I’m willing to give Rick Perry credit for one thing: he’s very clear on his objectives as a politician, even if those goals are batshit insane. He’s even published a list of priorities for a Perry presidency. These are actually seven reasons to retire him to some patch of parched desert in Texas and leave him to mummify.
He really hates “activist judges”, that catch-all phrase for judges that make decisions conservatives don’t like. His solution? Bog our congress down in appointment hearings that the Republicans will blindly block.
1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
Also, hey, let’s gut the Supreme Court and give all of its powers to congress! Where precedent can be ignored and the crony capitalists can both make the laws and interpret them!
2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
Meanwhile, let’s bankrupt the federal government and remove its major source of revenue. We don’t need no central government, after all, just let the states each do it their own way. So why is Perry running for president again?
3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
The senate is not elitist enough. Let’s just appoint ’em all — and just think, the starving government can make a little money by selling those appointments to corporate citizens. Senator Monsanto, Senator Boeing, anyone?
4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
In addition to abolishing all income tax revenue (see #3), Perry will require the government to balance its budget every year. $0 in, $0 out. Easy.
5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
It’s not enough that he plans to tear up the established political structure of the entire country, and destroy the federal government…he then wants to turn around and use that gutted national government to compel all the states to obey his medieval social agenda. Consistency isn’t his strong suit, nor is compassion. So, high on his list of priorities we find…slap the gays down.
6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
And after those gays are shut up, let’s get to work on the wimmin. No abortions! Ever!
7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.
And this deranged conservative maniac is being treated as a serious candidate by the media? Madness rules.
I’m ashamed to say I kinda-sorta agree with points 1 and 5. Not exactly as stated mind you, just with the general idea.
1) No position in a democratic government should be permanent, and that includes the judiciary. However, I wouldn’t mind a term limit of a decade or more either. Judges tend to get better with experience, and a short term limit would rob them of that.
5) Well, spending should approximately equal revenue. Shit happens, and sometimes the economy tanks. It happens, which is why this must never be set in stone. A limit on the deficit wouldn’t be a bad start, or a maximum number of fiscal years of running a deficit. Not that any constitutional amendment of this sort would quell the incessant tax/cut debate, but it’s a start at least.
The rest is of course nothing more than the lunacy of a thinkin’ challenged imbecile. I know most of you aren’t from Texas, but believe me, we don’t exactly like Perry down here either…
You’ve probably seen, circulating about, a picture which is an amalgamation of Perry’s face with George W. Bush’s face.
It’s wrong; Perry is much worse than Bush.
That list should ensure Perry doesn’t get elected dogcatcher anywhere.
He obviously hates the USA and the federal government. He even said he wanted Texas to seccede.
That being said, these days in the decline of the American empire, anything can happen. We saw something similar on another continent in the mid-20th century. It didn’t end well.
Senators from Coca Cola, Reynolds, Jack Daniels, and Apple.
They did this in Space Merchants, Pohl and Kornbluth.
Now the rest of the country can see what it has been like to live in Texas during the Perry regime – sigh.
Radpumpkin – I sort of agree with you on #1. My solution would be that they should have a mandatory retirement age of say, 60 or 62. That would guarantee some “young blood” once in a while, and get the senile ones off of the bench.
That’s an easy question, PZ. You answered it yourself: “to tear up the established political structure of the entire country, and destroy the federal government”.
I’d never vote for him; I think he’s just as insane as everyone else here. That said, I also think that 1) and 2) aren’t bad ideas.
What Perry doesn’t realize (not surprisingly) is that a significant portion of Republican and corporate power stems from a long series of supreme court decisions that have been phenomenally corrosive to even the facade of American democracy. Without lifetime terms, a Roberts court would most likely last for a lot less time than it would otherwise, and although this is a hypothetical because the Democrats are too craven to consider it, a massively Democratic Congress would then be empowered to override both Bush v. Gore and more recently, Citizens United.
That’s good to know. Bush is partly responsible for two of my friends ending up dead in Iraq.
He also slaughtered my 401(K) plan and the country I live in.
Could it get worse? Sure. I still have some friends above ground, my cats, and a stockpile of white wine.
For once Canada is in front of the US. Our federal government got out of our bedrooms a few years ago. Strange that he wants the Feds out of the business sector, but in the personal life’s of the taxpayers. Homosexuality is evvvvvvil, but Worldcom, Enron and Bernie M. are good?
Appointing senators does away with the Federal Election Commission and unneeded election rules and costs. Democracy is just a theory anyway.
It’s times like this that I have to say I’ve lost the feeling of national identity. “America” is sounding more like something I read about in history books than something in the present.
Perry is so much worse than Bush that Bush thinks Perry is dumb.
I’m cross-posting the text below from The Endless Thread. I think it belongs here, in a discussion of Republican candidates who do not understand economics (as well as a host of other subjects).
I sent Robert H. Frank, Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University a request for clarification of something he said when he was interviewed on a TV news show.
He was kind enough to reply, and it’s an excellent take-down of the Rethuglican approach to creating (or not) jobs, and to addressing the issue of unemployment in general. Though he didn’t name names, nor even political parties, I think Frank’s take on this soundly supports putting people back to work with some government help, like building infrastructure.
Here’s the email Frank sent to me:
Rick Perry would worsen the economic situation.
Abolishing Senate elections is popular with the Tea Party for some reason. As I’ve moted before elsewhere I find this amusing since it would make the US more like Canada, where our senators are appointed, and the impression one gets of Tea Party people is that they’re the folks who hate places like Canada for being too “socialist.”
Well, we know what that means. I’m going for May 2012 in the sweepstake.
He doesn’t list these out on his campaign website (at least not that I could find) so it seems that his people have wisely suggested that he tone down his christofascist retoric in public. It’s a good thing that this list is getting out there, and I hope a lot of middle of the road Americans will see it.
I agree that point 1 isn’t all bad, but I’d prefer a mandatory retirement at 65 or 70.
I could accept point 2 if the threshold was set at 90%. This would allow truly bad decisions to be thrown out. One would hope, however, that the judicial appointment process has enough integrity that such a condition would never occur.
Re point 5: we had a balanced budget act here in British Columbia for a while. The problem is it just gets repealed when necessary. And the chance of getting it enshrined as a constitutional amendment (in either of our countries) is so remote it isn’t worth discussing.
We have appointed senators in Canada, and it is just one big patronage boondoggle where sitting governments get to reward their cronies.
I’m having a really hard time wrapping my head around why Tea Partiers and Rick Perry want to do away with direct election of senators. I’m assuming they want to replace it with appointment of senators by the executive branch. Or am I missing something there?
It just strikes me as bizarre that a populist states-rights movement whose name comes from a protest about taxation without representation wants to do away with representation.
Let’s bring back the spoils system!
I wonder when we’ll repeat the Roman Republic. I mean, that lasted about 500 years, but today’s consumer doesn’t have the time to wait that long. They’re gonna want to speed up the process!
I’m from Canada.
I don’t want to elect senators.
I want senators appointed from the general population, like for jury duty.
They can work from home, over the internet.
They will be paid (modestly) and receive a (small) pension after their (limited) term.
or
They can continue the patronage appointments but limit the term to 10 years after which we kill them and eat them at a Canada Day barbeque.
Senators were originally appointed by the state legislatures. The House was supposed to represent the people and the Senate was supposed to represent the states.
I would assume they want to go back to that.
Actually, if he’s smart (or at least devious), his first priority will be changing the requirements for amending the Constitution. He might have trouble getting 3/4 of the state legislatures to approve some of his crappy ideas. Watch for him to paint the requirements for change as some kind of heavy anchor weighing us down.
For a party that practically deifies their image of the founding fathers, they sure don’t like their actual ideas.
Nos. 2 and 4 pretty much end the rule of law in America, while 3 and 5 render the federal government powerless to do anything, including provide for the national defense, as far as I can tell.
Does this guy ever think anything through? Or do real-world results not matter? Seriously, this is one campaign train that truly
pulled out with a jerk.
@sourtomatosand, #14
I think it’s a case of “Constitutional fundamentalism” for the common believers (the wealthy ideologues who bankroll them like the idea because it increases the anti-democratic elements of the American political system). The former see the country going in the wrong direction and assume it’s because the United States drifted away from the Constitution. Therefore, by restoring the Constitution to its original, pure, form, they can restore the country.
The way it was originally done was with Senators being appointed by state legislatures instead. It was a ludicrously corrupt system that produced even worse results than what we have now (which is saying a lot…) and was changed by Constitutional amendment in the 1910s iirc.
To those asking about direct election of senators: Before we had direct election, they were chosen by their respective state legislatures. Repealing the 17th would return us to that system.
Why would they want that? Presumably, they think it would strengthen the role of the states vs. the federal government. They’re all about “states’ rights”, you see. Except when they aren’t (see #6 and #7).
I’m wondering if, in the long term, a Perry presidency would be good for the country. He would be so crazy that an actual liberal-progressive movement could gain some ground in the 2014 mid-terms. At least one Dem who’s a governor or senator would seize the mood and run on from the left, and actually win. It could reverse the trend of weak and capitulating Democrats for years.
I’m dreaming, of course- the safe bet is to half-heartedly vote for Obama again.
I think that’s what they said about Reagan. I know it’s what they said about Bush II. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.
Wow, I wasn’t aware that the wingnut brigade had already moved up into arguing against the 17th amendment and the direct election of senators. I don’t even know how that argument is supposed to work.
“Senators are elitest, out of touch with the people, come from old money, and have way too much individual power to hold any form of progress. Obviously the solution to that is to further remove any ability of the common people to elect them in any way.”
