For decades, Democrats have straddled a divide: they sought to represent both the producers of government services and the low and middle income citizens who depend on those services. Democrats want the votes and the contributions of teacher unions, and they want the votes of the parents whose kids attend public schools. As long as the blue model worked, the contradictions could be managed.
Increasingly, however, the contradictions have come to the fore. Teacher unions want life employment for incompetent teachers; their representatives negotiate farcically unsound pension arrangements with complaisant politicians and want taxpayers to pony up when the huge bills come due. Other producers of government services also have their sweetheart deals.
The result is that the consumers of government services, many of whom of course are Democrats, are getting a raw deal. They are paying too much money in taxes to support a system of government that, however outstanding and dedicated some people in it may be, simply cannot deliver acceptable services at a reasonable cost. The Democratic claim to represent both sides fairly is getting harder to sustain.
Barack Obama has been trying to stimulate the economy with record-high government spending funded by higher tax rates and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s low interest rates.
But as Stanford economist Michael Boskin points out in the Wall Street Journal, “Japan tried that, to little effect, in the 1990s.” Slow growth has become the new normal there.
There are alternative policies. One is to cut government spending, or cut it more than you raise taxes. As Boskin points out, the Netherlands in the mid-1990s and Sweden in the mid-2000s “stabilized their budgets without recession [with] $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per dollar of tax hikes.”
And he notes that Canada reduced government spending in the mid-1990s and early 2000s by an amount equal to 8 percent of gross domestic product.
Those cuts weren’t painless, but they put Canada on a trajectory different from ours. Canadian voters value budget surpluses, and Canada managed to avoid almost all the bad effects of the 2007-09 recession.
I think that Keynes himself would be appalled to see the things being done in his name.
Example 1,876,342 of why there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats:
So, as usual, what has Republican leaders grumbling is not the principle that free people ought to be at liberty to conduct routine business without federal mandates. What irks them is that Obama bureaucrats are marginally more domineering than, say, Bush-era light bulb bureaucrats. (By the way, Daniel Horowitz of RedState reminds us that Rep. Upton’s light bulb ban “made its way into the 2007 energy bill [signed by President Bush], which turned out to be the Obamacare of the energy industry.”) Upton and Rodgers object to what they call FDA’s inflexible “‘my way or the highway’ approach” to the imposition of government standards. That the imposition itself, quite apart from its obnoxious manner, is offensive never dawns on them. And speaking of offensive, how’d you like this Upton-Rodgers line: “In fact, Congress has previously partnered with the restaurant industry to improve consumers’ access to information.” Michael Bloomberg and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz wouldn’t have written it any differently.
As he notes, this is why Obama managed to win again with four million fewer votes than the last time.
John and Ken were touting him on their show yesterday. Mayoral primaries are notoriously low turnout, and Garcetti and Greuel will be splitting the continuing-corruption vote, so that’s the only chance he has. And of course, he’d still have to win the runoff against the union-thug- and LA Times-endorsed winner in May.
Classification Societies originated in the 18th and 19th centuries at the initiative of English ship insurers. Their purpose is to serve the public interest and the needs of their clients by promoting the security of life, property and the natural environment.1 They are impartial organizations consisting of technical experts that have established a system of public safety based on private law contracts. They are often described as the unofficial “policemen” in the marine world. Classification Societies enter into contracts primarily with ship owners and shipyards, which enable them to determine and control whether a ship conforms to their rules. Although Classification Societies do have economic interests, these interests are not the primary reason for their existence. Because of this, they often take the form of non-profit corporations.2
Classification Societies set the standards for the design, construction, and maintenance of maritime vessels. They accomplish this through rules and standards formulated through a committee process. In developing these rules, a Classification Society’s staff relies upon prudent marine engineering principles, theoretical research, and experience.
This is something that the Commercial Spaceflight Federation should be considering.