/Reagan agendas......and then let the Republicans try to obstruct using the filibuster.
Let them talk and talk for days weeks and even months! let them talk right up till election day itself trying to justify their intellectually, morally and spiritually bankrupt positions that simply serve to enhance the short term wealth of a relatively tiny portion of the electorate.
Of course such a tactic would require a bold strategic vision and profoundly courageous leadership.
What the administration still doesn't get is that their poll numbers will go up when they truly stand up and lead. No compromise....just lead and stick to your guns. The American people are not so stupid nor so ignorant as the Republican propaganda machine would have us believe.
Bullies need to be stood up to and defeated. Please Mr President, take the lead and fight back.....enough with the compromising Mr Nice Guy stuff.
Recommend Recommended by 84 Readers Report as Inappropriate191.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) John G.NYCJuly 16th, 201012:59 pmThe GOP has now reduced its entire fiscal program to one Orwellian sentence: Tax cuts good, spending bad.
Recommend Recommended by 55 Readers Report as Inappropriate216.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) richard wilsonEurekaJuly 16th, 20101:12 pmIm embarrased by how gullible the working class in the US are. I bought the Tea Party line and , once my wife became unemployed, I watched Republicans clap for war and give a thumbs down for unemployment extensions. Why? Spending they say. Right. And, you continue to waste money on two unwinnable wars. Our infrastructure is gone, no party has done anything to create jobs and the unemployed are getting worse. If Huey Long came back Id vote for him. Anyone, even Lenin. Trust me, I know exactly what he did.You want a class war---then have one.
Recommend Recommended by 71 Readers Report as Inappropriate242.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) Charles W.NJJuly 16th, 20101:39 pmI will take Voodoo economics over Marxist economics any day.
Recommend Recommended by 21
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Cdr. John Newlin Vista, Calif. July 16th, 2010 2:05 pm
Aye, Dr. Krugman, there's the rub. And where is the President on this issue? Nowhere, Dr. Krugman. He's the invisible Commander-in-Chief. I wonder if he relies on you and others to spill a lot of ink in the Times and other organs so he doesn't have to take to the bully pulpit.
I don't think he's listening, Dr. Krugman. And his deafness is sending this once great country careening to the cliff of oblivion.
Then there is the complication of the Tea Party nut cases. Millions of people actually support this "movement." They are frustrated, angry, and are willing to believe anything that Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck spouts. Why is that? It's because the President has not a clue on how to lead, how to fight for what he believes, how to marshal the assets at his disposal to combat the forces of evil that have risen from the ashes of the Bush/Cheney disaster.
It is being reported today that Timothy Geithner, the Wall Street fox Obama hired to guard the nation's hen house, is lobbying against the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If the President makes the mistake of listening to Geithner, his presidency is doomed and we will suffer the slings and arrows of Boehner and McConnell. Those arrows will slay the middle class in America for certain.
Recommend Recommended by 51 Readers
MarkTucson, Arizona July 16th, 2010 2:07 pm
Paul: I am one Arizonan who CANNOT wait until 2012 to make Senator Kyl unemployed! He may be the most heartless man in America leading the fight to NOT extend unemployment benefits!
Recommend Recommended by 72 Readers
VA Vancouver, BC July 16th, 2010 2:18 pm
Absolutely this is happening right before our very noses. You can read it in any major newspaper or comment site.
The bank bailout fed blood to the voodoo economics vampire.
Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers
RayWashingtonJuly 16th, 2010
2:40 pm
With apologies to Karl Marx: "Tax cuts are the opiate of the masses."
Recommend Recommended by 36 Readers
Comments are no longer being accepted. Please submit a letter to the editor for print consideration.
It's so easy to cut and save to one's blog a short paragraph, with the title automatically embedded so that the reader can click on the whole article.
