"So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry! "
Actually, neither Krugman's views nor his new Nobel surprise me much. Krugman makes the common mistake of confusing the conditions that created subprime mortgages with the free market; and outside of the "hard" sciences of chemistry, physics, and mathematics, the Nobel laureate choices have been notably erratic - some enduring, others best forgotten. (We could say the same of Pulitzers, but that's another story...)
I can only hope we rise above ourselves. And I think we will. If a white Georgia redneck like me can vote for Obama, there will be others.
Certainly if you can rise above yourself, then why not Cynthia McKinney? She meets your standards - black, uber-liberal, and hates GWB. Why no lovin' for the Georgia candidate? (As you offered me Barr, another Georgia fringe candidate, I thought I'd return the favor.)
A related question, are you implying that Obama should be voted and elected because of his race? If the reverse draws your ire - namely any who won't vote for Obama because of his race, surely you wouldn't want those who would vote for him because of it?
Oh, that's right, you say:
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In case you haven't figure it out, I'm not here to debate my views or yours
So why are you posting and arguing the Democratic side? Those aren't your views?
In case you haven't figure it out, I'm not here to debate my views or yours. Think on it. It might come to you.
You continue to advocate policy ideas, proposals for Federal government programs-union "check card" voting, (which should do for business what subprime lenders did for banking); Federal government-provided health care, changes in regulation regime, tax increases-and you WILL NOT provide a basis for asking for these changes??? IF you advocate them, you must have a basis for why they are necessary, how they would fit into our constitutional government and how these proposals would actually help Americans.
Until you can provide answers for why those questions, why should anyone be persuaded to your and your candidate's ideas? Part of the give and take here is education, not merely throwing mud at each other. Mods: I'm trying to raise the level of debate at Jet Blast-a Nobel would be appreciated greatly.
Speaking of Nobels-congrats to Krugman. I offer that in the same spirit that I offered congrats to Gore. I cannot explain the committee's decisions any better than quantum mechanics. I have read most of his books and none of his works is on the level of Friedman, Buchanan, Mundell or Becker. I can only assume, like Gore, the Nobel committee gave him the prize for his outspoken anti-Bush screeds and for proposals that are in concert with the committee's socialist ideas. Friedman revolutionized economics, monetary theory and the very concept of freedom; Mundell inspired the Euro; Buchanan investigated political economy and how incentives change politics. What did Krugman do on globalization? But, my best to him.
GF
PS It should be "figured", not figure. You must learn about the past tense; didn't they teach English in GA? Oh, I forgot, the worst education in the US, which is why so many are moving there.
Click here for a good WSJ appreciation of Krugman's Nobel. I have "Pop Internationalism" and intend on re-reading it. Yes, long ago, he did some ground breaking work concerning trade and how some countries grow and how trade makes that possible.
That said, how can he so persuasively argue for free trade and write some of the most partisan columns and support an anti-trade Democrat platform? He is not a "hack" economist, but he is a "hack" political writer. And one can be both.
My name is Don. Glad to meet you. Did you're mother just not like you much ? Or was she just slightly mad -- like all Choir Masters ?
Your answer didn't provide me any answers (at least none that I can discern.) On one hand we're talking household income and in the next sentence we're talking Subchapter S and other goobledy gook.
I'm afraid I'm not an expert on the U.S. tax code. Explain it to me like I'm not. Seperate it out (if possible) and tell me what the business owner is paying and what the business is paying -- in taxes.
I am truly curious. Here's your chance to shine. The few small buisness owners I know don't take home anything close to $250K a year. Their businesses make considerably more. But they don't.
Lest anyone get any ideas that I have started supporting Krugman's ideas for the economy, please note this from pg 177, post 3526 in this thread
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five Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith. The economists explain why Barack Obama's proposals, including "misguided tax hikes," would "decrease the number of jobs in America." The prospects of such tax rate increases under Barack Obama are already harming the economy. The economists conclude that "Barack Obama's economic proposals are wrong for the American economy." The proposals "defy both economic reason and economic experience."
How Krugman could write on Ricardo and, through peer-reviewed research, support free trade AND then support Obama's positions is hard to take. In any case, I'll side with the 5 Nobel winners above to 1 Paul Krugman.
