Category Archives: Economics
Yglesias Blows Graphs
Liberals, especially, should be almost desperate to shrink government to a size that’s sustainable in the long run. Here’s a graph–one of many documenting the public’s declining faith in government efficacy, in this case that of the federal government. It shows that in 1986 Americans estimated that the government wasted 38 cents of every dollar it raises. Now they estimate it wastes 51 cents. It’s not hard to read the inevitable death of even Clinton-style liberalism in the rising slope of that chart, and others like it. Surely at least part of the voter’s disdain for government comes from their (accurate) perception that it’s bloated and keeps bloating, with new agencies and inefficiencies simply layered in on top of the old ones. Meanwhile, the private sector has used computer technology to streamline itself, eliminating layers rather than adding.
Democrats, as the party of government, need to turn that perception around by. Obama, by dedicating his stimulus to preserving bureaucracy as we know it, has by and large missed this opportunity. (Clinton would not have missed it.)
Public sector employment is also pretty much the worst sector to stimulate if you care about government deficits, since the unnecessary jobs saved will linger after the recession ends, protected by powerful public worker unions, where they will add to government’s long term costs. If we stimulate the construction industry, the tire industry or any other private sector industry, there’s not that same budgetary downside. If all those jobs linger after the recession ends, so much the better.
Even direct government employment in new WPA-style jobs would be better in this respect, I think, than simply paying to preserve existing government jobs. It’s easier to wind a WPA down, when recession ends, than it is to shrink the entrenched education bureaucracy.
One of the few things that Franklin Roosevelt got right was that government employees should not be allowed to unionize. It has been a disaster for the nation.
Smash Capitalism
…and you destroy civilization.
It’s sad that these spoiled children have put themselves so deep into debt for educations that are worthless, both in the marketplace and in understanding how the world works. They rage against the wrong machine.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They’re also not materially poor. But they do suffer from a poverty that is worse in many ways:
These young people also suffer from a vast intellectual and moral poverty. One of the things that shines through when we interview the people taking to the streets is that so many are woefully ignorant, and that they wallow in a sea of relativism that allows for no morality other than that gained by intense navel gazing. They are the antithesis of the original American revolutionaries, whose leaders were men of exceptional erudition and thoughtfulness, and whose followers knew at the very least their Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. Revolutionaries of old were shaped by philosophy, known science, literature, practical life experience, and a deep sense of morality and justice. Today’s little park piddlers are shaped by an aching sense of unfairness, a terrible fear of human-kind (that would be the AGW shtick), and a morality shaped by Oprah and whichever fabulously rich Hollywood Leftist happens to grab the microphone on any given day.
These self-styled 99%-ers are not poor, not by any known standard, either today or in the history of the world. They are intellectually and emotionally bereft, but otherwise awash in material benefits.
Fortunately, they’re not, as they delude themselves, the 99%. If they were, the Republic would be lost.
More Propellant Depot Commentary
Doug Mohney weighs in (though he misspells Keith Cowing’s name — a common error). The SLS is fiscally insane.
Propellant Depots Going Mainstream
Ken Chang has an article about them in the New York Times. And over at The Space Review today, Andrew Gasser of Tea Party in Space defends them from the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt being sown by the defenders of the status quo.
Can’t Get Good Goons These Days
Some thoughts on the upcoming ignominious end to Occupy Wall Street:
…the value of the sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls. Obama told Wall Street that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. That scared them into line for a while. But now Wall Street’s sick of him, and doesn’t care. They’re not playing ball like they used to.
So he unleashed the pitchforks and what we got was the #occupy movement, a pathetic, and totally non-scary, embarrassment for the Democrats. Republicans are now hoping they’ll stay in place until November of 2012.
That Alinsky stuff just doesn’t work like it used to.
[Update a couple minutes later]
When rage becomes the machine.
Pay The Americans Now, Or Pay The Russians Later
I have a post up at Open Market about the penny-wise-pound-foolishness of Congress with Commercial Crew.
What Could Go Wrong?
The EU is considering banning publication of European bond ratings. While they’re at it, they might also want to consider removing all the batteries from their smoke detectors, as a fire-prevention measure.
Back Space Taxis
…or pay more to the Russians. A rapid-fire Reuters dispatch on Lori’s talk this morning, from Irene Klotz, who’s sitting behind me.
[Afternoon update]
Alan Boyle (who’s sitting next to Irene): Pay the Americans now, or pay the Russians later.
The European Identity Crisis
The real problem isn’t financial:
A disciplined Teutonic economic order does not suit the French way of life; orderly, inflation-fighting Prussian capitalism is only slightly less horrible than the Anglo-Saxon law of the jungle from a French point of view. At the end of the day, France may simply be incapable of adjusting to the rigors of a German economic style; if so, the question of the nature of the monetary union turns into an irreconcilable contest between two fundamentally different approaches to political economy. Either France (and the rest of the Latins and Greeks) must live under German rules, or the Germans (and the other thrifty and orderly northern countries) must become more like Zorba the Greek.
The inability to square this circle is the real reason it is taking Europe so long to figure out how to deal with the euro crisis. Europe is having an identity crisis — and this is not something that can be settled in a weekend.
Or perhaps ever. At least not peacefully.