I guess, it’s supposed to be a “state’s right” dog whistle that would argue that senators would be so much better at keeping darkie down if only the “right people” could elect them, but then, why not emphasize the state’s right angle instead of blankly acknowledging you want to remove direct election which should sound like a good thing even to the brain-addled ranks of the wingnut army?
I think that overlooked portion is the real horror of this document.
Not to diminish the rest, but the rest is at least standard wingnut, which serves as a strong reminder why one should never vote for a Republican or argue for conservative beliefs, but that part is definitely a naked attempt behind the big money backing Perry to subvert democracy even more than his fellow snakes.
#21: Yeah, that was the hope with Bush. All it did, though, is make a person with 1990’s Republican ideas seem like a good choice, and it’s leaving us with the choice in 2012 to re-elect that horrible disappointment or gamble on a complete fucking idiot.
That doesn’t work. It’s been tried in history many, many times.
What happens is the wingnuts seize power as long as they can, any way they can, and destroy everything. It can take generations to recover, if a recovery even happens.
The White Russians said it about the Reds in 1917. They were right but it took nearly a century before things started heading their way again.
I get the feeling that the teabaggers think that either they’re going to rule forever so it’s ok to eliminate basic protections because hey-my guys will always be there and will always have my back; Or perhaps they know the end of the road is near and they have to make it as big an orgy as possible for now and keep it going for as long as possible, future be damned.
I rather suspect that it’s a combination: consciously they think the former, unconsciously they recognize the latter. The latter has also has the advantage of explaining economic, energy, business, and environmental policies.
P.S.:
See, your mistake is in thinking of “states’ rights” as being opposed to federal authority. It is that, too, but there’s another aspect to it that’s really more important: it’s in opposition to “people’s rights”. I quote the 10th Amendment:
To the states, OR to the people. If you read that, and then call yourself a “states’ rights” advocate… what are you really saying?
The most notable “states’ rights” that have historically been advocated for by people who embrace that label have been slavery and (a century later) segregation.
Boo.
Notice that many on the hard right attack the direct election of senators, enshrined in the 17th amendment, on the grounds of states’ rights.
This to me is a sign that reappeal of the 17th is a stalking horse for reappeal of the 14th; they would like to know, how far can they get, attacking an amendment on the grounds of states’ rights. If they think they’re getting far enough to validate the strategy, they’ll turn on the 14th. Indeed, some of them have already.
Now of course they have other reasons for attacking the 17th; the Republicans have had great successes in state legislatures recently, and it’s likely reappeal of the 17th would gain them seats in the federal senate. Further – they have a long demonstrated love of patronage systems that enable them to reward their cronies.
I remember being in Seoul, South Korea during the 2008 presidential campaign. Being in the best-educated country in the world, almost all Koreans I met expressed great disdain for George W. Bush and were excited about the prospect of Barack Obama winning the upcoming elections.
I had so many people there ask me how I possibly could have voted for Bush (even though I didn’t). I can’t even imagine what they will think of us if (when?) Perry wins.
Whenever someone like rick perry says he wants to end abortion they never tell you about phase 2 of the plan. Then again, it is only for people who can think ahead a year or two into the plan, so the folks who are for it don’t really care too much.
Obviously a lack of abortion will end in a lot of children being born that can’t be cared for. Since people of color are disproportionately poor there will be a lot of nonwhite babies being born to poor families, pissing off the honky constituents of perry and his friends. I am sure rick perry doesn’t think the tax payer should have to shoulder the burden, so it will probably mean forced sterilizations, disproportionately for women of color, at some point in time. How could it not? Without abortion or a platform of economic justice there are few options that would be available.
Perhaps. But what if he wrecks the country in 2013?
hey also… isn’t the majority for gay marriage now? Dude is livin’ in the past I guess.
zyxek | 20 August 2011 at 1:42 pm:
Naive.
I could give many reasons, but I’ll start with one: Abortion. Ginsburg and Breyer are both relatively old. Let’s say Ginsburg has a 40% chance of outlasting Perry, and Breyer a 70% of outlasting Perry. That’s a 28% chance they both outlast Perry, or a 72% Perry gets to replace one or the other.
There are already 4 judges on SCOTUS that would approve laws making abortion illegal, perhaps with exceptions for rape. And Kennedy would probably approve plenty of restrictions on abortion. Now what happens if Rick Perry gets to replace Ginsburg or Breyer? 5 judges willing to ban abortion, and a 6th willing to restrict it. Those same 5 judges would also favor restrictions on most forms of contraceptives, and on safe sex education.
And a Rick Perry court is not something that would go away when his term(s) were over.
The kooks want to outlaw abortion.
They hate paying welfare to single mothers with kids, many of whom will be nonwhite. This takes tax money, lots of it.
So what is left when the number of unwanted, nonwhite babies skyrockets?
Already we have a problem with young women abandoning their babies in garbage cans or what not.
I suspect they will just bring back the custom of exposing unwanted babies on hillsides somewhere. This isn’t even that old a practice. It was so common even in the UK a few centuries ago, that we have a English word for these infants. Foundlings.
Re Perry’s 6. 7. Note how quickly the ‘states rights’ talk ceases once they feel they can use the federal government to enforce their ideology. The whole ‘states rights’ is just a divide-and-conquer tactic they employ where they can’t tackle the entire country at once. As they grow stronger, it will be slowly phased out, till they can control the federal government completely. Then they will make an U turn and abolish any state autonomy to enforce their totalitarian ideology on states where they didn’t gain total control yet.
Don’t be stupid. They will be sent to religious orphanages where they can be used for sex and slave labor.
I’m… not really kidding :(
Nah, they will just give their slaves less food and more whip till the death rate matches the birth rate.
They might. It will still happen though. Some women would consider a quick death on a cold hillside an improvement over being raised in fundie xian and Catholic religious orphanages to be unskilled labor.
In societies that practice infant abandonment, people had the option of just going out and picking them up as “foundlings”. They could raise them for whatever they wanted, adopted children, sex slaves, farm workers, servants.
Probably half of them died right away. No big deal, just go out and find another one.
Huh. So Perry’s list of priorities as President are a list of amendments to the Constitution? When the President has no direct involvement in the amendment process? Or is that going to be another amendment?
What makes you think that idiots like Perry actually have a clue as to what the US Constitution actually says? They tend to use the Rush Limbaugh Abridged Constitution.
Another possibility regarding the added and/or subtracted ammendments he is proposing: perhaps he hopes that there will be serious opposition and no way to force them through GOP-style, and the radical right wing whackos can then propose a Constitutional Convention to ‘solve’ the problems quickly. Which would either start an actual shooting civil war, or would make the United States of America into an actual Christian Nation.
The more that comes out about this guy on the national stage, the better. Now the question comes is if any of it will stick. It hasn’t tended to do that in Texas.
It will take a lot of work too tear off all the Teflon with this guy. That’s the key–get the Teflon. It’s harder to do against a Republican, especially one as oily as this one, but it can be done. Expect the national press to gloss over it, though. They always kiss Republican ass whenever they can.
What makes you think that idiots like Perry actually have a clue as to what the US Constitution actually says? They tend to use the Rush Limbaugh Abridged Constitution.
Do you suppose a President can’t influence Amendments? Do you think that a power-mad fuckface like Rick Perry wouldn’t try?
Republitards have most of the state legislatures. If they keep them, Perry getting them to push those Amendments through would be a whole lot more likely than you can imagine.
Don’t discount this guy when it comes to using the Presidency to rile up Republican state legislatures to dance to his tune. He is 100% capable of it!
I’ve just finished a tl;dr series of posts on Keynesian economics, the bugbear of conservatives like Perry.
From the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 to the time the economy hit bottom in 1933, real GDP plunged nearly 30%. Real per capita disposable income sank nearly 40%. More than 12 million people were thrown out of work; the unemployment rate soared from 3% in 1929 to 25% in 1933. Some 85,000 businesses failed. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes. By 1933, about half of all mortgages on all urban, owner-occupied houses were delinquent.
The economy began to recover after 1933, but a huge recessionary gap persisted. Another downturn began in 1937, pushing the unemployment rate back up to 19% the following year.
The contraction in output that began in 1929 was not, of course, the first time the economy had slumped. But never had the U.S. economy fallen so far and for so long a period. Economic historians estimate that in the 75 years before the Depression there had been 19 recessions. But those contractions had lasted an average of less than two years. The Great Depression lasted for more than a decade. The severity and duration of the Great Depression distinguish it from other contractions; it is for that reason that we give it a much stronger name than “recession.”
The Great Depression came as a shock to what was then the conventional wisdom of economics. To see why, we must go back to the classical tradition of macroeconomics that dominated the economics profession when the Depression began.
Classical economics is the body of macroeconomic thought associated primarily with 19th-century British economist David Ricardo. His Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, published in 1817, established a tradition that dominated macroeconomic thought for over a century. Ricardo focused on the long run and on the forces that determine and produce growth in an economy’s potential output. He emphasized the ability of flexible wages and prices to keep the economy at or near its natural level of employment.
According to the classical school, achieving what we now call the natural level of employment and potential output is not a problem; the economy can do that on its own. Classical economists recognized, however, that the process would take time. Ricardo admitted that there could be temporary periods in which employment would fall below the natural level. But his emphasis was on the long run, and in the long run all would be set right by the smooth functioning of the price system.
Economists of the classical school saw the massive slump that occurred in much of the world in the late 1920s and early 1930s as a short-run aberration. The economy would right itself in the long run, returning to its potential output and to the natural level of employment.
In Britain, John Maynard Keynes had begun to develop a new framework of macroeconomic analysis, one that suggested that what for Ricardo were “temporary effects” could persist for a long time, and at terrible cost. Keynes’s 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, was to transform the way many economists thought about macroeconomic problems.
