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Or his political acumen.
Of which his understandable wariness of the Republican attack machine is an important subset, but I still like the way Reagan did it better.
As for all these drug offenders in prison, I don't know. Who are these people? Repeat offenders (many times repeat offenders) and dealers, manufacturers, and distributors.
My experience in my state is that most all of the first-time offenders (users only at least) do not get jail-time, much less prison time. What they get is probation and mandated treatment in some form. With specific regard to drug offenses, the court and legal system seem to me to to go to great lengths to keep mere recreational users out of prison.
Few people back then would have seriously thought Reagan was a coddler of criminals. He had other issues he equivocated on for political reasons.
BTW, wrt #802, what state are you in? (Geographical, not mental.)
EDIT: both geographically and mentally, too.
Which is amusingly ironical, for if pardons were used for political reasons, can you imagine the overheated rhetoric amongst the media talk-show jocks
Ironically, on a libertarian note, I did have a friend of mine argue that he thought "no-texting-and-driving" laws were a good idea... because HE gets into accidents while HE is texting!! Exception that proves the rule, I guess.
EDIT: both geographically and mentally, too.
Then this one's for you, Morty.... I've got a Louisiana photo book that has a CD in it with a fuller version,** but the link is a nice sampling.
**Plus Gov. Jimmy Davis singing his most famous composition, "You Are My Sunshine"
The model in your brain is not reality, is not coequal to reality, does not comport with reality, and can never be reality. It's easy to believe that if everyone would adhere to one’s views, the world would be perfect, but a) they won't, and b) it wouldn't anyway.
Consider the advent of the contraceptive pill circa 1964. People, many good social liberals, were saying at the time that this would solve forever more the issue of out-of-wedlock and unwanted pregnancy. Indeed, to a great extent, that’s how it was sold. How'd that work out?
Make drugs legal and a whole host of problems will be exacerbated along with a bunch of new ones that will suddenly come into play. Understand, this doesn't mean maybe it shouldn't be done; my point is that it will create problems that we can't predict right now (probably because our views won't let us see them), so we should tread as on eggs. Just as an example. Right now most all the DUI infractions surround drinking of alcohol. Oh, yes, in some cases of serious injury drug tests are made, but it's fairly rare and the tests and protocols for alcohol are simpler and more straightforward, thus easier to use.
You think that government will be less involved in our lives if drugs are legal? In what way? Will Jack Daniels be able to start making crack? Will marijuana farmers be eligible for subsidies? Will Phillip Morris start the factories going for its Marlboro High brand?
Right now most crimes are committed by people under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. How do you think legalization will affect that? How about the court-sponsored sobriety apparatuses? Treatment centers (insurance rates, medical problems)? Civil suits for damages? Domestic and child abuse?
Like with other social cures for perceived social ills, better watch that that solution is not worse than the problem we seek to solve. Promoting more drug use (and that’s an unintended consequence) may be something we should consider carefully. How many people here don’t do, or don’t do as much, illegal drugs because they fear the consequences?
That is a nice print.
You think that government will be less involved in our lives if drugs are legal? In what way? Will Jack Daniels be able to start making crack? Will marijuana farmers be eligible for subsidies? Will Phillip Morris start the factories going for its Marlboro High brand?
And that's exactly why I think there's a distinction that needs to be made between decriminalizing the possession of home-grown marijuana and allowing any sort of brand name marketing or commercial distribution. Decriminalization would help empty the jails of many thousands of people who don't belong there, but full legalization would only encourage would-be "entrepreneurs" (some with unlimited budgets and existing distribution networks) to create a brand new class of users.
For people who used it? Pretty darn well.
This is a country run by big business--and remember, they are "persons". If it's legal, restricting it's manufacture, when it's an obvious moneymaker...hm?
Will the FDA get involved? Consumer products ombudsmans, private sector and public sector? "Yeah, Bacardi says drug responsibly, but drugging "coke" and rum responsibly is impossible, and Bacardi knows it, your honor." This is going to be a simplification? I don't think so. I can start to envision the civil suits already. There's going to be a whole lot less government, sure.
Well you can lead a horse to water, explain the benefits of proper hydration to it, and even give it a big horsey straw, but there's really a limit to your ability to make it drink. There are people who refuse vaccinations and blood transfusions too, I pity them for their ignorant delusions but ultimately I try to make the best decisions that are under my own control. I'm not concerned with the degree or extent to which rubes ignore well-established and widely-published reproductive science in favor of any purported zeitgeist.