Sometimes the comments to a Krugman piece are just as good as the Krugman piece.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1279278112-1dE8WnYxO7hvuUJFT60F0Q
Thus:
Friday, July 16, 2010
OpinionWorldU.S.N.Y. /
Redo That Voodoo
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Republicans are talking confidently about the midterm elections, which is cause for concern.
Comments are no longer being accepted.
Edward Reno, NV July 16th, 2010 2:00 am
I've only taken two basic university classes in economics. I mostly read my medical journals for work and history for recreation. I do like to follow the news daily. There are a few things that are extremely obvious even to a non-expert like me! For example, that both the Reagan and Bush era tax cuts to the wealthy led to larger deficits and long term decline in growth. And, that deregulating any industry too much can lead to disasters, since the public is left unguarded against excess. What I fail to understand is this: do these conservative Congressional Republicans really believe that tax cuts for the wealthy work? Do they believe that more and more deregulation is in the interest of the nation's safety and prosperity? That is, have they missed the obvious evidence? Or, do they merely spout propaganda to mislead people so that they get the backing of wealthy donors?
Recommend Recommended by 1639 Readers
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Douglas Minneapolis July 16th, 2010 11:11 am
It would be cynical enough if it were only about pure economics. But it isn't, and it never has been. A nation in which the majority owe more than they make doesn't understand economics at any level. That cupidity makes Americans vulnerable to manipulation on breath-taking scale.
What it is about is ownership. Many fair-minded conservative Americans have been duped for generation after generation by the little club of the hyper-wealthy that appeal to the patriotism and sense of fairness of their poorer compatriots to get them to tilt the playing field ever further. Right now, about a third of America's billionaires inherited it. They didn't work for it. They didn't have to be good at something or know anything to acquire it. It was just handed over - the world's biggest welfare check. The working people who helped earn that wealth for the master in the first place certainly don't see any of it. These insanely wealthy people suddenly find themselves in charge of enormous economic power, and also with choices to make that affect millions of lives. You might as well give a six-year-old a TAC-nuke. People of this stripe lobby Congress, outsource their factories, and bank in the Caymans. They do it because they don't owe this country or its people anything. They belong to a small nation that has no boundaries, and whose passport is universally recognized.
George Carlin said it best. "It's a club.....and you ain't in it."
Recommended by 208 Readers
Jerry St. Louis July 16th, 2010 11:44 am
What is totally amazing to me is that the Republican Party has convinced so many middle and lower income groups to believe that tax cuts on the wealthy is somehow good for them and the country. Now that is Voodoo.
I have a Republican conservative friend who is constantly harping about Obama and higher taxes, and all the while this guy is on Social Security and pays no taxes anyway. Go figure! When I ask him what his complaint is he has no answer, he just hates Obama and because he believes in the Republican idea that we should not need taxes to pay for the hugh military he likes so much.
What the Democrats need is better propaganda and a boss that is a little more aggressive and willing to fight a propaganda ideology war.
Kamachanda Illinois July 16th, 2010 12:05 pm
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue"
"The Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former Bush administration economist all say that tax cuts lead to revenues that are lower than they otherwise would have been – even if they spur some economic growth."
http://www.factcheck.org/
I am so sick of the lies.
Recommend Recommended by 117 Readers Report as Inappropriate188.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) Sal AnthonyQueens, NYJuly 16th, 201012:58 pmDear Mr. Krugman,
The reason we always hear that the rate of a permanent flat tax ought to be between 19 and 23 percent is because no matter how we've tried to configure the tax system over the course of the past eighty years or so, on average, that's what we've managed to collect. This happens because the higher you raise rates, the more those being slammed find ways to avoid getting hit.
As for the Reagan years, anyone can look up the fact we collected half a trillion dollars in taxes in 1981 and nearly a trillion in 1989. Revenues doubled over the course of his presidency. That is irrefutable economic fact. That we spent more than we brought in? So what else is new? As for Clinton's mild increase in taxes generating prosperity - surely you're joking. Subtract the blowout tax revenues brought in by the internet boom on Wall Street and we're quickly back to hundred-billion dollar budget deficits.
