Tit for Tat
Posted: Sunday, July 10, 2011
by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo
Mr. Krugman,It's not quite true that the Nobel Prize holder for Economics is an idiot--but I get the point of the commentor's frustration and anger.
You are, like the majority liberals/progressives, an idiot.
"The situation cries out for aggressively expansionary monetary and fiscal policy."
This statement implies that the government should spend massive amounts of MY money, which I work very hard to acquire, for my own family.
That in turn implies that the government has a right to everything I might earn - and that Sir is slavery.
First, the commentor sees the problems in personal terms: he fears taxes. He thinks taxes are pointless, tyrannical and rob him of his rightful claim to his earned and invested income.
His next point has an error of association: the debate of macro-economic policy no more "implies"
slavery than the debate over gun control, abortion, voter id, requiring car insurance or registering a birth certificate.
So let's forget about the slavery analogy/comparison/slippery slope and look at how to understand policy.
We are individuals. Government represents the group. We can all dig wells, or we can have government provide a water system that provides for clean water delivered to the group. Taxes pay the cost of that group delivery--but it is cheaper and more efficient and healthier than drilling individual wells.
But sooner or later, government will have to invest in the system. Expand it, change technologies, replace old structures, re-configure it--and that will cost money--big money--bigger than the cost of an individual well you might still be using. So, if your well works, why should you pay for the system?
What in truth needs to occur is for the government to be shrunk by at least 50%, to a level that consumes less than 20% of the GDP.I'd love to know how the commentor derives and determines these numbers! Does he include Defense spending? Education? Tax credits and subsidies to oil companies, farms, investment credits? National Parks? Environmental regulation? His statement, defined by specific target percentages, does not share the source for its norms or how this compares to nations above and below the US in income, productivity, debt, government revenues, GDP growth, exports, safety net spending, defense, health care, infrastructure, and regulation. It makes no measure of its impact on the quality of life and the creation of new opportunities.
Unfortunately this will never happen with the old guard members of congress in place, along with the Obamination flapping in the wind completely bereft of any intelligent policy. Although what wold you expect from an affirmative action president that has never so much as run a lemonade stand?
The correct prescription is to create certainty within the financial, and small business community! I for one will not be investing in additional employees. How can I? I have absolutely no idea what the will cost me a year hence, let alone attempting to project costs post-obamacare.This is a red herring; a fallacy of false cause. Nobody hires or buys based on "certainty." The costs of tomatoes, oranges (facing a severe in Brazil, the number one producer of oranges), fuel, paper products--or health care are never stable. Costs and prices fluctuate based on variables and influences beyond any administration's control. Weather, revolution, shipping costs, technology all impact and change price. Do you "invest" in employees--or hire when demand or opportunity dictates the need?
Obama care is deliberately injected here as a false cause when it is really the private price of insurance premiums are arbitrarily sky rocketing and have been for a decade! These premiums are subject to the same market forces as other prices, but were difficult to control without regulation; they were never "certain." Obama care only limits those who can be left out of coverage and put at risk. It also requires that 85 cents of every dollar in premiums be spent on care, limiting profits and marketing costs to 15 percent.
That's the problem, the unspoken cause of the outcry: the "certainty" of the cap on profits--not the uncertainty of "costs." Aetna Health insurance in Conneticut has actually petitioned the state's insurance commissioner to lower its premium rates by an average of 10 percent for10,000 policy holders for 2012 and may pay rebates in 2011 to its clients. This is the direct result of the Affordable Health Care Act.
Close to fifty percent of available jobs have a skill gap. Trained or skilled workers are not available to fill these jobs. Can the commentor find skilled workers?
But most importantly, does he have an expanding base of customers, repeat or new? Does his business have the demand to pay for new workers? Without the demand, he isn't going to hire any new people or keep his old workers on--if there is no work.
That's the red herring: demand drives jobs. Not certainty. Without customers, he or any business can't met fixed costs.
Until this administration, and all the "redistribute the wealth" parasites are removed from office, along with their staff level sycophants, the economy and thus hiring will not recover.A principle of expository writing is support your conclusions. Use examples, facts, or reasoned arguments. Here we have a case of "say it and believe it." "In truth, this administration has instilled entropy into our system as their desired end-state."
In truth this administration has instilled entropy into our system as their desired end-state, and until someone is able to correct that mindset we will all suffer.
- Gettysburg dead by Timothy Sullivan. Library of Congress
Examples? Evidence? Who have been the obstructionists in Congress and held up appointments and legislation? Who voted against regulated financial markets, thereby against adding the vaulted "certainty" to the markets? Who pushed for regulation to bring certainty and predictability?
Who pushed for non-drops for pre-existing conditions in workers health care. Adding certainty to the opportunity of workers to advance, demonstrate flexibility or travel to met the dictates of the market?
Who has reduced the global terrorist threat? Who has resisted closing tax loopholes and ending tax credits? Who saved the American auto industry and the thousand of jobs that it networks?
Who established the $20 billion trust fund to make the citizens, businesses, and states in the Gulf region whole--and who called it a "shakedown?"
Since the 2009 depression 88 percent of income went to corporate profits the with workers wages receiving only one percent. Who supports eliminating the minimum wage?
Who aided the stock market recovery?
Who resisted reducing nuclear arms, and now wants to hold the government hostage to political demands?
The commentor uses a technique called compression. He applies descriptors to a whole set of actions without looking at the specifics or details, the acts and steps involved--not reviewing the evidence available.
He uses another technique called "poisoning the well." He discredits the administration by associating it with ideologies and ideas associated with anger and fear. He doesn't mention the Ryan budget plan.
The commenter also makes the argument ad nauseam, repeating familiar phrases and charges against the administration, so familiar until they ring true by repetition without evidence and are accepted without examination.
In the end, the commentor argues against its own premise. On the one hand, government does not create jobs; but on the other, it is so strong and powerful, it has to be replaced for jobs to be created.
It just depends on whose hands are in control.
There is a larger issue the commenter subsumes, omits, and limits. That's a discussion of how the economy is really doing. For one, corporate profits are growing at a faster rate than the economy as a whole, 6 percent to 1.8 percent, according to May article on ChiefExecutive.net.
Businesses raked in $1.4 trillion in profits for the 2nd quarter of 2011. Compare that to total stimulus spending of 0.787 trillion for the entire stimulus package, of which .158 trillion were tax cuts. Does that sound like "redistributed wealth" or "entropy?"
By the way, that puny stimulus--when compared to corporate quarterly profits--created 3 million jobs, according to an USA Today article, August 2010.
It just depends on whose hands are in control.
This Article has been viewed 302 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I left 2 windows open for replies, but nobody seems to have taken the bait. First, it is possible for government to block job creation, while not actually creating new jobs. That's a significant mantra in some circles. Although the blocks citied serve the political ends mentioned above. Second, admittedly, the stimulus didn't work as it should, but here's the rub: it was too small! If you are curious as to why, I'll send you links.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.