The Dems as led by the DLC since the Clinton years are a center-right party. To pretend otherwise is foolish.
While I think we are all in some semblance of agreement on the merits of prison reform, etc, I find it somewhat ironic, to say the least, to be lectured on the policies of social justice by a man who openly cites Ayn Rand as an influence in any way other than "I'm against anything that crazy ##### ever said."
Only people well to the left side of the political spectrum contend that the Democrats are not also on the left side. They've been center-left, except for a few holdouts, for decades.
Actually - go back a step. What is the criteria for "unwanted"?? One cannot presume that a given pregnancy should be wanted or unwanted at the same rate in 1964 and 2012.
This link is a mis-google (got stats for New Zeeland)- but look at the births per woman and the age of mother at childbearing.
But here is one for the us now. There was an increase of the teen birthrate in the US -- all ages to different extent - from about 1988 to 1992. So clearly, ol' Herbert Walker Bush is to blame - not the development of birth control pills. For the rest of the 50 years the trend is clearly downward.
I am not going to dispute your claim that teenagers have sex more, since it obviously actually counters your argument.
I cannot find a nice graph showing the availability of various birth control methods to US teenagers, but it's my recollection that the late 80s - early 90s were the height of the Reagan/Bush (and various Red State) efforts to restrict access.
Oh... and in case Snapper or Gaelan show up: US teen (and all women) abortion rates have been dropping since
the 80s
Yeah, right, as if that's all that's involved in parental consent laws, invasive ultrasound imaging requirements, and other laws that have made it virtually impossible for abortion clinics to operate in many states. The irony here is that I doubt you even favor those restrictions yourself.
You're such an idiot sometimes, David.
You realize that denying an abortion to a teenager absent parental consent results in a net increase in government expenditure of money, right? Just checking.
"Stereotyped." Lol.
Stereotypes don't fall randomly out of trees. They exist for a reason. It's not an accident that, say, mafia are portrayed as Italians.
What does "restrict access" mean to a libertarian?
2) Why are we taling about what happened in the 21st century? The quote I responded to was "the late 80s - early 90s."
Exxactly. Or that Jewish people have horns.
Out of nowhere, Greg(U)K!
Your knee jerked.
No, that's the Polish Jew. The Russian Jew has stripes.
Come on, we all know there's no nationality for the Jew other than service to the Elders of Zion. I mean, come on, there's a *stereotype for a reason* people!
1) How did we get to abortion? The topic I was responding to was "various birth control methods."
2) Why are we taling about what happened in the 21st century? The quote I responded to was "the late 80s - early 90s."
Then assuming that the responses to your first comment all arose from nothing but a simple misunderstanding, can we assume that as a libertarian, you oppose any laws** that limit access to birth control or abortion?
**other than laws that allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions on grounds of individual conscience, or that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives
Hey, some Jews are smart! Although I hear their women don’t believe in sex after marriage.
It depends on the libertarian. Generally speaking, libertarians don't really think of it as a privacy issue in the modern liberal way, but generally one that essentially involves what point in a pregnancy the fetus can possess property (itself) for the mother to become the ward of. For me, that's the point at which viability becomes 50/50 (in the view of the doctor) - before that point, I believe the ability to seek an abortion from a party freely willing to perform the abortion should be absolutely unlimited and after that point, absolutely forbidden with the exception of situations that would normally grant the woman the right to use lethal force for self-defense.
But some libertarians see that point earlier and some see that point later, so if you want a specific libertarian belief, you're going to be disappointed. Parental wardship and minors, from conception to majority age, result in a lot of tricky situations in which it's not as clear-cut as cases of consenting adults agreeing with other consenting adults.
Skipping over the fallacy of considering the self a form of property ad arguendo, it's quite some time between the head breeching the birth canal and the new little monkey being granted the right to hold property in America.
Andy asked a question. I answered.
I posted a follow up comment. It's like a dialogue or something.
And AFAIC you answered it accurately and well, though I'm still curious as to David's personal take on those restrictions.
And BTW "liberals" are often just as conflicted on this issue as libertarians. There's hardly unanimity about the proper extent of abortion rights in either camp, in spite of all the rhetoric.