The issue is spending. Always has been, always will be. We can debate what we ought to spend ON, and I will surely concede that I'd rather send money to the unemployed than to bail out failing banks, but playing with the tax code is where all the mischief happens, and we should stop doing it.
When you put the same rate on everyone, someone making ten times what someone else makes is paying TEN TIMES the amount of taxes. If that isn't enough for you bloodthirsty liberals, then something's clearly wrong in your moral math.
Cordially,
Sal Anthony
Recommend Recommended by 26 Readers Report as Inappropriate190.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) Nick LentoCliffside Park, NJJuly 16th, 201012:58 pmThis is a time when Democrats should be passing uncompromised good/progressive legislation that is popular with the people and that repudiates the old Bush/Reagan agendas......and then let the Republicans try to obstruct using the filibuster.
Let them talk and talk for days weeks and even months! let them talk right up till election day itself trying to justify their intellectually, morally and spiritually bankrupt positions that simply serve to enhance the short term wealth of a relatively tiny portion of the electorate.
Of course such a tactic would require a bold strategic vision and profoundly courageous leadership.
What the administration still doesn't get is that their poll numbers will go up when they truly stand up and lead. No compromise....just lead and stick to your guns. The American people are not so stupid nor so ignorant as the Republican propaganda machine would have us believe.
Bullies need to be stood up to and defeated. Please Mr President, take the lead and fight back.....enough with the compromising Mr Nice Guy stuff.
Recommend Recommended by 84 Readers Report as Inappropriate191.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) John G.NYCJuly 16th, 201012:59 pmThe GOP has now reduced its entire fiscal program to one Orwellian sentence: Tax cuts good, spending bad.
Recommend Recommended by 55 Readers Report as Inappropriate216.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) richard wilsonEurekaJuly 16th, 20101:12 pmIm embarrased by how gullible the working class in the US are. I bought the Tea Party line and , once my wife became unemployed, I watched Republicans clap for war and give a thumbs down for unemployment extensions. Why? Spending they say. Right. And, you continue to waste money on two unwinnable wars. Our infrastructure is gone, no party has done anything to create jobs and the unemployed are getting worse. If Huey Long came back Id vote for him. Anyone, even Lenin. Trust me, I know exactly what he did.You want a class war---then have one.
Recommend Recommended by 71 Readers Report as Inappropriate242.HIGHLIGHT (what's this?) Charles W.NJJuly 16th, 20101:39 pmI will take Voodoo economics over Marxist economics any day.
Recommend Recommended by 21
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Cdr. John Newlin Vista, Calif. July 16th, 2010 2:05 pm
Aye, Dr. Krugman, there's the rub. And where is the President on this issue? Nowhere, Dr. Krugman. He's the invisible Commander-in-Chief. I wonder if he relies on you and others to spill a lot of ink in the Times and other organs so he doesn't have to take to the bully pulpit.
I don't think he's listening, Dr. Krugman. And his deafness is sending this once great country careening to the cliff of oblivion.
Then there is the complication of the Tea Party nut cases. Millions of people actually support this "movement." They are frustrated, angry, and are willing to believe anything that Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck spouts. Why is that? It's because the President has not a clue on how to lead, how to fight for what he believes, how to marshal the assets at his disposal to combat the forces of evil that have risen from the ashes of the Bush/Cheney disaster.
It is being reported today that Timothy Geithner, the Wall Street fox Obama hired to guard the nation's hen house, is lobbying against the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If the President makes the mistake of listening to Geithner, his presidency is doomed and we will suffer the slings and arrows of Boehner and McConnell. Those arrows will slay the middle class in America for certain.