There are lots of good reasons to be annoyed with Paul Krugman. (Like here, here, and here). But as a cock-eyed optimist, I'm very happy to have him around. Think about it: The world's most famous left-wing economist:
1. Blames European unemployment on labor market regulations that hold wages above the market-clearing level. (The Accidental Theorist, Part 1)
2. Publicly and articulately advocates free trade without hemming or hawing. (Pop Internationalism)
3. Identifies anti-globalization activists as the enemies of the world's poor. (The Accidental Theorist, Part 3)
4. Titles an essay "In Praise of Cheap Labor: Bad Jobs at Bad Wages Are Better than No Jobs at All" (The Accidental Theorist, Part 3)
5. Points out that if you oppose Big Government, you should favor cutting Social Security, Medicare, and other popular programs. ("The Lost Fig Leaf") Sure, he's hoping to scare us away from libertarian rhetoric, but there's no use running away from the truth.
Yes, he's been slipping. And it's tiring to hear an economist so much more successful than me prattling about equality! I don't begrudge you your publications, Paul, why can't you let Bill Gates, Monty Burns, and Scrooge McDuck count their billions in peace?
Still, I can't imagine Paul Samuelson doing any of the above, much less Galbraith. At least in economics, the intellectual climate hasn't been as good as it is now for a century.
You can find more at MarginalRevolution.com Good site
You might learn more about the tax code, because BHO is going to use it in ways that will greatly distort small business. Subchapter S corporations, basically, pay taxes at the individual's rates, not corporate rates. And remember the small business has to pay both "sides" of Social Security i.e. 12.4 % plus Medicare. BHO would put a huge burden on small Chap S businesses.
Just to diverge totally from the subject of the thread to post one of Krugman's more enlightened economic articles. Mea Culpa.
Supply, Demand, and English Food
We Americans like to boast about our economic turnaround in the '90s, but you could argue that England--where I've spent the past few weeks--is the real comeback story of the advanced world.
When I first started going there regularly in the early '80s, London was a shabby and depressed city, and the country's old industrial regions were a Full Monty-esque wasteland of closing factories and unemployment lines. These days, however, London positively buzzes with prosperity and with the multilingual chatter of thousands of young Europeans-- French especially--who have crossed the Channel in search of the jobs they can no longer find at home.
How this turnaround was achieved is a fascinating question; whether the new Labour government can sustain it is another. But I'm not going to try answering either question, because I've been thinking about food. Marcel Proust I'm not (what the hell is a madeleine, anyway?), but the change in English eating habits is enough to get even an economist meditating on life, the universe, and the nature of consumer society.
For someone who remembers the old days, the food is the most startling thing about modern England. English food used to be deservedly famous for its awfulness--greasy fish and chips, gelatinous pork pies, and dishwater coffee. Now it is not only easy to do much better, but traditionally terrible English meals have even become hard to find. What happened?
Maybe the first question is how English cooking got to be so bad in the first place. A good guess is that the country's early industrialization and urbanization was the culprit. Millions of people moved rapidly off the land and away from access to traditional ingredients. Worse, they did so at a time when the technology of urban food supply was still primitive: Victorian London already had well over a million people, but most of its food came in by horse-drawn barge. And so ordinary people, and even the middle classes, were forced into a cuisine based on canned goods (mushy peas!), preserved meats (hence those pies), and root vegetables that didn't need refrigeration (e.g. potatoes, which explain the chips).
But why did the food stay so bad after refrigerated railroad cars and ships, frozen foods (better than canned, anyway), and eventually air-freight deliveries of fresh fish and vegetables had become available? Now we're talking about economics--and about the limits of conventional economic theory. For the answer is surely that by the time it became possible for urban Britons to eat decently, they no longer knew the difference.
The appreciation of good food is, quite literally, an acquired taste--but because your typical Englishman, circa, say, 1975, had never had a really good meal, he didn't demand one. And because consumers didn't demand good food, they didn't get it. Even then there were surely some people who would have liked better, just not enough to provide a critical mass.
And then things changed. Partly this may have been the result of immigration. (Although earlier waves of immigrants simply adapted to English standards--I remember visiting one fairly expensive London Italian restaurant in 1983 that advised diners to call in advance if they wanted their pasta freshly cooked.) Growing affluence and the overseas vacations it made possible may have been more important--how can you keep them eating bangers once they've had foie gras? But at a certain point the process became self-reinforcing: Enough people knew what good food tasted like that stores and restaurants began providing it--and that allowed even more people to acquire civilized taste buds.