Keynes’s book shifted the thrust of macroeconomic thought from the concept of aggregate supply to the concept of aggregate demand. Ricardo’s focus on the tendency of an economy to reach potential output inevitably stressed the supply side—an economy tends to operate at a level of output given by the long-run aggregate supply curve. Keynes, in arguing that what we now call recessionary or inflationary gaps could be created by shifts in aggregate demand, moved the focus of macroeconomic analysis to the demand side. He argued that prices in the short run are quite sticky and suggested that this stickiness would block adjustments to full employment.
Keynes dismissed the notion that the economy would achieve full employment in the long run as irrelevant. “In the long run,” he wrote acidly, “we are all dead.”
Keynes’s work spawned a new school of macroeconomic thought, the Keynesian school. Keynesian economics asserts that changes in aggregate demand can create gaps between the actual and potential levels of output, and that such gaps can be prolonged. Keynesian economists stress the use of fiscal and monetary policies to close such gaps.
The experience of the Great Depression certainly seemed consistent with Keynes’s argument. A reduction in aggregate demand took the economy from above its potential output to below its potential output and the resulting recessionary gap lasted for more than a decade. While the Great Depression affected many countries, I’ll focus on the US experience.
The plunge in aggregate demand began with a collapse in investment. The investment boom of the 1920s had left firms with an expanded stock of capital. As the capital stock approached its desired level, firms did not need as much new capital, and they cut back investment. The stock market crash of 1929 shook business confidence, further reducing investment. Private domestic investment plunged nearly 80% between 1929 and 1932.
Other factors contributed to the sharp reduction in aggregate demand. The stock market crash reduced the wealth of a small fraction of the population (just 5% of Americans owned stock at that time), but it reduced the consumption of the general population. The stock market crash also reduced consumer confidence throughout the economy. The reduction in wealth and the reduction in confidence reduced consumption spending and shifted the aggregate demand curve to the left.
Fiscal policy also acted to reduce aggregate demand. As consumption and income fell, governments at all levels found their tax revenues falling. They responded by raising tax rates and cutting services in an effort to balance their budgets. The federal government, for example, doubled income tax rates in 1931. Total government tax revenues as a percentage of GDP shot up from 10.8% in 1929 to 16.6% in 1933. Higher tax rates tended to reduce consumption and aggregate demand.
Other countries were suffering declining incomes as well. Their demand for US goods and services fell, reducing the real level of exports by 46% between 1929 and 1933. The Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 dramatically raised tariffs on products imported into the United States and led to retaliatory trade-restricting legislation around the world. This act, which more than 1,000 economists opposed in a formal petition, contributed to the collapse of world trade and to the Depression.
As if all this were not enough, the Federal Reserve, in effect, conducted a sharply contractionary monetary policy in the early years of the Depression. The Fed took no action to prevent a wave of bank failures that swept the country at the outset of the Depression. Between 1929 and 1933, one-third of all banks in the US failed. As a result, the money supply plunged 31% during the period. I should mention that the Fed was legally bound to limit the amount of money it could release into the economy. This was because every dollar the Fed released had to be either gold or backed 100% by gold. The Fed ran out of gold in early 1930. This was a major reason why the US dropped the gold standard in 1932. Other countries had similar experiences and also discarded the gold standard.
Slumping aggregate demand* brought the economy well below the full-employment level of output by 1933. The plunge in aggregate demand produced a recessionary gap. Nominal wages plunged roughly 20% between 1929 and 1933. But the shift in short-run aggregate supply was insufficient to bring the economy back to its potential output.
The failure of shifts in short-run aggregate supply to bring the economy back to its potential output in the early 1930s was partly the result of the magnitude of the reductions in aggregate demand, which plunged the economy into the deepest recessionary gap ever recorded in the US. The short-run aggregate supply curve began shifting in 1930 as nominal wages fell, but these shifts, which would ordinarily increase real GDP, were overwhelmed by continued reductions in aggregate demand.
A further factor blocking the economy’s return to its potential output was federal policy. Roosevelt thought that falling wages and prices were in large part to blame for the Depression. Programs initiated by his administration in 1933 sought to block further reductions in wages and prices. That stopped further reductions in nominal wages in 1933, thus stopping further shifts in aggregate supply. With recovery blocked from the supply side, and with no policy in place to boost aggregate demand, it is easy to see now why the economy remained locked in a recessionary gap so long.
Keynes argued that expansionary fiscal policy represented the surest tool for bringing the economy back to full employment. The US carried out only a partial policy until war prompted increased federal spending for defense. New Deal policies did seek to stimulate employment through a variety of federal programs. But, with state and local governments continuing to cut purchases and raise taxes, the net effect of government at all levels on the economy did not increase aggregate demand during the Roosevelt administration until the onset of world war. Expansionary fiscal policies forced by the war had brought output back to potential by 1941. The US entry into World War II led to much sharper increases in government purchases, and the economy pushed quickly into an inflationary gap.
*Aggregate demand is the total demand for final goods and services in the economy at a given time and price level. It is the amount of goods and services in the economy that will be purchased at all possible price levels. This is the demand for the gross domestic product of a country when inventory levels are static.
End of Part I. Further parts to come but unfortunately I have to take my wife to the emergency room so I have no idea when I’ll be able to finish my teal deer remarks.
Oh, so Perry’s a Libertarian? Maybe he should leave the GOP and form his own party: Anarchists for Christ.
Hope its nothing dire ‘Tis. Chomping at the bit waiting with grog in hand for part two.
Surprised he didn’t have an amendment calling the United States a Christian nation in there.
rad_pumpkin:
My concern with term limits for judges is that, unless you only appoint judges from among people near the end of their working lives, it would leave them with the necessity to find another job after their term is over. This leaves them open to being influenced by thoughts of what law firms they might want to join, what corporate clients they might want to represent or even work for as inhouse counsel, what industry they might want to work for as a lobbyist, etc. With lifetime tenure, they still might decide to leave the bench before they die or retire and go on to another phase of their career but at least they’re not going to be required to. Yes, there are judicial ethics rules that govern actual negotiations with a future potential employer, but the potential influence of the need for future employment could extend beyond that. I’m open to the idea of a mandatory retirement age, I guess, but only if it’s fairly high.
As for the rest of what Perry wants, it’s terrifying.
I don’t think I wrote that Perry wouldn’t try to influence ammendments. I was merely trying (unsuccessfully, apparently) to point out that one possible reason for the push to repeal or ennact new ammendments could be to force a logjam which could make a constitutional convention a possibility. This does not preclude using the ammendment proposals as a way to bring out the insane voters in droves (this is already done in state elections, even state elections for federal office).
In short, I think that a President can influence ammendments. I have never thought otherwise. And I do think a ‘power-mad fuckface like Rick Perry’ would try. I apoligize for not being clear.
I live in New Zealand. Believe me, Bush was a huge joke almost everywhere, not just South Korea.
What? Nothing about him changing the rules for natural born citizenship to stop “anchor babies”?
His notions reek of privilege. He’s in the majority, so the majority should rule, whether or not others’ rights get trampled. Judge turnover is a bigger problem for the disenfranchised; overriding judicial decisions ditto; direct voting of senators ditto; hetero-only marriage ditto; male-only sexual freedom ditto.
Why does he hate the constitution? Because it allows others to play on his field. Get rid of constitutional protections, and he comes out smelling like roses.
Bastard.
Canada’s been mentioned already, but nobody has mentioned this little irony so maybe it’s just an Alberta thing (and it doesn’t get any more conservative than this broken province). Up here, our right wing wants to get rid of the appointment of senators and have them elected, to the point where our provincial government (over 40 years in power and still going strong!) has had purely symbolic senate elections (the only time I’ve deliberately defaced my ballot out of protest).
@rad_pumpkin #1
On 1. Why do you think that a democracy (ours is a federal republic form of one, to note) should not have any permanent positions, and if you do, shouldn’t you really be in favor of all federal judges being elected, and re-elected as long we democratically choose so? If you are already comfortable with the idea that a federal judge is appointed in a democracy, why is the permanence the deal-breaker, and not the appointment?
On 5. I am unsure whether you are really arguing for a balanced budget amendment. I agree that we should *try* to balance the budget every year. However, as you state, shit happens and sometimes we cannot live by that maxim, and may have to borrow. So why tie the hands of future Congresses when you cannot reliably predict the future, and cast in stone any numbers? Can you please elaborate?
To be honest, there is a reason the judges are both appointed and kept there for until life/retirement.
The first reason is that they are appointed so that they don’t have to compaign. Judges should focus on interpreting the consitution lawfully, not trying to get people to vote for them, it’ll affect the way they interpret. The second is that so they don’t have specific terms they have to worry about, and can focus on (hey!) the constitution. I think that maybe there should be a cap on how old they can be, at around 70-75 years. 60-65 is too young, because many judges are already near that age by the time they are appointed.
Argh, late to this party:
Why not just advocate killing the judges you dislike? Makes about as much sense (Constitutionally speaking).
Currently, New York has two Democratic senators. If they were appointed by our state government, we’d probably end up with one Dem and one Repub* (our state government is close to evenly split). So, yeah. If that isn’t a naked power grab for his party, I don’t know what is.
*Assuming, of course, that Albany could get its shit together long enough make the appointment.
Wait! So the federal government shouldn’t have the power to levy taxes, but it should have the power to regulate what has been traditionally defined by the states?
I CAN HAZ CONSISTENCY PLZ?
Of course. ‘Cos Rick fucking Perry will never need an abortion.
FUCK YOU, RICK PERRY.
No way is Perry in the majority.
Old, white, rich christofascist males aren’t even close. Compare them to women, young people, poor people, and nonwhites and they start looking real small.
He is though, a member of the once and now fading ruling class. That’s why he and they are so anti-democracy. They don’t want democracy, they want to rule.