Recommend Recommended by 51 Readers
MarkTucson, Arizona July 16th, 2010 2:07 pm
Paul: I am one Arizonan who CANNOT wait until 2012 to make Senator Kyl unemployed! He may be the most heartless man in America leading the fight to NOT extend unemployment benefits!
Recommend Recommended by 72 Readers
VA Vancouver, BC July 16th, 2010 2:18 pm
Absolutely this is happening right before our very noses. You can read it in any major newspaper or comment site.
The bank bailout fed blood to the voodoo economics vampire.
Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers
RayWashingtonJuly 16th, 2010
2:40 pm
With apologies to Karl Marx: "Tax cuts are the opiate of the masses."
Recommend Recommended by 36 Readers
Comments are no longer being accepted. Please submit a letter to the editor for print consideration.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Friedman: Op-Ed Columnist - The Spies Who Loved Us - NYTimes.com
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
Sometimes Friedman is good by accentuating the negative!
Op-Ed Columnist - The Spies Who Loved Us - NYTimes.com: "Look, if you had told me that we had just arrested 11 Finns who were spying on our schools, then I’d really have felt good — since Finland’s public schools always score at the top of the world education tables. If you had told me that 11 Singaporeans were arrested spying on how our government works, then I’d really have felt good — since Singapore has one of the cleanest, well-run bureaucracies in the world and pays its cabinet ministers $1 million-plus a year. If you had told me that 11 Hong Kong Chinese had been arrested studying how we regulate our financial markets, then I’d really have felt good — since that is something Hong Kong excels at. And if you had told me that 11 South Koreans were arrested studying our high-speed bandwidth penetration, then I’d really have felt good — because we’ve been lagging them for a long time."
Sometimes Friedman is good by accentuating the negative!
Op-Ed Columnist - The Spies Who Loved Us - NYTimes.com: "Look, if you had told me that we had just arrested 11 Finns who were spying on our schools, then I’d really have felt good — since Finland’s public schools always score at the top of the world education tables. If you had told me that 11 Singaporeans were arrested spying on how our government works, then I’d really have felt good — since Singapore has one of the cleanest, well-run bureaucracies in the world and pays its cabinet ministers $1 million-plus a year. If you had told me that 11 Hong Kong Chinese had been arrested studying how we regulate our financial markets, then I’d really have felt good — since that is something Hong Kong excels at. And if you had told me that 11 South Koreans were arrested studying our high-speed bandwidth penetration, then I’d really have felt good — because we’ve been lagging them for a long time."
David Brooks: Op-Ed Columnist - An Economy of Grinds - NYTimes.com
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
David Brooks writes pieces that are often hard to categorize, but I read everything he writes. This one deserves note and reading over and over again. It covers an interesting class view that fits with my own.
Knowing Brooks's Republican political-history, this piece is not of small import. David Brooks is slowly feeling his way into a world-view that is anti-establishment, anti-corporate. Far from where he was during the Bush years. Click on and start at the beginning.
Op-Ed Columnist - An Economy of Grinds - NYTimes.com: "Since the princes are nicer and more impressive, it is easy to be seduced into the belief that they also are more trustworthy. This is false. During the last few years, for example, the princes at Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers behaved with incredible stupidity while the hedge fund loners often behaved with impressive restraint."
David Brooks writes pieces that are often hard to categorize, but I read everything he writes. This one deserves note and reading over and over again. It covers an interesting class view that fits with my own.
Knowing Brooks's Republican political-history, this piece is not of small import. David Brooks is slowly feeling his way into a world-view that is anti-establishment, anti-corporate. Far from where he was during the Bush years. Click on and start at the beginning.
Op-Ed Columnist - An Economy of Grinds - NYTimes.com: "Since the princes are nicer and more impressive, it is easy to be seduced into the belief that they also are more trustworthy. This is false. During the last few years, for example, the princes at Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers behaved with incredible stupidity while the hedge fund loners often behaved with impressive restraint."