As a bona fide modern liberal, I'd agree. Viability is a huge concern, and one that keeps changing as medicine improves. I would say that, whatever the underlying philosophy, most liberals would agree with Dan's #836, though perhaps in terms slightly less black-and-white (though as Dan says, there's disagreement about the viability "point," and hence plenty of grey area). I don't think there are very many liberal women who would say "privacy gives women the right to abort truly viable fetuses" – I mean, I'm sure you can find people who believe anything, if you look widely enough, but for the purposes of this debate, they're strawwomen. There are surely many more liberal women who would say "I am politically pro-choice in the sense that I don't impose my faith on others, but my faith would make it very hard for me to abort any fetus, viable at that point or not."
Four to five Supreme Court justices believe partial birth abortion cannot be constitutionally banned.
In other words, I think the level of mainstream modern liberal consensus on what seem as if they should be fringe ideas is dramatically underestimated around here. A parallel would be the modern liberal shock at the notion that mandating commerce (buying health insurance) might be unconsitutional. Modern liberals truly do have a much more difficult time confronting ideas and people outside their echo chamber, which I believe was the conclusion of a fair-minded book recently reviewed in the NYT Sunday book review.
"established" Keynesiasn theory isn't really established. It failed during the great depression (or there is another great excuse for why it took 9 years for "stimulus" to kick in).
Having fancy computer models doesn't prove anything, they are typically a let's match inputs to results GIGO machines that gets "tweaked" (rewritten) every so often when results diverge from predictions to remap them together. Not much different than most "trading algorithms" sold to small investors.
Clearly the stimulus failed at restoring the economy to "normalcy".
Keynes, one of history's truly great investors and brilliant thinkers, came up with a fantastically creative, but wrong theory. When it's leading adherent, Krugman, happily pontificates that the government could stimulate the economy by employing people to march out into the desert and dig holes, and then fill them back in, it's prima facie evidence of it's intellectual bankruptcy. How can an economic policy increase output by consuming resources to produce nothing?
Keynesiasm has been successful at one thing, squeezing out more rational economic thought to become the predominant economic mantra. First, because it's clearly true on one level. Keynes was no dummy, to get out of a depression or recession where people aren't working and output is flat or falling, you've got to get people back to work, man! Absolutely true, the problem is that government can't put them to work in their most productive uses, and not without a bunch of unintended side effects damaging the recovery. Our stimulus is a fantastic example of that that keeps giving us fantastic examples of mis-spent resources.
We gave a bunch of wealthy VCs and entrepreneurs hundreds of millions to gamble that Solyndra could be successful, a gamble that is heads, they win, tails taxpayers lose. We eliminated much of their risk, while reserving them all of the rewards to create a resource allocation that probably wouldn't have happened in a free market where it would have competed against better business ideas for capital. And in a market already distorted by heavy subsidies. The problem is there are no real Technocrats, stimulus decisions were, and always are made, by political means, driving the "stimulus" not to those who can best use it, or most need it, but to those who are most important to keeping our imperial congress permanently employed as career politicians.
And you can't take the politics out of the decisions, ever. Another great stimulus example was the banking stimulus. Hank Paulson said we had to give the banks huge loans of cheap money (a massive subsidy) to restore confidence sapped by their poor decisions. But again, it was a heads they win, tails taxpayers lose type of deal. The banks had to give up nothing, not dividends, not executive pay for this massive handout. Banks truly in bad shape would have clearly agreed to onerous terms to get this life saving injection, and healthy banks would have not taken the subsidy to avoid onerous terms. But Hank wanted unanimity so much he made it just a giant handout, and even threatened the job of the Wells Fargo CEO who said he didn't need it, in order to force a unanimity. We could have achieved the same, or better result, with far less capital committed if we tied the new capital to a high preferred interest rate, and a restriction on executive pay/bonuses until the preferred was repaid.
And then he bailed out AIG, which was a handout to AIG shareholders and bigger one that directly saved tens of billions for foreign banks that had made the mistake of lending to it (as well as goldman and other domestic banks). In bankruptcy the government could have backed AIG without bailing out shareholders (who were responsible for the management team's mistakes), could have negotiated 100% repayment of domestic banks (with onerous terms attached again), etc, and allowed foreign governments to take care of their own banks.
What would be the argument that it is constitutional - given the parameters of Roe and the assumption of a right to privacy therein - to ban a medical procedure that the woman and her doctor believe is necessary?