God, I really miss Molly Ivins right now. :(
Thanks tis. I actually understood almost all of that. I’ve been frantically reading up on macroeconomics, seeing as it is seriously effecting me. The key seems to be stimulating “aggregate demand”.
I’d be interested in your take about what we have to do to fix our economy and USA finances.
My own views are that we are seriously hosed, the worst in my lifetime. It took us 10 years to get in our hole, thanks to Bush’s monumental incompetence. It will take us 10 years to get out of it.
My own plan is based on conventional Keynesian economics and common sense. Even my cat hasn’t been able to pretend it was interesting.
‘Tis,
Thank you for the lesson, and I hope everything is OK with your wife.
sadly, I see a lot of Bush’s economic adviser’s policies in the work of Keys and the National party these days.
so while bush himself was a joke, the devastation he and his cronies wrought most NZs appear happy to embrace, it seems.
sometimes one has to look behind the puppet to see the strings being pulled.
@Tis:
best wishes for your wife. I see you’re getting closer and closer to writing that book I keep urging on you….
:)
I’d be interested in your take about what we have to do to fix our economy and USA finances.
control the markets so that fear mongering doesn’t have such a grand affect on demand.
stop rampant speculation.
restore capital gains taxes to where they should be.
restore the tax brackets to where they were before Reagan took office.
pray?
*jazz hands*?
What a country, where one party in a two-party system has candidates that communicate entirely with dog whistles, to the part of the population that demand they have the right to be dumber, and meaner, than dogs.
What a relief that all men are mortal! That means this horrid abuse of human DNA will die as well. (And likely he FEARS the fact, since only the most exceptionally idiotic and crazy of Xians actually thinks that the afterlife is anything but nonsensical lies for their neighbors and children.)
I’d settle to before Bush cut them. Most economists including right leaning GOP ones think that was a mistake that didn’t really help the economy. It’s starving the federal government.
Get spending under control, 74% of which is entitlements and military.
It took 8 years for Bush to wreck the economy. It’s probably going to take that long to dig us out.
There isn’t much of a correlation between tax rates and prosperity. Of the 15 most heavily taxed countries, 8 of them are also among the 15 most prosperous.
After the “no tax! but we will still buy guns and bibles” mob, have driven the USA into the middle ages, What is Canada going to do about the “wetbacks” crossing the 49th?
‘Tis – I’m so appreciative of your posts. The dismal science is not even remotely dismal when you cut through the jargon and explain it in such a way that even an artist type like me can get it (or at least think so…). A lot of “a-ha” moments click for me. I second ichthyic’s recommendation that you write a book. It cannot happen too soon!
I hope that your wife is okay. Please keep us posted.
It took 8 years for Bush to wreck the economy.
it started long before Bush.
Bush was just profit-taking, in all senses of the word.
Hi Ichthyic! Haven’t seen you around much of late – probably because I haven’t been around much of late.
I, as a Kiwianian, feel sickened by Key’s insidious application of Bush-style fiscal policies. The smile on the face of the tiger, indeed.
I think there’s been so much of it though, going back so many terms, (Douglas, Richardson etc.) many people just feel like giving up.
I think there’s been so much of it though, going back so many terms, (Douglas, Richardson etc.) many people just feel like giving up.
political apathy does seem to be a pervasive Kiwi characteristic.
that has both up and down sides.
right now, I find it a refreshing change from the states.
Might regret that later.
Or, also, given up and left the country.
They weren’t always so apathetic – there is, I’m sure, a little bit of learned helplessness occurring.
Are you still blogging? I’m giving up here for the moment, I need to log out and on again completely to see new comments – refresh won’t work :-(
Or, also, given up and left the country.
that too.
I would add that it wasn’t for want of trying to change things though… I did my stint on the hill, if only working through non-profit channels.
…or were you talking about Kiwis bailing out?
Ichthyic #67:
Would I be correct in naming Nixon?
As a former Xian with wide and long-term exposure to the breed, I can unfortunately assure you that for the most part, at least in evangelical circles, even the smartest and sanest Xians think that Heaven and Hell actually exist and that people’s souls (which also actually exist) will be stuck in one of those places or the other after they die, forever and ever, amen.
Make them drink Tim Horton’s coffee, and eat poutine. The ones that survive and adapt can stay.
Nerd, Iris, et al,
Thank you for your kind words about my posts. My wife has diverticulitis. They’re keeping her overnight in the hospital to get her comfortable and hydrated.
Onward with Keynesian economics:
For Keynesian economists, the Great Depression provided impressive confirmation of Keynes’s ideas. A sharp reduction in aggregate demand had gotten the trouble started. The recessionary gap created by the change in aggregate demand had persisted for more than a decade. And expansionary fiscal policy had put a swift end to the worst macroeconomic nightmare in US history, even if that policy had been forced on the country by a war which would prove to be one of the worst episodes of world history.
The experience of the Great Depression led to the widespread acceptance of Keynesian ideas among economists, but their acceptance as a basis for economic policy was slower. The administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower rejected the notion that fiscal policy could or should be used to manipulate real GDP. Truman vetoed a 1948 Republican-sponsored tax cut aimed at stimulating the economy after World War II (Congress overrode the veto), and Eisenhower resisted stimulative measures to deal with the recessions of 1953, 1957, and 1960.
It was Kennedy’s administration which first used fiscal policy with the intent of manipulating aggregate demand to move the economy toward its potential output. Kennedy’s willingness to embrace Keynes’ ideas changed the nation’s approach to fiscal policy for the next two decades.
We can think of the macroeconomic history of the 1960s as encompassing two distinct phases. The first showed the power of Keynesian policies to correct economic difficulties. The second showed the power of these same policies to create them.
Kennedy took office in 1961 with the economy in a recessionary gap. He had appointed a team of economic advisers who believed in Keynesian economics, and they advocated an activist approach to fiscal policy. The new president was quick to act on their advice. Expansionary policy also served the administration’s foreign-policy purposes. Kennedy argued that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union, its avowed enemy, in military preparedness. He won approval from Congress for sharp increases in defense spending in 1961.
The Kennedy administration also added accelerated depreciation to the tax code. Under the measure, firms could deduct depreciation expenses more quickly, reducing their taxable profits—and thus their taxes—early in the life of a capital asset. The measure encouraged investment. The administration also introduced an investment tax credit, which allowed corporations to reduce their income taxes by 10% of their investment in any one year. The combination of increased defense spending and tax measures to stimulate investment provided a quick boost to aggregate demand.
The Fed followed the administration’s lead. It, too, shifted to an expansionary policy in 1961. The Fed purchased government bonds to increase the money supply and reduce interest rates.
The Kennedy Labor Department defined full employment to be an unemployment rate of 4%. The actual unemployment rate in 1963 was 5.7%; the perception of the time was that the economy needed further stimulus. Kennedy proposed a tax cut in 1963, which Congress approved the following year. In retrospect, we may regard the tax cut as representing a kind of a recognition lag. Policy makers did not realize the economy had already reached what we now recognize was its potential output. Instead of closing a recessionary gap, the tax cut helped push the economy into an inflationary gap.
The expansionary policies, however, did not stop with the tax cut. Continued increases in federal spending for the newly expanded war in Vietnam and for Johnson’s domestic programs, together with continued high rates of money growth, sent the aggregate demand curve further to the right. While Johnson’s Council of Economic Advisers recommended contractionary policy as early as 1965, macroeconomic policy remained generally expansionary through 1969. Wage increases began shifting the short-run aggregate supply, but expansionary policy continued to increase aggregate demand and kept the economy in an inflationary gap for the last six years of the 1960s.
The 1960s demonstrated two important lessons about Keynesian macroeconomic policy. First, stimulative fiscal and monetary policy could be used to close a recessionary gap. Second, fiscal policies could have a long implementation lag. The tax cut recommended by Kennedy’s economic advisers in 1961 was not enacted until 1964, after the recessionary gap it was designed to fight had been closed. The tax increase recommended by Johnson’s economic advisers in 1965 was not passed until 1968, after the inflationary gap it was designed to close had widened.
Macroeconomic policy after 1963 pushed the economy into an inflationary gap. The push into an inflationary gap did produce rising employment and a rising real GDP. But the inflation that came with it, together with other problems, would create real difficulties for the economy and for macroeconomic policy in the 1970s.
For many observers, the use of Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies in the 1960s had been a triumph. That triumph turned into a series of macroeconomic disasters in the 1970s as inflation and unemployment spiraled to ever-higher levels. The fiscal and monetary medicine that had seemed to work so well in the 1960s seemed capable of producing only instability in the 1970s. The experience of the period shook the faith of many economists in Keynesian remedies and made them receptive to alternative approaches.
When Nixon became president in 1969, he faced a very different economic situation than the one that had confronted Kennedy eight years earlier. The economy had clearly pushed beyond full employment; the unemployment rate had plunged to 3.6% in 1968. Inflation had soared to 4.3%, the highest rate that had been recorded since 1951. The economy needed a cooling off. Nixon, the Fed, and the economy’s own process of self-correction delivered it.
For the Nixon administration, the slump in real GDP in 1970 was a recession, albeit an odd one. The price level had risen sharply. According to Keynesian theory, this was not supposed to happen. There was simply no reason to expect the price level to soar when real GDP and employment were falling.
The administration dealt with the recession by shifting to an expansionary fiscal policy. By 1973, the economy was again in an inflationary gap. The economy’s 1974 adjustment to the gap came with another jolt. OPEC tripled the price of oil. The resulting shift in short-run aggregate supply gave the economy another recession and another jump in the price level.
The second half of the decade was, in some respects, a repeat of the first. The administrations of Ford and Carter, along with the Fed, pursued expansionary policies to stimulate the economy. Those helped boost output, but they also pushed up prices.