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist - A Little Economic Realism - NYTimes.com
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
David Brooks weighs in on the opposite side of Paul Krugman. Keynes 1; Friedman 1.
This is important and importantly bad. 1930's here we come.
But his logic about corporate enterpreneurs is flawless.
Op-Ed Columnist - A Little Economic Realism - NYTimes.com: "You can’t read models, but you do talk to entrepreneurs in Racine and Yakima. Higher deficits will make them more insecure and more risk-averse, not less. They’re afraid of a fiscal crisis. They’re afraid of future tax increases. They don’t believe government-stimulated growth is real and lasting. Maybe they are wrong to feel this way, but they do. And they are the ones who invest and hire, not the theorists."
David Brooks weighs in on the opposite side of Paul Krugman. Keynes 1; Friedman 1.
This is important and importantly bad. 1930's here we come.
But his logic about corporate enterpreneurs is flawless.
Op-Ed Columnist - A Little Economic Realism - NYTimes.com: "You can’t read models, but you do talk to entrepreneurs in Racine and Yakima. Higher deficits will make them more insecure and more risk-averse, not less. They’re afraid of a fiscal crisis. They’re afraid of future tax increases. They don’t believe government-stimulated growth is real and lasting. Maybe they are wrong to feel this way, but they do. And they are the ones who invest and hire, not the theorists."
Sunday, July 4, 2010
What Is Goldman Sachs Thinking? « The Baseline Scenario
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
This is a simple piece but very profound. Please click on and read on. This type of piece by Simon Johnson nips dangerous thinking in the bud. But to what avail? The smart guys start something and then the dumb guys plow in and overdo it just as the smart guys are doing a 180. It's the nature of capitalism. Do it until Goldman Sachs calls you up and says "you owe us 3 gazillion; pay up," and then does (already did) a giant squid-sucking vehicle that drives the previous-good-thing down and the taxpayers have to pay. But the taxpayers can't pay. Thus chaos.
What Is Goldman Sachs Thinking? « The Baseline Scenario: "Financial Times (p.13, front of the Companies and Markets section):
“Debt-to-GDP ratios in the developed world are about double those in emerging markets and they’re growing. This makes emerging markets interesting because you’re pick up incremental spread [higher interest rates compared with developed world rates], and in return you’re actually taking less macroeconomic risk.”This is a dangerous view for three reasons."
This is a simple piece but very profound. Please click on and read on. This type of piece by Simon Johnson nips dangerous thinking in the bud. But to what avail? The smart guys start something and then the dumb guys plow in and overdo it just as the smart guys are doing a 180. It's the nature of capitalism. Do it until Goldman Sachs calls you up and says "you owe us 3 gazillion; pay up," and then does (already did) a giant squid-sucking vehicle that drives the previous-good-thing down and the taxpayers have to pay. But the taxpayers can't pay. Thus chaos.
What Is Goldman Sachs Thinking? « The Baseline Scenario: "Financial Times (p.13, front of the Companies and Markets section):
“Debt-to-GDP ratios in the developed world are about double those in emerging markets and they’re growing. This makes emerging markets interesting because you’re pick up incremental spread [higher interest rates compared with developed world rates], and in return you’re actually taking less macroeconomic risk.”This is a dangerous view for three reasons."
Friday, July 2, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist - Such, Such Are His Joys - NYTimes.com
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
An odd column by David Brooks, that, simply, simply, must be read:
Op-Ed Columnist - Such, Such Are His Joys - NYTimes.com: "On Wednesday, the essayist Christopher Hitchens announced that he has cancer of the esophagus and will soon begin chemotherapy. There are others who know him better than I who can reflect on his illness."
An odd column by David Brooks, that, simply, simply, must be read:
Op-Ed Columnist - Such, Such Are His Joys - NYTimes.com: "On Wednesday, the essayist Christopher Hitchens announced that he has cancer of the esophagus and will soon begin chemotherapy. There are others who know him better than I who can reflect on his illness."