So what does all this have to do with economics? Well, the whole point of a market system is supposed to be that it serves consumers, providing us with what we want and thereby maximizing our collective welfare. But the history of English food suggests that even on so basic a matter as eating, a free-market economy can get trapped for an extended period in a bad equilibrium in which good things are not demanded because they have never been supplied, and are not supplied because not enough people demand them.
And conversely, a good equilibrium may unravel. Suppose a country with fine food is invaded by purveyors of a cheap cuisine that caters to cruder tastes. You may say that people have the right to eat what they want, but by thinning the market for traditional fare, their choices may make it harder to find--and thus harder to learn to appreciate--and everyone may end up worse off.
The English are often amused by the hysteria of their nearest neighbors, who are terrified by the spread of doughnuts at the expense of croissants. Great was the mirth when the horrified French realized that McDonald's was the official food of the World Cup. But France's concern is not entirely silly. (Silly, yes, but not entirely so.)
Compared with ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the plunging yen, such issues are small potatoes. But they do provide, well, frites for thought.
We're drifting well away from the thread title by now, but I'm astonished that a presumably well read writer (whether you agree with him or not) would put dodgy English food in the 70s down to the Victorians. I would have thought that WW2 with its food rationing, that went on from 1939 until 1954; plus the virtual bankruptcy of the country as a result of the war might have had at least as significant an impact.
Or perhaps that just demonstrates why he has a Nobel prize, and I don't even have an Economics O Level!
29 of the Dow 30 rallied stupendously yesterday, guess which one went down?
General Electric. The company that manufacters lots of top quality stuff. Its in trouble.
Why? GE finance. If GE was a fine All-American athlete, as it should be (based the fine things it manufacturs), it has a cancer the size of a football in its guts. GE finance provides credit to people that shouldn't have it...from Wal-Mart credit cards, to Sub-Prime mortgages, to buy-now-pay-later at Aussie department stores.
Who's aching to see Palin run in 2012? Catfight with Hillary anyone? That should be on pay-per-view.
I wonder if McCain is starting to regret his choice for VP right about now. Maybe the little lady has figured out they're losing the battle and wants to position herself for 2012 instead, at the expense of the old guy of course. Her entourage is as entertaining as she is, nothing like a good mob chanting "terrorist Obama" to go with the morning tea.
IF you advocate them, you must have a basis for why they are necessary...
Thank you for typing IF, GF.
I advocate painting my bedroom ceiling black with little pinpricks of silver to represent stars. Must I have a basis for why they are necessary ?
Our country has survived without many, many things. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." Only one is "necessary" and even that is debatable.
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Until you can provide answers for why those questions, why should anyone be persuaded to your and your candidate's ideas?
I give up. Why should anyone be persuaded by my ideas ? I'm not running for office. Nevertheless, someone may decide that they'd like to paint their ceiling black. Call it "pursuit of happiness."
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Part of the give and take here is education, not merely throwing mud at each other.
I see.
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PS It should be "figured", not figure.
Thanks for the "education". Your Nobel is in the mail.
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You must learn about the past tense; didn't they teach English in GA?
Not very well I'm afraid. But as I told Brick, I still find I can make myself understood.
Barack Obama tells a plumber in Ohio he wants to "spread the wealth around," eliciting criticism that his economic recovery plan is socialist in nature.
Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber over the weekend that his economic philosophy is to "spread the wealth around" -- a comment that may only draw fire from riled-up John McCain supporters who have taken to calling Obama a "socialist" at the Republican's rallies.
Obama made the remark, caught on camera, after fielding some tough questions from the plumber Sunday in Ohio, where the Democratic candidate canvassed neighborhoods and encouraged residents to vote early.
"Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed "more and more for fulfilling the American dream."
"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
Location: not the @r$& end of the earth but can see it from here.
Posts: 243
Neither obama or Jm want to say so but everyone will have to pay sometime.There is no way the usa can continue the path of tax cuts and massive deficits.How much can spending be cut to offset the deficits and tax cuts?Not nearly enough I'd say.Unfortunately being between a rock and a very hard place the fed and DC have very little room to move.
The banks have ruined the financial system and the fed has debased the currency to " save" the economy.
Linear Mode