The 1970s presented a challenge not just to policy makers, but to economists as well. The sharp changes in real GDP and in the price level could not be explained by a Keynesian analysis that focused on aggregate demand. Something else was happening. As economists grappled to explain it, their efforts would produce the now commonly accepted model. But, before consensus came, two additional elements of the puzzle had to be added. The first was the recognition of the importance of monetary policy. The second was the recognition of the role of aggregate supply, both in the long and in the short run.
The idea that changes in the money supply are the principal determinant of the nominal value of total output is one of the oldest in economic thought; it is implied by the equation of exchange, assuming the stability of velocity. Classical economists stressed the long run and thus the determination of the economy’s potential output. This meant that changes in the price level were, in the long run, the result of changes in the money supply.
At roughly the same time Keynesian economics was emerging as the dominant school of macroeconomic thought, some economists focused on changes in the money supply as the primary determinant of changes in the nominal value of output. Led by Milton Friedman, they stressed the role of changes in the money supply as the principal determinant of changes in nominal output in the short run as well as in the long run. They argued that fiscal policy had no effect on the economy. Their “money rules” doctrine led to the name monetarists. The monetarist school holds that changes in the money supply are the primary cause of changes in nominal GDP.
Monetarists generally argue that the impact lags of monetary policy—the lags from the time monetary policy is undertaken to the time the policy affects nominal GDP—are so long and variable that trying to stabilize the economy using monetary policy can be destabilizing. Monetarists thus are critical of activist stabilization policies. They argue that, because of crowding-out effects, fiscal policy has no effect on GDP. Monetary policy does, but it should not be used. Instead, most monetarists urge the Fed to increase the money supply at a fixed annual rate, preferably the rate at which potential output rises. With stable velocity, that would eliminate inflation in the long run. Recessionary or inflationary gaps could occur in the short run, but monetarists generally argue that self-correction will take care of them more effectively than would activist monetary policy.
While monetarists differ from Keynesians in their assessment of the impact of fiscal policy, the primary difference in the two schools lies in their degree of optimism about whether stabilization policy can, in fact, be counted on to bring the economy back to its potential output. For monetarists, the complexity of economic life and the uncertain nature of lags mean that efforts to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy can be destabilizing. Monetarists argued that the difficulties encountered by policy makers as they tried to respond to the dramatic events of the 1970s demonstrated the superiority of a policy that simply increased the money supply at a slow, steady rate.
Monetarists could also cite the apparent validity of an adjustment mechanism proposed by Milton Friedman in 1968. As the economy continued to expand in the 1960s, and as unemployment continued to fall, Friedman said that unemployment had fallen below its natural rate, the rate consistent with equilibrium in the labor market. Any divergence of unemployment from its natural rate, he insisted, would necessarily be temporary. He suggested that the low unemployment of 1968 (the rate was 3.6% that year) meant that workers had been surprised by rising prices. Higher prices had produced a real wage below what workers and firms had expected. Friedman predicted that as workers demanded and got higher nominal wages, the price level would shoot up and unemployment would rise. That, of course, is precisely what happened in 1970 and 1971. Friedman’s notion of the natural rate of unemployment buttressed the monetarist argument that the economy moves to its potential output on its own.
Perhaps the most potent argument from the monetarist camp was the behavior of the economy itself. During the 1960s, monetarist and Keynesian economists alike could argue that economic performance was consistent with their respective views of the world. Keynesians could point to expansions in economic activity that they could ascribe to expansionary fiscal policy, but economic activity also moved closely with changes in the money supply, just as monetarists predicted. During the 1970s, however, it was difficult for Keynesians to argue that policies that affected aggregate demand were having the predicted impact on the economy. Changes in aggregate supply had repeatedly pushed the economy off a Keynesian course. But monetarists, once again, could point to a consistent relationship between changes in the money supply and changes in economic activity.
Much of the difficulty policy makers encountered during the decade of the 1970s resulted from shifts in aggregate supply. Keynesian economics and, to a lesser degree, monetarism had focused on aggregate demand. As it became clear that an analysis incorporating the supply side was an essential part of the macroeconomic puzzle, some economists turned to an entirely new way of looking at macroeconomic issues.
These economists started with what we identified at the beginning of this text as a distinguishing characteristic of economic thought: a focus on individuals and their decisions. Keynesian economics employed aggregate analysis and paid little attention to individual choices. Monetarist doctrine was based on the analysis of individuals’ maximizing behavior with respect to money demand, but it did not extend that analysis to decisions that affect aggregate supply. The new approach aimed at an analysis of how individual choices would affect the entire spectrum of economic activity.
These economists rejected the entire framework of conventional macroeconomic analysis. Indeed, they rejected the very term. For them there is no macroeconomics, nor is there something called microeconomics. For them, there is only economics, which they regard as the analysis of behavior based on individual maximization. The analysis of the determination of the price level and real GDP becomes an application of basic economic theory, not a separate body of thought. The approach to macroeconomic analysis built from an analysis of individual maximizing choices is called neo-classical economics.
Like classical economic thought, neo-classical economics focuses on the determination of long-run aggregate supply and the economy’s ability to reach this level of output quickly. But the similarity ends there. Classical economics emerged in large part before economists had developed sophisticated mathematical models of maximizing behavior. The neo-classical economics uses mathematics in an extremely complex way to generalize from individual behavior to aggregate results.
The 1970s put Keynesian economics and its prescription for activist policies on the defensive. The period lent considerable support to the monetarist argument that changes in the money supply were the primary determinant of changes in the nominal level of GDP. A series of dramatic shifts in aggregate supply gave credence to the new classical emphasis on long-run aggregate supply as the primary determinant of real GDP. Events did not create the new ideas, but they produced an environment in which those ideas could win greater support. The experience of the 1970s suggested the following:
● The short-run aggregate supply curve could not be viewed as something that provided a passive path over which aggregate demand could roam. The short-run aggregate supply curve could shift in ways that clearly affected real GDP, unemployment, and the price level.
● Money mattered more than Keynesians had previously suspected. Keynes had expressed doubts about the effectiveness of monetary policy, particularly in the face of a recessionary gap. Work by monetarists suggested a close correspondence between changes in monetary supply and subsequent changes in nominal GDP.
● Stabilization was a more difficult task than many economists had anticipated. Shifts in aggregate supply could frustrate the efforts of policy makers to achieve certain macroeconomic goals.
End of part 2. The Grand Finale, aka Part 3, will follow shortly.
Fuck that. I’m going to Patagonia. I’ll learn Spanish after I get there.
Good lord, I’m pretty much already a Canadian by your metric.
Timmy’s iced coffee RULEZ.
Part 3, entitled An Emerging Consensus: Macroeconomics for the Twenty-First Century
The last two decades of the 20th Century brought progress in macroeconomic policy and in macroeconomic theory. The outlines of a broad consensus in macroeconomic theory began to take shape in the 1980s. This consensus has grown out of the three bodies of macroeconomic thought that, in turn, grew out of the experiences of the twentieth century. Keynesian economics, monetarism, and neo-classical economics all developed from economists’ attempts to understand macroeconomic change. We shall see how all three schools of macroeconomic thought have contributed to the development of a new school of macroeconomic thought: the New Keynesian school.
New Keynesian economics is a body of macroeconomic thought that stresses the stickiness of prices and the need for activist stabilization policies through the manipulation of aggregate demand to keep the economy operating close to its potential output. It incorporates monetarist ideas about the importance of monetary policy and neo-classical ideas about the importance of aggregate supply, both in the long and in the short run.
Another “new” element in New Keynesian economic thought is the greater use of microeconomic analysis to explain macroeconomic phenomena, particularly the analysis of price and wage stickiness. For example, sticky prices and wages may be a response to the preferences of consumers and of firms. That idea emerged from research by New Keynesian economists.
It is fair to say that the monetary policy revolution of the last two decades began on July 25, 1979. On that day, Carter appointed Paul Volcker to be chairman of the Fed’s Board of Governors. Volcker, with Carter’s support, charted a new direction for the Fed. The new direction damaged Carter politically but ultimately produced dramatic gains for the economy.
Oil prices rose sharply in 1979 as war broke out between Iran and Iraq. Such an increase would, by itself, shift the short-run aggregate supply curve, causing the price level to rise and real GDP to fall. But expansionary fiscal and monetary policies had pushed aggregate demand up at the same time. As a result, real GDP stayed at potential output, while the price level soared. The implicit price deflator jumped 8.1%; the consumer price index (CPI) rose 13.5%, the highest inflation rate recorded in the twentieth century. Public opinion polls in 1979 consistently showed that most people regarded inflation as the leading economic problem facing the nation.
Volcker charted a monetarist course of fixing the growth rate of the money supply at a rate that would bring inflation down. After the high rates of money growth of the past, the policy was sharply contractionary. Its first effects were to shift the aggregate demand curve. Continued oil price increases produced more leftward shifts in the short-run aggregate supply curve, and the economy suffered a recession in 1980. Inflation remained high. The combined shifts in aggregate demand and short-run aggregate supply produced a reduction in real GDP and an increase in the price level.
The Fed stuck to its contractionary guns, and the inflation rate finally began to fall in 1981. But the recession worsened. Unemployment soared, shooting above 10% late in the year. It was the worst recession since the Great Depression. The inflation rate, though, fell sharply in 1982, and the Fed began to shift to a modestly expansionary policy in 1983. Inflation dropped to a 4.1% rate that year, the lowest since 1967.
The Fed’s actions represented a sharp departure from those of the previous two decades. Faced with soaring unemployment, the Fed did not shift to an expansionary policy until inflation was well under control. Inflation continued to edge downward through most of the remaining years of the 20th Century and into the new century. The Fed has clearly shifted to a stabilization policy with a strong inflation constraint. It shifts to expansionary policy when the economy has a recessionary gap, but only if it regards inflation as being under control.