Could you please link to the review and/or book, because this is the most wrongheaded statement I've read in a while, actually.
This is a popular bit of revisionism that I'm seeing pop up more and more lately. It must be a talking point or something. Every time I read it I think about Mormons baptizing Ben Franklin and John Wesley into their church.
Define "normalcy."
I don't think you can support your implied assertion that the US government instituted a Keynesian approach during the early years of the Depression. Keynes didn't even publish his General Theory until 1936.
Also, note that greatly increased government spending was exactly what took the US out of the Depression, when the nation entered WWII.
Happy to. The book is "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion," reviewed March 19, 2012. William Saletan of Slate reviewed.
"The hardest part, Haidt finds, is getting liberals to open their minds. Anecdotally, he reports that when he talks about authority, loyalty and sanctity, many people in the audience spurn these ideas as the seeds of racism, sexism and homophobia. And in a survey of 2,000 Americans, Haidt found that self-described liberals, especially those who called themselves “very liberal,” were worse at predicting the moral judgments of moderates and conservatives than moderates and conservatives were at predicting the moral judgments of liberals. Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment.
Haidt isn’t just scolding liberals, however. He sees the left and right as yin and yang, each contributing insights to which the other should listen. In his view, for instance, liberals can teach conservatives to recognize and constrain predation by entrenched interests. Haidt believes in the power of reason, but the reasoning has to be interactive. It has to be other people’s reason engaging yours. We’re lousy at challenging our own beliefs, but we’re good at challenging each other’s. Haidt compares us to neurons in a giant brain, capable of “producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system.”
This is an editorial conclusion, not data.
Of course it is. Laws restrict freedom. As you well know.
I don't have a hard time believing it, though. We liberals are, in fact, pretty annoying. Not quite SBB-level annoying, but still, annoying.
As well they should when we're talking about minors.
But they're wrong about the connection -- that's exactly what the survey says. Liberals are very poor at predicting the moral judgments of even moderates. They'll try -- God, will they try -- but they generally fail.
What's the other model?
As to your point about "how could stimulus increase output" - I believe the answer is that it's a loan or infusion of capital. Isn't that the whole basis of capitalism?? Keynsian stimulus is not loaning money to a business in the hope that it suceeds and will pay you dividends or increase the value of your stock - but it's essentially buying a S&P indexed mutual fund. By "giving" money to people who are currently unemployed, the money gets spent on stuff. Probably there is some econometric parameter which indicates that stimulus can only work if the "employed sector" of the economy has net positive growth, or something.
But I am no economist, I just made that up.
That's a nice enough idea, but the giant brain sure hasn't "produc[ed] good reasoning" all that much of the time, so maybe we need a better idea.
I've seen this happen, and it's disgusting. It depends what we're being loyal to, and whose authority we're appealing to, as even Sam would no doubt admit. I don't imagine that he would object to us appealing to Charles Darwin's authority as more informed about evolution than Trent Lott's. Most people, because they're not doctors, need to trust in the authority of those who have studied medicine to tell them that they need vaccinations. If they started thinking that the entire medical establishment had no more authority on that subject than some random person who claimed that vaccinations were harmful, that would be a public health disaster. The destruction of the possibility of any kind of authority leads to intellectual chaos.
I've also found that people who strongly identify as liberals are more likely to be suspicious and distrustful of others than people who identify as conservatives or who don't identify strongly (which is most people, really). That, of course, can have good or bad effects for the individual, but I think it tends to have bad effects for society, because it leads to more laws and more incarceration.
I can believe this, because these self-described liberals will predict that the conservatives will do whatever they think is the wrong thing, whereas the conservatives will predict according to their cartoon picture of liberals, who even they would admit are sometimes right. That is to say, my anecdotal observation is that conservatives are, strangely enough, more willing to admit that a liberal will sometimes do something good than vice versa. (I'm only talking about fairly intelligent people here, though--I haven't talked to many unintelligent people recently.)
I think that's a natural function of the fact that the liberal perceives the conservative's failings as errors of omission, while the conservative perceives the liberal's failings are errors of co-mission. In other words, the conservative would say "yes, it is a good idea to see to it that children are well-nourished, but in doing so you're introducing too much government intervention in day-to-day life, which has bad consequences ultimately," which allows the liberal's heart to be in the right place even though his policy idea is faulty. The liberal, on the other hand, would say "you're willing to let children go hungry, you bastard!"