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist - Wishing Will Make It So - NYTimes.com
Barton II: Op-Ed Columnist - Wishing Will Make It So - NYTimes.com: "This week, Barton became the star of another hearing, which was convened to grill Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP. The rosy-cheeked Englishman had the kind of dopey sullenness you might find in an underachieving student at the Hogwarts detention room. But Barton seemed smitten, and he apologized to BP for the president’s “shakedown” of the company for a $20 billion fund to compensate the people of the gulf for the effects of the spill. This is perhaps not the stupidest remark any elected official has ever blurted out, but possibly the dumbest that ever came in the form of a prepared statement.
Every Democrat in Washington did the happy dance. The party could not point out too often that if the Republicans took control of the House, Barton would be leader of the House energy committee."
Every Democrat in Washington did the happy dance. The party could not point out too often that if the Republicans took control of the House, Barton would be leader of the House energy committee."
Friday, June 18, 2010
Joe L. Barton
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
Thank you Joe L. Barton. You have saved the 2010 November election. ABR. Stands for Asian Development Bank where my daughter Genny works. But for today and this season it stands for "Anything but Republicans."
Thank you Joe L. Barton. You have saved the 2010 November election. ABR. Stands for Asian Development Bank where my daughter Genny works. But for today and this season it stands for "Anything but Republicans."
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist - Unfazed by Reality - NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist - Unfazed by Reality - NYTimes.com: "When you put people out of work, you cripple the quality of life of their entire families. When you start dismantling the public schools and driving teachers from the classrooms, you damage — and in many instances cripple — the lifetime prospects of untold numbers of pupils. When you undermine a recovery that is as fragile as this one, which is as fragile as a crate of eggs, you undermine the economic health of the entire nation.
These are the kinds of disasters that the deficit hawks, secure in their ideological dream world, are quite happily prepared to live with."
These are the kinds of disasters that the deficit hawks, secure in their ideological dream world, are quite happily prepared to live with."
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Very Angry Tea Party - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
Aside from the article on the discovery of vast mineral resources in Afghanistan, this essay-article is the most profound thing in the New York Times today. Or season.
The Very Angry Tea Party - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com: "When it comes to the Tea Party’s concrete policy proposals, things get fuzzier and more contradictory: keep the government out of health care, but leave Medicare alone; balance the budget, but don’t raise taxes; let individuals take care of themselves, but leave Social Security alone; and, of course, the paradoxical demand not to support Wall Street, to let the hard-working producers of wealth get on with it without regulation and government stimulus, but also to make sure the banks can lend to small businesses and responsible homeowners in a stable but growing economy."
Aside from the article on the discovery of vast mineral resources in Afghanistan, this essay-article is the most profound thing in the New York Times today. Or season.
The Very Angry Tea Party - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com: "When it comes to the Tea Party’s concrete policy proposals, things get fuzzier and more contradictory: keep the government out of health care, but leave Medicare alone; balance the budget, but don’t raise taxes; let individuals take care of themselves, but leave Social Security alone; and, of course, the paradoxical demand not to support Wall Street, to let the hard-working producers of wealth get on with it without regulation and government stimulus, but also to make sure the banks can lend to small businesses and responsible homeowners in a stable but growing economy."
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Read the Article; Then Read the Comment
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
Compelling article showing Obama to be weak weak weak. Then a brilliant comment putting things into perspective. All in the wonderful (and I mean this) Saturday Globe and Mail today.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/konrad-yakabuski/oil-spill-casts-a-menacing-pall-over-obamas-agenda/article1601747/
The comment:
Creative Investor, interesting analysis.
I live near the Rockies. Somebody, at some time, made the decision to build the TransCanada highway right through the mountains.
Creative Investor, I assume that your follow the same analysis here, and that you blame the people who decided to build the highway for every car crash, whether it was due to a drunk driver, negligence, bad weather, whatever.