To skip a little ahead, it should be mentioned that this concern about inflation was evident again when the US economy began to weaken in 2008, and there was initially discussion among the members of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) about whether or not easing would contribute to inflation. At that time, it looked like inflation was becoming a more serious problem, largely due to increases in oil and other commodity prices. Some members of the Fed, including Ben Bernanke, argued that these price increases were likely to be temporary and the Fed began using expansionary monetary policy early on. By late summer and early fall, inflationary pressures had subsided, and all the members of the FOMC were behind continued expansionary policy. Indeed, at that point, the Fed let it be known that it was willing to do anything in its power to fight the current recession.
The next major advance in monetary policy came in the 1990s, under Greenspan. The Fed had shifted to an expansionary policy as the economy slipped into a recession when Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 began the Persian Gulf War and sent oil prices soaring. By early 1994, real GDP was rising, but the economy remained in a recessionary gap. Nevertheless, the Fed announced that it had shifted to a contractionary policy, selling bonds to boost interest rates and to reduce the money supply. While the economy had not reached its potential output, Greenspan explained that the Fed was concerned that it might push past its potential output within a year. The Fed, for the first time, had explicitly taken the impact lag of monetary policy into account. The issue of lags was also a part of Fed discussions in the 2000s.
Reagan, whose 1980 election victory was aided by a recession that year, introduced a tax cut, combined with increased defense spending, in 1981. While this expansionary fiscal policy was virtually identical to the policy Kennedy had introduced 20 years earlier, Reagan rejected Keynesian economics, embracing supply-side arguments instead. He argued that the cut in tax rates, particularly in high marginal rates, would encourage job creation. He reintroduced an investment tax credit, which stimulated investment. With higher employment and firms investing more, he expected long-run aggregate supply to increase more rapidly. His policy, he said, would stimulate economic growth.
The tax cut and increased defense spending increased the federal deficit. Increased spending for welfare programs and unemployment compensation, both of which were induced by the plunge in real GDP in the early 1980s, contributed to the deficit as well. As deficits continued to rise, they began to dominate discussions of fiscal policy. In 1990, with the economy slipping into a recession, George H. W. Bush agreed to a tax increase despite an earlier promise not to do so. Clinton, whose 1992 election resulted largely from the recession of 1990–1991, introduced another tax increase in 1994, with the economy still in a recessionary gap. Both tax increases were designed to curb the rising deficit.
Congress in the first years of the 1990s rejected the idea of using an expansionary fiscal policy to close a recessionary gap on grounds it would increase the deficit. Clinton, for example, introduced a stimulus package of increased government investment and tax cuts designed to stimulate private investment in 1993; a Democratic Congress rejected the proposal. The deficit acted like a straitjacket for fiscal policy. The Bush I and Clinton tax increases, coupled with spending restraint and increased revenues from economic growth, brought an end to the deficit in 1998.
Initially, it was expected that the budget surplus would continue well into the new century. But, this picture changed rapidly. George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of large tax cuts, arguing that less government intervention in the economy would be good for long-term economic growth. His administration saw the enactment of two major pieces of tax-cutting legislation in 2001 and 2003. Coupled with increases in government spending, in part for defense but also for domestic purposes including a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the government budget surpluses gave way to budget deficits. Supposedly to deal with times of economic weakness temporary tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2008.
As the economy continued to weaken in 2008, there seemed to be a resurgence of interest in using discretionary increases in government spending, to respond to the recession. Three factors were paramount: (1) the temporary tax cuts had provided only a minor amount of stimulus to the economy, as sizable portions had been used for saving rather than spending, (2) expansionary monetary policy, while useful, had not seemed adequate, and (3) the recession threatening the global economy seemed to be larger than those in recent economic history.
New Keynesian economics emerged in the last three decades as the dominant school of macroeconomic thought for two reasons. First, it successfully incorporated important monetarist and neo-classical ideas into Keynesian economics. Second, developments in the 1980s and 1990s shook economists’ confidence in the ability of the monetarist or the neo-classical school alone to explain macroeconomic change.
While there is less consensus on macroeconomic policy issues than on some other economic issues (particularly those in the microeconomic and international areas), surveys of economists generally show that the New Keynesian approach has emerged as the preferred approach to macroeconomic analysis. The finding that about 80% of economists agree that expansionary fiscal measures can deal with recessionary gaps certainly suggests that most economists can be counted in the New Keynesian school. Neither monetarist nor neo-classical analysis could support such measures. At the same time, there is considerable discomfort about actually using discretionary fiscal policy, as the same survey shows that about 70% of economists feel that discretionary fiscal policy should be avoided and that the business cycle should be managed by the Fed. Just as the New Keynesian approach appears to have won support among most economists, it has become dominant in terms of macroeconomic policy.
As we have seen, the Fed established a commitment in 1979 to keeping inflation under control. As long as inflation does not become excessive, any rate above 3% appears to qualify as excessive, the Fed will seek to close inflationary or recessionary gaps with monetary policy. The Fed used expansionary monetary policy to respond to the 1990–1991 recession and switched to contractionary policy in 1994 to prevent an inflationary gap. The Fed adjusted monetary policy frequently in the second half of the 1990s as it tried to steer the economy through global monetary crises, apparent shifts in money demand, and fears the economy had pushed into another inflationary gap.
There will always be controversy concerning the appropriate policy response to a particular situation. Such disagreements, however, should not keep us from recognizing the amount of consensus among economists that appears to have emerged. Most economists now subscribe to ideas that we can associate with the New Keynesian approach to macroeconomics. The success of the New Keynesian school results in part from the ideas of Keynes himself and in part from the ability of New Keynesian economists to incorporate monetarist and neo-classical ideas in their thinking. Controversy continues, but there is much agreement, and that agreement has affected macroeconomic policy.
It appears that Perry will disregard the consensus of economic professionals in favor of economic policies which look good at first glance but have been shown not to work, particularly in times of recession.
Okay, lecture over. Those of you in the Western Hemisphere can now wake up and go to bed.
Unfortunately, they procreate.
—
So much for my enjoyment of the Rick Parry compaign.
Tis,
Are those posted somewhere? Would be a shame to lose them in a long comment stream.
I’ll have to read ‘Tis words of wisdom in part 3 in the morning. Time for bed (not due to his prose, but a couple of early mornings this week).
Well, I personally hope they will welcome us with open arms.
It took a lot. I’ve always loved this country. I never saw it as some sort of perfection, and I was well aware of all the ways that it was fucked up, but I always saw it as “doing the best we can, given some of the negative facts of human nature, and the structure of our government is designed to prevent extremism of all kinds”.
If you had told me even 5 years ago that I could seriously consider leaving, I would have laughed at you. But honestly, this is getting to be too much for me. I keep waiting for the middle class to wake up, look around, and see the way the right wing has been fucking them, dry and hard. I thought that was what was happening when Obama was elected. I think it was, but the right’s strategists are very smart and they derailed it quite successfully.
So now? Now a corporation is considered a person with all the rights of a person and us real people have no say at all anymore. And the fact that someone running for president, considered a serious contender, can have a list like that and is still considered a contender….
I think if a Republican gets in this time, and most especially Perry or that insane person from Minnesota, I am going to seriously look into immigrating to Wales. I spent a little time there last month and fell in love. Sure the UK as problems too, but I’m not sure I can sit in the US and watch it burn. Like I said, I always loved this country. Watching it die may be just too much for me.
It seems to me that Item #2 (let Congress override Supreme Court rulings) already exists in the Constitution. If the Supreme Court (or any court for that matter) interprets a law in a way that Congress doesn’t like, Congress simply has to pass a new law that makes the intent of Congress clear, thus nullifying the Court’s ruling. Congress doesn’t even need a 2/3 vote for that. A simple majority would suffice.
Second, if the Supreme Court rejects a Congressional law as unconstitutional, Congress can (with a 2/3 vote) change the Constitution to make the law in question constitutional. Sure, Congress would have to get the States to also agree, but there *are* current constitutional means for Congress to nullify any Supreme Court decision.
Finally, Congress can even fire the Supreme Court and the entire judiciary if they want to. All legal and constitutional. They just have to *want* to badly enough.
So, not only does Perry (and the rest of Tea Party) not like the current Constitution, they don’t even know what’s currently in it.
We definitely need a new Molly Ivins. All we got is Jim Hightower. Hey, at least he has his five minute spot on Pacifica stations.
This crap from Fed Up, isn’t going to fly once it gets brought up in the campaign. These proposed amendments just aren’t going to fly. Most people understand we need payroll and income taxes and almost everyone LOVES voting for their senators.
I support only two constitutional amendments. #1 The ERA. My eighth grade history book had a the ERA included in the appendix where the constitution the constitution. This book was purchased in ’78, I was issued the book in the 79-80 school year. This was issued in a school district in Texas which is now the 2nd largest in the state and is now represented by proto-teabagger Dan Patrick in the US House. What the hell went wrong? Yes, the Gablers were the beginning of the end for the surging progressive movement in the Texas of the 60’s and 70’s. #2 I support an amendment for direct popular vote of the President. Even though Obama lost Texas by a good margin, more Texans voted for Obama than voted for him in the four lowest population states he won. It might be the five lowest pop states he won, but I just worked a nine hour shift at my new job and don’t feel like doing any more math. I live in an outright blue as hell city with a gay mayor (and a gay at large council member, and a strong Green contender for an at large seat). Why the hell should my vote not count?