I'm not sure why this is relevant to my question, but okay. What is the importance of predicting moral judgments of others, and how does that impact society in general?
Because if you have no clue about other people and other ideas, you have no business governing a society that contains them. This is a diverse nation beyond merely the differences in the colors of our skin.
I'm not sure that follows, actually, but let's flip the script just a bit and ask the obvious rejoinder. What good does it do if you have a 'clue about other people and other ideas" if you are simply going to ignore them more or less entirely? How does that better premise you for "governing a society that contains them?"
Because you're more wise and more open-minded.
here.
But of course, since conservatives -- unlike liberals -- always consider the future consequences of their laws and regulations, this effect must have been intended. (although I suppose it's not necessarily causative)
I'm just going to assume you're aware of the circle here and conclude you're being ironic.
Very true, although I don't believe it's necessarily inherent to liberal thought; I'm not willing to write them all down as fundamentally inferior just yet. I haven't read Haidt's book yet, but as Michael Barone (among others) has pointed out, it's very easy for mainstream liberals to live in a cocoon, utterly insulated from any thoughts or values that differ from their own. Avoid Fox News, don't listen to AM talk radio, and steer clear of right wing blogs and you're almost perfectly protected from any diversity of thought or opinion. It's in large part why liberals are so lousy at understanding the positions of others and so terrible at debating and defending their own positions, and typically wind up resorting to childish name calling.
Up until very recently, it was almost impossible for conservatives to cocoon themselves so thoroughly and completely; they had no choice but to be exposed to different ways of viewing the world. It'll be interesting to see if they start to lose their ability to understand and predict liberals over the next few decades as their ability to insulate themselves from liberal thought and values increases.
The last statement that "liberals were the least accurate of both groups" seems to be a corollary finding at first blush.
This would lead me to believe that you are an economist.
Re: #865: Wow.
This is a very good sign that you are yourself in a protected cocoon of your own.
QFT.
fun fun fun
FWIW I know OF liberals who fit that stereotype, I actually personally know conservatives who fit that conservative stereotype
2 random issues
1: The sample was highly unrepresentative- 62% female, average age 28
2: See the last quote? A liberal may argue that a conservative may claim to have such concerns but that a conservatives actions/policy preferences indicate that such claim is false- that's a confounding factor, if that liberal supposition is correct (and based upon the way many conservatives (or conversely the liberals falsley claim to have certain concerns as well)- then the study result is flawed
But Will Saletan said that it said that conservatives were super-special all better and that makes us feel so morally superior that it hurts! Don't take away our sweet, sweet pain of being spoon fed our own assumptions, Johnny!
I doubt Michael Barone has any more insight into liberal thinking than Eric Alterman has into conservative thinking... and I don't know that AM radio -- left or right -- qualifies as "thought". I suppose it might count as entertainment, if you find rote, repetitive talking point cliche mongering 'entertaining'.
I think flexibilities and thoughtfulness of the L/R 'bases' are pretty irrelevant, though -- conservatives have been a lot more successful in slating candidates who accept and even laud inflexible ideology in the GOP than liberals have in the Democratic party.
Pretty much, though I wouldn't like to be governed by either latte liberals or gun-rack conservatives. Both sides are whack jobs, fated to forever wage fruitless battles against their own idiocy.
Agreed. And ... notice how ahead of the curve I was here, conceding the point waaaaay back in #851.
I do know this: that with the exception of President Paul and just maybe President Bachmann, any remotely plausible US President would have argued for, and signed, some sort of significant stimulus bill in 2009. Any Bush would have done it; so would McCain; so would Mitt Romney. There might have been arguments over the amount, but no actual President is likely to want to run three years later on the record "hey, I did nothing, and the recession wasn't as bad or as long as if I'd done something." (I guess I'm not seeing Paul or Bachmann as a remotely plausible President – just like Republican primary voters.)
Humans are idiots. Unfortunately, barring an alien invasion by super smart ooze to rule us stupid monkeys as we were meant to be ruled, we're sort of stuck with something like that. I mean, until the great Market Fairy descends, natch. Which may be super smart alien ooze, actually.
I prefer cappuccinos for the record. Occasionally a macchiato. Lattes have too much milk.
