…it would look like this.
I think that this is one of those rare cases where an abortion is the only reasonable option.
Category Archives: Economics
Hope And Change
…and 10.2% unemployment:
Naturally, according to the “experts” it’s more than expected.
It’s not more than I expected. I’m actually surprised it’s not worse, considering how they’ve been making war on business and vandalizing the economy in general.
None Of The Above
NASA Watch has a poll up on what kind of heavy lifter NASA should build. I’ve decided to do my own, proper poll:
[Mid-afternoon update]
Wow, not much love for either flavor of Ares, at least from my readers. So far, the vast majority goes for “none of the above.”
Advice For CA Taxpayers
Fight back against the thieves in Sacramento. Refile your state W-4 ASAP.
The Inherited Deficits Fallacy
Keith Hennessy on Barack Obama’s Bart Simpson defense.
I would add that it’s not possible to know to what degree “tax cuts” boosted the deficit, because they weren’t “tax cuts.” They were tax rate cuts, and they may have actually reduced it by boosting the economy and incomes.
A Free-Market Party?
The rise of free-market populism in this country finally has manifested in an election. And judging from the hyperbolic reactions, you know it’s a political movement with staying power.
When tepid, traditional conservative candidate Doug Hoffman knocked off liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava—a candidate who was supported by nearly every boogeyman in the GOP handbook—you might have thought that the rabble had stormed the Bastille.
Sophisticated New York Times columnist Frank Rich called the event “a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war” and compared the conservative surge to a murderous Stalinist purge. (Remarkably, the esteemed wordsmith failed to unleash similar histrionic language when one-time-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman met the same fate.)
Purging moderates is indeed a self-destructive strategy for any national party. But running a party without any litmus tests on the central issue of the economy seems to be similarly self-defeating.
The most impressive trick played by Rich and other liberals, though, is creating a narrative wherein the ones attempting to fundamentally reconfigure the American economy are cast as the moderates.
The nearly powerless who stand in their way? Well, they play the part of Stalinists.
But of course, as Orwell pointed out, the real Stalinists are the people who torture the language like Frank Rich does.
Is It 1993 Again?
…or 1938?
Democrats lost 80 seats in the 1938 election, after gaining seats in 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1936.
How did this happen? As Amity Shlaes notes in her history of the Depression, “The Forgotten Man,” Roosevelt believed less competition and high wages would heal the economy. Aided by Congress, he went about engineering those two things with a vengeance, trebling the size of the federal government in less than a decade.
At the time, such drastic action may have seemed warranted. Within three years of the 1929 crash, GDP had fallen nearly a third and a fourth of the U.S. work force was idle. Even so, the economy appeared to stabilize in 1934 and 1935, and in 1936, Democrats won landslides in both Congress and the presidency.
What happened next is a tale of overreach and hubris — one that holds lessons for today’s Democrats.
But they seem determined not to learn them. Because to do so would negate their entire world view.
A Question For Ares Supporters
Is there any amount of money that this thing could cost that would cause you to say, “OK, it’s not worth it”? Because to listen to them defend it, you’d sure think that the answer is “no.” That the only important thing is that it’s “safe,” and to hell with the cost.
More Augustine Thoughts
Dennis Wingo says that NASA doesn’t need more money, it just needswhat NASA needs is a better architectural approach. I agree. But that’s doesn’t keep the jobs in the right places.
Despite my initial misreading of it, though, I even think that it’s possible to do it without the extra three billion. And it had better be, because I doubt if they’re going to get it.
Defending Free Markets
One of the things that I do miss about living in Florida for the past five years was the occasional (but in retrospect, not often enough) opportunity to get together with Bob and Lou Poole for dinner (they lived about twenty-five miles away). Here are his thoughts on the influence of Ayn Rand.