I worked like hell to get Perry out last election. We had a very good candidate, Bill White. Bill white was a superhero. He handled the Katrina refugee crisis well, so well that TV Tropes includes the Katrina crisis as our city’s Crowning Moment of Awesome. The Rita evacuation was a debacle as everyone was so badly spooked by Katrina, but Bill White learned from it and we handled Ike quite well. We ran the Master of Hurricanes, but Perry still won. WTF is wrong with us? Stormfighter vs Goodhair. How could Stormfighter lose?
1) The judiciary exists to check the popularly elected government, and as such shouldn’t be directly controlled by the people. Or more to the point: imagine the ridiculous “policy” debates of ordinary elections transpiring between two or more potential judges. I fear this would result in a popularity contest between which laws would be “constitutional” on the basis of popular opinion. My issue with permanence is that I do not believe (purely personal opinion) it should exist in a democratic government. Incidentally, I am not opposed to term limits for Congress either. If this is to be a limit on the number of terms/years a person may serve, or a mandatory retirement age is another issue entirely, and not something I would want to get into.
5) I’m certainly not in favor of any balanced budget amendment that excludes flexibility. I would be in favor of some limitations, eg. requiring that spending not exceed revenues by more than 5% (arbitrary number) for more than 5 (again, arbitrary number) fiscal years unless there is some sort of national emergency. Admittedly, this would do little in our present financial situation.
I read a humorous commentary some time ago stating that all of our fiscal problems could be solved by requiring that spending not exceeds revenues by more than x%, otherwise all congressmen would be ineligible for reelection. While unfeasible, I would love to see whether something like this could yield some positive results.
What Key has that Bush didn’t is the appearance of being rational, not to mention a three-digit I.Q. That makes a huge difference to public perception.
But I’m honestly not up with my own countries politics, I’ll certainly be doing my homework before the election in november.
Federal judges have tenure and no expiration date because there is no expiration date on wisdom. (regardless of which you consider wise.) The federal budget being balanced or not is really irrelevant except that running a debt allows for both a safe haven for investors and for the fed to do more than it might otherwise have done. Recall also that much of the federal debt is owing to Social Security payments, which must by law be invested in federal bonds.
PS. Perry has no principles.
As the great Joshua Lyman once said: “I like you guys who want to reduce the size of government – make it just small enough so it can fit in our bedrooms.”
Undo all the amendments!
rad_pumpkin 88:
We are in a permanent state of endless war. If that’s not a national emergency, I don’t know what is.
Note: I am not advocating for the existence of that state — there are far less destructive, far less expensive ways to deal with terrorism, our energy needs, etc. — just pointing out that it’s an enormous sinkhole in the budget that has been and will continued to be justified no matter what our fiscal picture is.
“And this deranged conservative maniac is being treated as a serious candidate by the media?”
This is what bothers me most of all. None of the mainstream media outlets are even remotely functional as journalists anymore. Everyone knows Faux News is mostly propaganda anymore, but CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC…none of them are even remotely critical anymore about the extremist candidates.
“Madness rules.”
Unfortunately, yes…madness is indeed becoming the rule.
Perry’s plans are disturbing enough on their own (when did repeal of direct election of senators become mainstream anyway?), but I’m also worried that he’ll move on to repealing the 15th and 19th amendments. Well, I’m sure he’d like to anyway. I think if he were actually elected he’d find that the President can’t do everything he or she wants to in real life. At least, I hope he’d find that.
rog #92
Bad idea. I like free speech, separation of church and state, and not having soldiers quartered in my home.
Tis Himself, that is a fascinating series on Keynesian economics. I may well steal it.
One thing I do not understand about the attacks on the 17th Amendment: The tea partiers say they want to take power away from the government and give it to the people. Except that in this case, they want to take a specific power away from the people and give it to the government.
Another thing about the 17th Amendment: Do the tea partiers know why it was enacted? Let me introduce William Andrews Clark (the man after whom Clark County, Nevada is named). Clark was an extremely wealthy copper baron in Montana, who bought election to the U.S. Senate from Montana in 1899. His buying of the election was so blatant that the Senate refused to seat him. He was elected to the other Montana Senate seat in 1901, and since no one could actually prove he had bought it (those whom he paid kept quiet), he was seated that time. Clark was in large part responsible for the 17th Amendment.
You have to consider what conservatism really is. It’s the domination of society by an aristocracy.
From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.
The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats.
More generally, it is crucial to conservatism that the people must literally love the order that dominates them. Of course this notion sounds bizarre to modern ears, but it is perfectly overt in the writings of leading conservative theorists such as Burke. Democracy, for them, is not about the mechanisms of voting and office-holding. In fact conservatives hold a wide variety of opinions about such secondary formal matters. For conservatives, rather, democracy is a psychological condition. People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of its intrinsic superiority are conservatives; democrats, by contrast, believe that they are of equal social worth. Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy. This has been true for thousands of years.
The conservative idea of doing away with popular election of senators and having them appointed by the states is just another example of aristocratic rule. After all, senators are members of the aristocracy so it doesn’t make sense for the plebs to have a say in their selection.
One thing I do not understand about the attacks on the 17th Amendment: The tea partiers say they want to take power away from the government and give it to the people
I’ve been told it’s a “state’s rights” thing. Which makes me think that Perry is longing for the antebellum south.
If you go into a job interview bashing the company/organization you wish to work for, they won’t give you a single thought of consideration.
Why is it so popular to do that when running for a government position? I like their honesty but lets tone down the rhetoric..
Wow, glad to know controlling my uterus is the last of those seven things! *eye roll*
Really, if being president did give one this almost complete power over everything in the entire country, and you could do anything you wanted with that power (which is what this jackass seems to think), telling me what to do with my uterus is number SEVEN? Telling people who they can and can’t marry is number SIX?
At least the first couple make sense, because they’re the first steps in making sure that nobody every takes your power away ever, ever, ever!
I can’t look at that list and not see him reasoning it with all the logic of a three-year-old who doesn’t want to share his toys.
Numbers 6 and 7 on Perry’s list remind us all that when a conservative says “I want to maximize individual liberty,” he or she really means “I want to maximize individual liberty, provided you limit yourself to doing things I approve of.”
llewelly says,
I think the modern dream of states’ rights (and getting back to state appointed senators) is due to the fact that state governments are the easiest to corrupt. Monied interests can nearly always get what they want at the state level by threatening to cross state lines since state budgets are tied so tightly to local business’ prosperity (big businesses favor friendly states all the time in exchanges for laws and tax breaks they like). Additionally local executive structures are smaller — so cronyism, nepotism etc. provide more ‘bang for the buck’ (I assume!).
‘Tis,
A few points and questions.
1) If most economists including those in charge of the Fed (and other central banks?) are now New Keynesians, and New Keynesianism is basically right (as I gather you believe), why is the US economy, along with most others in rich countries, in such deep shit? How do you account for the current crisis?
2) Individuals are not maximisers. This is quite clear in monetary terms from numerous results in behavioural economics: people discount hyperbolically, they regard a loss as more important than a comparable gain, the introduction of an irrelevant alternative C can change their choice between A and B, they are liable to the fallacy of sunk costs, they care about the welfare of others (even strangers) as well as their own… Moreover, economic behaviour varies cross-culturally in important ways. It is possible to claim that there is an invisible quantity called “utility” in terms of which they are maximising, but this is either false, or an unfalsifiable dogmatism, depending on how it is formulated. Furthermore, there is no reason whatever to believe that departures from maximising behaviour cancel out.
3) Individual preferences cannot be summed without taking into account the institutional systems within which those preferences operate – most importantly, those of states and corporations. These have interests which do not correspond with those of any individual.
4) Almost the whole of your analysis concerns the US economy alone. Individual national economies, even that of the USA, are not the right level of analysis if we want to understand what is going on in the world. American hegemony since 1945 has been based on the combination of economic, military, techno-scientific, political and cultural power, just as that of Britain was in the 19th century. The power of the US elite, like that of the British elite before it, is tied to its monopoly over foreign policy, and its ability to veto political developments in large parts of the world. That power is now threatened because the costs of maintaining military dominance and popular acquiescence simultaneously are too great. This is the underlying reason why the credit bubble was allowed to grow to vast proportions – so that its inevitable popping threatens the viability of the entire system.
5) Most important of all, none of the schools of economics you mention appear to pay any attention to limits on natural resources – where “resources” include the environment’s capacity for absorbing waste products. None of them have shown how a capitalist economy, at national or global level, can run without continually increasing its demands on environmental systems. It is true that, for example, energy use per unit of GDP can decrease – but in no case that I am aware of has actual energy use or energy use per capita fallen without (as in post-Soviet Russia) disastrous falls in living standards. I’m not claiming it is impossible for a capitalist economy to develop in a way compatible with environmental limits – but the burden of proof, in practical terms, is on those who claim it can, since this is now an urgent necessity.
In short, despite what economists like to think, economics cannot be a self-contained field of enquiry; we need a unified historical science of human-environmental systems.
Well, there has only been anything approaching the modern conception of democracy (with trivial exceptions, and in either the purely political sense or in your broader one of equal social worth) for around a century. Until the rise of movements for women’s suffrage, the disputes have always been over how broad or narrow the aristocracy should be.
then
Which is exactly why they are permanent positions. They are the check to the whims of the current population.
Yes it’s not perfect as stacking of the bench can happen, but something has to be there to check the swings of voters.
If a dingleberry like Perry or Bachmann gets in the question in Canada might be how much it will encourage their equivalents up here. The current Conservative federal government already has its share of these kind of fools, and in general there are a signifcant number of Christian Right style believers here, although they’re more likely to be considered weird by the average Canadian than they would in the US. Marci McDonald’s The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada is a recent book on the issue.
Remember back when Shrub was president and you said, “It couldn’t possibly get any worse than this”?