You can see that sort of thing here in nearly every political thread, and even in some threads that are nominally non-political. And it's certainly not a phenomenon that's confined to one group.
The irony is that it's likely that most of us here have good friends and more acquaintances whose political premises are completely contradictory to their own, and yet somehow we manage to see the whole person and not just his political views. It's this sort of real world empirical data that makes me question some of the reflexive reactions against Luke Scott. Perhaps it's just that easy answers are so much-----easier.
To go from the personal to the general, there are four broad groups of mindsets that we see fairly regularly, both here and in the outside world. Going from Left to Right:
---1. Statists with a pre-disposition to favoring government solutions to private sector solutions. The operative word here is "pre-disposition", which to me indicates a lack of curiosity, or a pre-emptive unwillingness to consider alternatives.
---2. Liberals whose priority is problem-solving, but who see the private sector often leaving massive social inequities that targeted government programs can sometimes alleviate. Often confused by conservatives and libertarians with the previous category. Give mostly lip service to concerns about deficits, and often dismiss their significance. Generally in favor of varying degrees of progressive taxation, and often hostile to sales taxes for their inherent regressive nature.
---3. Conservatives whose study and/or life experiences lead them to be skeptical of government solutions to social problems, but who don't reflexively dismiss them out of hand. Historically concerned about deficits, though often selectively so. Generally opposed to more than moderate degrees of progressive taxation, as past a certain point they see it stifling incentives from the private sector.
---4. Libertarians who reflexively oppose almost any role for the state in society beyond police, fire and national defense. Particularly hostile to public education and the very idea of a social safety net. Views all taxation as essentially amounting to government-backed robbery, and especially when those taxes are used to reduce income inequalities.
Is that an unfair outline? Does anyone here feel misrepresented?
If so, it's because you see yourself aligning yourself with adjacent groups, and you don't want to be pinned down. Fair enough, and yes, that's definitely a modification that needs to be made. But it's very seldom that anyone leaps beyond the adjacent category and over to the next one up or down. Agreed?
But of course there are still more modifications that have to be made to allow for "social issues". Category # 3 conservatives often note that liberals favor "liberal" family values when it comes to society, but in their own lives live like 1950's midwestern nuclear families, minus the reflexive and assumed sexual stereotyping. Undoubtedly true, but this also is an example of something else I haven't mentioned until now: A split within a category. This can get pretty messy, especially when you start looking at conservatives whose "family values" are wholly verbal and serially violated (and how) in practice.
Forget about just how prevalent these respective contradictions are, because that's not the point. The point is that "conservatism" (and "liberalism") at some point has to be answerable to the practices of its own adherents. If you don't acknowledge the charitable contributions of many conservatives (not counting the ones made to phony "non-profit" PACs), then you're not playing fair if you're assuming that their political views mean that they're indifferent to human suffering. And if you don't note that most liberal businessmen follow conservative business practices, you're also not sufficiently observant.
I'd say even more, but FORTUNATELY FOR EVERYONE ELSE I've got to run downtown for the evening. I wonder what this thread is going to look like later on, but I hope it doesn't just degenerate into namecalling and he said / she said.
Or as David Frum put it recently, "we're all Keynesians during Republican administrations."
...or whenever defense spending is the topic at hand.
Kevin Drum has a theory that tax cuts make government spending cheaper – and so, thanks to classic market principles, when Republicans cut taxes, voters become much happier about high spending. I have no idea whether it works that way, but something has to explain the gargantuan deficits of the Reagan and Bush(es) administrations.
I have a cleaner theory. Politics is tribal, and all of the people who claim to be incensed about deficits when Democrats are in office are actually incensed because a Democrat is in office. The deficit is just the cover. In support of this theory I offer the fact that when the second Clinton administration was actually *paying down debt* with the surplus they were running in the late 1990s, the right wing talking point (especially during the run-up to the 2000 general) was that we had to elect a president to cut taxes and end the surplus, because the Democrats were going to use the surplus taxes to buy up Wall Street, take over "capitalism" and implement "socialism."
Seriously. I #### you not.
The problem with the "family values" meme (beyond whatever you think of it substantively) is that it ####### about a whole laundry list of ills that aren't amenable to political solutions and aren't really even political.