Because, obviously, there would have been NO CAR CRASHES on a mountain highway if the highway had never been built. So true, so true.
There have been some train derailments on the tracks near the mountains, too. Drat those politicians who decided to build those train tracks across the country. There wouldn't have been even one single solitary train derailment if they hadn't built the railroad right across the country.
Creative Investor, I deduce that you aren't troubled by the reports that BP was cutting corners immediately before the explosion. Perhaps you think that oil companies should be excused from any responsibility to perform their work prudently and to the highest standards of the industry. Because, after all, according to your analysis, once the federal government allowed them to drill offshore, all the blame goes to the government and not one iota of blame goes to the company, regardless of how reckless or negligent it may have been.
Compelling article showing Obama to be weak weak weak. Then a brilliant comment putting things into perspective. All in the wonderful (and I mean this) Saturday Globe and Mail today.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/konrad-yakabuski/oil-spill-casts-a-menacing-pall-over-obamas-agenda/article1601747/
The comment:
Creative Investor, interesting analysis.
I live near the Rockies. Somebody, at some time, made the decision to build the TransCanada highway right through the mountains.
Creative Investor, I assume that your follow the same analysis here, and that you blame the people who decided to build the highway for every car crash, whether it was due to a drunk driver, negligence, bad weather, whatever.
Because, obviously, there would have been NO CAR CRASHES on a mountain highway if the highway had never been built. So true, so true.
There have been some train derailments on the tracks near the mountains, too. Drat those politicians who decided to build those train tracks across the country. There wouldn't have been even one single solitary train derailment if they hadn't built the railroad right across the country.
Creative Investor, I deduce that you aren't troubled by the reports that BP was cutting corners immediately before the explosion. Perhaps you think that oil companies should be excused from any responsibility to perform their work prudently and to the highest standards of the industry. Because, after all, according to your analysis, once the federal government allowed them to drill offshore, all the blame goes to the government and not one iota of blame goes to the company, regardless of how reckless or negligent it may have been.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Magazine Preview - Democrat in Chief? - NYTimes.com
Magazine Preview - Democrat in Chief? - NYTimes.com: "This didn’t satisfy the Congressional leaders, who thought the message had to be more about their “fighting for the middle class” versus the indifference of Republicans. They wanted Obama to go out there and tell the public that installing a Republican Congress would be like climbing into a time machine and teleporting right back to the Bush era. Privatizing Social Security, ending Medicare, repealing the health care law and reinstating tax cuts for the wealthy — that’s what the Republicans were proposing, and the lawmakers said they needed Obama to drive that point home with the electorate.
Oh David Brooks!
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
Read about The Big Shaggy and David's defense of the liberal education. One of his best.
Natural Gas Guru: Op-Ed Columnist - History for Dollars - NYTimes.com
Read about The Big Shaggy and David's defense of the liberal education. One of his best.
Natural Gas Guru: Op-Ed Columnist - History for Dollars - NYTimes.com
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist - An Unnatural Disaster - NYTimes.com
Op-Ed Columnist - An Unnatural Disaster - NYTimes.com: "“Where I was wrong,” said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, “was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.”
Bob Herbert
"With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow 'had their act together' with regard to worst-case scenarios.'"
Bob Herbert
"With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow 'had their act together' with regard to worst-case scenarios.'"
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor - The Rush Limbaugh Victory - NYTimes.com
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
The following post is spot-on, but late by about ten years. Where has mainstream media been? Intimidated, that's where. Democrats too have been intimidated, not just Republicans.
Op-Ed Contributor - The Rush Limbaugh Victory - NYTimes.com: "But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh."
The following post is spot-on, but late by about ten years. Where has mainstream media been? Intimidated, that's where. Democrats too have been intimidated, not just Republicans.
Op-Ed Contributor - The Rush Limbaugh Victory - NYTimes.com: "But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh."
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