It seems to me that Item #2 (let Congress override Supreme Court rulings) already exists in the Constitution. If the Supreme Court (or any court for that matter) interprets a law in a way that Congress doesn’t like, Congress simply has to pass a new law that makes the intent of Congress clear, thus nullifying the Court’s ruling. Congress doesn’t even need a 2/3 vote for that. A simple majority would suffice.
Second, if the Supreme Court rejects a Congressional law as unconstitutional, Congress can (with a 2/3 vote) change the Constitution to make the law in question constitutional. Sure, Congress would have to get the States to also agree, but there *are* current constitutional means for Congress to nullify any Supreme Court decision.
Finally, Congress can even fire the Supreme Court and the entire judiciary if they want to. All legal and constitutional. They just have to *want* to badly enough.
So, not only does Perry (and the rest of Tea Party) not like the current Constitution, they don’t even seem to know what’s currently in it.
KG #105
The simple answer is that often the politicians don’t listen to the economists. I’m firmly convinced that deregulation of the financial markets was a major cause (albeit not the only cause) of the financial crises over the past several years. With the exception of Larry Summers, mainstream economists were calling for tighter financial regulation during the 1990s and 2000s. The politicians passed deregulation. Summers and Greenspan (who is not a mainstream economist) advised Clinton to sign those laws. Bush picked his economic advisers based on ideology in preference to any other criteria.
Most people are maximizers. However they are often not economic maximizers. Giving to charity is not economic maximizing. Buying a Ferrari instead of a Ford is not economic maximizing. Today the daughter and I went out to dinner. We had sushi. We could have bought acceptable sushi at the supermarket, instead we paid more than quadruple the price to eat at a restaurant. There are other motivations beside economic maximization for purchasing particular goods and services.
I agree,
Captain ObviousKG.Other countries’ laws, regulations and customs differ from those of the US. I used the US situation because (a) it’s the one I’m familiar with and (b) while the specifics may differ, the general outline is similar if not identical. I don’t know the specifics for how the Peoples’ Bank of China or the Bank of England regulate banking practices in their countries. However, there isn’t a higher level of regulation. The Bank of International Settlements* is a clearing house, not a regulator like national central banks. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund aren’t regulators either. The G8 makes agreements which are enforced (or sometimes ignored) by national central banks and finance ministries.
In my essay I described the American situation. Since the impetus for the essay was a bit of economic idiocy from an American presidential candidate, that seemed reasonable.
This is true, but it wasn’t the topic I was writing on. I have touched on the limits of resources in other essays. Do a search for “economic problem”** (including the quotation marks) and you’ll find them.
I don’t believe many economists disagree. I certainly don’t. I’ve discussed the psychological and sociological ramifications of certain economic situations before.
*The BIS is an organization most people have never heard of that’s vital to the world economy.
**The economic problem, first expressed by Adam Smith, can be summed up as “how can we satisfy unlimited demands with limited resources?”
Unlike Bush, Perry isn’t a faker. This is terrifying. I’m terrified. I’d gladly have Bush back before letting this madman into the White House.
Sorry to be off topic, but as a sushi afficianado let me say no, no you can’t.
And if I’m wrong, I need to start shopping at your supermarket.
The way I think of it is like this:
Do we want a man who not only thinks praying for rain is the way to end a drought, but gets thoroughly ignored whenever he does, as President?
I mean Jesus fuck, what if he prays for the US to recover?!
[Citation needed, not to mention definition of what is supposedly being maximised, if it is not economic benefit.]
On the contrary side, I cite Nobel Laureate in Economics Herbert Simon. I’ll chase down an exact citation if anyone wants one, but he points out that maximimising is in fact impossible in most situations. First, because we do not have the unlimited cognitive resources that would be needed to maximise even binary choices*. Simon argues that people are usually satisficers with regard to particular goals: they search until they find a choice or course of action that is good enough. Second, since there is, at any one time, an indefinitely large numbers of actions an individual could take, and an indefinitely large number of goals they might wish to pursue. Hence salience becomes crucial: people act on the goals that are currently most salient, and salience is context-dependent and indeed, changing salience is the aim of much advertising and political campaigning. The goals people have need to be endogenised if we are to understand socio-economic systems, since they are not determined independently of social, and in particular cultural and political influences.
You really think “free market” economists take this into account? Moreover, while you say:
you give no hint how this can be done and sepcifically, how it can deal with institutional systems.
You ignore my point that national economies are simply not the right level of analysis. The fact that there isn’t a higher level of regulation is neither here nor there. There most certainly is a higher level of systems integration, as we’ve seen so clearly in the current crisis.
But you’ve simply ignored the overwhelming evidence from behavioural economics, and cognitive and social psychology, that individuals are not maximisers.
* I have seen it claimed that this can be accommodated within a maximisation schema by taking into account the costs of further information-processing. But these cannot be known in advance, so the claim fails.
KG, I never thought I’d say this but you’re being dishonest. If you had quoted the very next sentence I wrote then you would have your answer. That sentence is:
Why did the daughter and I get sushi at a restaurant instead of a supermarket? Because (a) the sushi was much better at the restaurant, (2) the restaurant ambiance is better, or at least different, than the dining room table, and (iii) the restaurant happens to be closer than the supermarket. Notice how economics does not enter into any of these arguments. There are other considerations besides economic maximization when making a decision to buy something.
You seem to have a hair up your ass about economic maximization. I’m not quite sure why you’re fixated on it but I can tell you, from personal experience, even economists recognize there are other things in life besides economic maximization.
They may not. So what? Do you really think “free market” economists are in the mainstream? The Chicago Boys, the Austrian School, and the rest of the Freshwater Economists are considered fringe economists by the rest of the economic field. Few in the economic world, other than the Cato Institute, have any respect for the Von Mises Institute.
I write an essay for the general reader and you complain I didn’t write a technical paper for the professional economist. If you want to know the mathematics behind economics then read Akira Takayama’s Mathematical Economics or Lars Ljungqvist’s Recursive Macroeconomic Theory.
And you ignore the point that I wasn’t writing about world economics. You seem annoyed that I didn’t write the essay you wanted me to write but instead wrote the essay I wanted to write. If I wanted to discuss world economics I could have done so. Since that wasn’t my intention, I didn’t write that essay but instead wrote a different essay.
HAVE I EVER FUCKING SAID THAT INDIVIDUALS ARE ECONOMIC MAXIMIZERS?* Don’t say I’m incorrect about an argument I’ve never made.
*I’ve got caps lock and I’m not afraid to use it.
I love your blog. I agree with you often. I think Rick Perry is a fool. That all being said, you have a tendacy to act as if only the republicans block supreme court candidates, endorse stupid laws, spend our money like fools, sell us out to corporations, use terms like “activist judges”, exploit the middle class, give tax cuts to those that need them least.
I am not a republican, nor am I a democrat. To think that republicans are “evil” and that the only reason that we don’t live in a uptopia is democrats are too inept to get past the mean old republicans is stupid. Sorry, PZ, it’s just true. I am disappointed every time I see you selling that hookum on an otherwise rational blog.
Matthew Buckner:
Where was this said?
It’s a simple truth that modern Republican policy is far more harmful than that espoused by the Democrats. While many democrats have been on the wrong side of much legislation (the PATRIOT act, giving tax breaks to the wealthy, supporting corporations over citizens, draconian changes to copyright law, and so on), Republicans are far worse, as a group.
If you’ve read this blog for long, you know that PZ calls out Democrats for their stupidity, as well. Fuck, just read anything he’s written about Obama. Talk about damning with faint praise!
This isn’t about gaining utopia by electing only Democrats. This is about avoiding hell by not electing Republicans.
Which is only about half as stupid as erecting a strawman, and then blaming the blog owner for your creation.
Fuck you, ‘Tis. An anecdote is not a citation, and you know it; it’s you who’s either being dishonest, or simply, as I suspect, uncharacteristically obtuse, because your neo-classical faith means you have to believe people are maximisers, in the teeth of the evidence. Here’s what I said – emphasis added:
You gave absolutely no clue as to what you think is being maximised. If you claim most people are maximisers you have to say what it is they are maximising. Otherwise, the claim is completely empty: all you’re saying is “People choose the alternative they prefer at the time they make the choice.” Wow, what an insight! It allows us to predict, er… absolutely nothing.
Why don’t you fucking well read what I wrote? Do you see the qualifier “economic” in my sentence? No, you fucking well don’t, because it’s fucking well not there, and that was fucking deliberate, you fuckwitted fucker. In my original comment, I gave several reasons for denying that people are maximisers, and it’s true that I said:”this is quite clear in monetary terms”, but that’s just because that is how experiments in behavioural economics are usually done. I also said:
Damn – blockquote fail, and it seems to be a failure of the site. There should be an “end of blockquote” after “how it is formulated”, and everything thereafter should be one level less deep.
Yes, it’s the site that made you forget the slash.
Thread Hop:
Funny thing about point 2: Perry apparently is not very familiar with the Constitution, because Congress CAN ALREADY DO THAT (well, with the consent of 3/4 of the states). It’s called a constitutional amendment; they supercede Supreme Court decisions because the job of the Supreme Court is to interpret the Constitution, and so they can’t very well give an interpretation that the Constitution directly contradicts.
It’s already happened twice before; parts of the 14th amendment are there to overrule the Dred Scott decision, and the entire point of the Eleventh and Sixteenth Amendments was to overrule two Supreme Court decisions. And the main practical purpose of the ERA would’ve been to force the Supreme Court to upgrade its standard for judging cases of discrimination against women.
Therrin@122,
I didn’t forget the slash. After the fail I checked this, of course. I retyped that part of the message several times in case something wasn’t showing correctly on my screen, and preview always showed the same blockquote fail. It’s rather stupid to make such comments when you don’t know the facts.
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