I'd say pretty much the same thing about the concerns of latte liberals and gun-rack conservatives (*) -- they're defending a way of life and an outlook and modes of comprehending and carrying on with life that only marginally overlap with politics, yet they insist on triumphant roles within politics.
(*) Which has kind of already been said by zenbitz and others when they noted that people are tribal. Latte liberalism and gun-rack conservatism are more about identity than anything else.
Keynes, one of history's truly great investors and brilliant thinkers, came up with a fantastically creative, but wrong theory. When it's leading adherent, Krugman, happily pontificates that the government could stimulate the economy by employing people to march out into the desert and dig holes, and then fill them back in, it's prima facie evidence of it's intellectual bankruptcy. How can an economic policy increase output by consuming resources to produce nothing?
Over the short-term, that's how. Let's ask two related questions:
1) Let's say the government doesn't employ people to dig holes in the desert, let's say it just prints money (technically, borrows money from the Fed or the private sector) and gives that money to unemployed people for doing nothing instead. People have more money in their pockets, they spend more money on things, and production goes up over the short run. Over the long-run, this leads to inflation and/or government crowding out of private borrowing and investment. But that may be preferable to the alternative which is that, as a result of a massive financial crisis and economic panic, everyone becomes so risk averse that they hoard cash and T-bills, otherwise viable businesses go bankrupt, and the only ones who make money are the lawyers. And if you pay people to do something other than digging holes, at least they gain some job skills along the way.
2) Another way to ask the question: During the housing boom, the private sector effectively paid a bunch of people to go out into the desert (Phoenix and Las Vegas, among other places) and build unwanted houses that can only be sold below the cost of construction. Yet somehow all of that residential construction put money in people's pockets, made them feel more optimistic, and helped fuel an economic boom. Over the long-run, it was obviously wasteful, but it's hard to say it didn't cause an increase in output over the short-run.
I agree with your points on Solyndra and some of your points on TARP, by the way. My one qualm is that you would be surprised at the number of banks whose executives vastly overrated the quality of their own balance sheets and rejected what would have been life-saving (or at least life-prolonging) capital infusions from the private sector. I'm not sure they would have taken money from the government until it was too late, in an AIG scenario.
Oh, now I see. You're not ignoring them. You're rejecting them. Because now, not only are you morally superior to those stupid liberals who can't even conceive of your noble moral concepts properly, you're intellectually superior as well, to the point where you are the final arbiter of what it is proper for them to think as well.
Now, could you regale us with another rendition of that old song about how liberals think they're better than everyone else? That would be the best bookend possible, really.
I like that one. It may be particularly useful in helping explain a divide a good friend of mine constantly have between one another. He's a stone-cold rationalist - to him simply being a "tradition" is reason enough to discard a cultural practice. On the other hand I'm quite conservative (though not at all politically...more like I'm a cultural pack-rat). I guess boils down to him saying "if I can't come up with a reason for why we do this, let's lose it", and me saying "if I can come up with a reason why this is dangerous I'll think about losing it".
The collapse of "family values" in "real America" (so to speak) coincides with the collapse of jobs in "real America," which itself correlates strongly with the collapse of organized labor and the protection of said jobs against the brutal calculus of capital and management (which, for the record, is far too often confused with "the Free Market," but that's another thing.) So of course, the people who are most interested in furthering the collapse of labor and living-wage jobs in service to short term P&L takings by management use the cultural panic of the collapsing "values" to convince the useful fools themselves to vote for the policies which are actually eroding the values themselves.
Because people are idiots, more or less.
I have to say, Sam, I'm not at all sure what you're arguing here. Are you really not willing to acknowledge the difference between:
1) careful consideration of an argument before rejecting it, and
2) refusal to consider the argument in the first place?
Perhaps you're trying a little too hard to score tribal points here?
No, I'm not willing to acknowledge that one side of the spectrum does this in any way, shape or form "better" than the other.
Funny thing about that, really. I have no tribe here.
Oh, OK. Thanks for clarifying that - I never would have understood that that's what you meant the comment I quoted above.
Oh, OK. My bad, then.
I see. Well, way to pick the least controversial thing David has ever said as something to mock him about.
The least controversial thing David has ever said, having been said by David, is worthy of mockery by definition.
So, then, points-scoring it is.
Not enough swamp goats to mate with.
You'd be surprised at how few live to tell the tale.
I just thought this little bon mot should make the new page...
edit... oops too soon
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