Dec 06 2008

Maybe it’s not quite THAT bad

Category: economy — harmonicminer @ 1:00 pm

A friend of mine around age 31 or so, with a couple of small children, recently put up a blog post about his sense of impending doom on the economic front. Herewith, my response, trying to make the point that things were actually worse for people his age in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in real terms, and there is reasonable hope that it will all work out, even with a blundering government that doesn’t quite know what to do, and is too proud to have the courage to do very little.

I used to hate it when old guys started out with, “When I was your age”, but…

Continue reading “Maybe it’s not quite THAT bad”

Tags:

Nov 30 2008

Daily Kos mythology

Category: economy,left,taxes — harmonicminer @ 10:04 am

On the Daily Kos, we get this narrative about a conservative dad and a liberal daughter:

A blue collar man came home from a long day’s work to find his idealistic daughter had dropped in while doing some local community organizing. Like so many others in his income bracket, he considered himself to be a God fearing conservative, and along with most conservatives, was very, very much against income and capital gains taxes, especially on the rich.

But today he was deeply worried about the economic future of his naive, liberal daughter and his two grandchildren. Based on stories his parents told him about the Great Depression, his own shallow prejudice, and selected morsels of misinformation fed to him by right-wing talk radio, he decided to confront her right there and then for her own good.

He started by calmly and politely pointing out that Barack Obama was a Muslim, not a US citizen, and the President-elect was going to raise taxes on millionaires and force government funded abortions on everyone — even the men. Before the girl had a chance to respond to her father’s breathtaking ignorance, he muttered something about unions being responsible and trailed off. The girl, sensing something more was going on, asked him instead about his own job.

Continue reading “Daily Kos mythology”

Tags: , ,

Nov 26 2008

Obama’s “center-right” economic team?

Category: economy,Obama — harmonicminer @ 9:18 pm

Larry Kudlow, no raving Leftist he, evaluates Obama’s economic team as being predominantly center-right. And this seems to give him hope that Obama is going to talk a Left leaning game, while governing more from the center.

Continue reading “Obama’s “center-right” economic team?”

Tags: ,

Nov 26 2008

Thomas Sowell on goats

Category: economy,government — harmonicminer @ 2:24 am

Thomas Sowell helps us separate the sheep from the goats.

There is an old Russian fable, with different versions in other countries, about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was that Boris had a goat and Ivan didn’t. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.

Ivan said, “I want Boris’ goat to die.”

Variations on this story in other countries suggest that this tells us something about human beings, not just Russians.

Read the whole thing.

Tags: ,

Nov 25 2008

Get ready to pay union benefits from your own pocket

Category: economy — harmonicminer @ 10:27 am

Washington DC is about to give us all an object lesson on why private sector unions in “industries too large to fail” are a danger to all of us. But first, some background:

Perhaps you are one of those who sees unions as the little guys all organizing in order to demand better pay and working conditions from evil corporate employers who hold all the cards.  And, it may seem to you that it really doesn’t affect you if you’re not working for that employer, or a member of that union.  You may look on with a certain degree of disinterest, thinking that whatever happens in that particular industry is not going to matter to you.

Continue reading “Get ready to pay union benefits from your own pocket”

Tags: ,

Nov 22 2008

Obama holds seance with FDR

Category: economy,Obama — harmonicminer @ 3:11 pm

While a recent new report on President-elect Obama’s plans is pretty high on glittering generality, including the obligatory swipe at George Bush, the former senator shares the single substantive detail (and it isn’t much) about how he will aid the rebuilding of the economy. Here is his plan to create 2.5M new jobs by 2011.

“We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels,” Obama said. He also made a commitment to fuel-efficient cars and alternative energy technologies “that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years ahead.”

Move over Community Reinvestment Act. We’re about to have a new Works Progress Adminstration, a new Civilian Conservation Corps, a new Reconstruction Finance Corporation, etc.
Continue reading “Obama holds seance with FDR”

Tags: ,

Nov 12 2008

The Foundation for Economic Education

Category: economy,education,freedom — harmonicminer @ 1:48 am

One of my favorite sites is the Foundation for Economic Education.

There’s a small joke involved:  access to the site is FREE, but the url is http://www.fee.org/.

Get it?  OK, I’m amused by small things.

Anyway, I’ll be adding a link to this place in my blogroll soon, and I urge you to visit and read, often.

Just skulk around.  Click here and there.  Read a bit.  It will be worth your while in understanding two critical things:

1)  How the USA got so rich

and

2)  How it can become much poorer

And once you understand these two things, you have some idea of how we can help societies that are now poor to become richer.

I’m for that.

Tags: , ,

Nov 08 2008

The demographic breakdown

Category: economy,election 2008 — sardonicwhiner @ 9:47 am

From Daily Kos, here are a couple of charts showing the demographic breakdown of the election.  It’s pretty eye-opening, especially if this is new info to you, and then I have some conclusions.

Continue reading “The demographic breakdown”

Tags: ,

Nov 06 2008

Economic reality, government programs, food and energy

Category: Congress,economy,energy,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:02 am

John Stossel has some good thoughts on what is, and is not, in the power of governments. He begins by quoting African-American economist Walter Williams:

“Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good,” Williams says.

The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.

“Most of life is outside the government sector,” says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. “Most change in America doesn’t come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn’t come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up.”

Continue reading “Economic reality, government programs, food and energy”

Tags: , ,

Nov 02 2008

On Redistribution

Category: economy,election 2008,Obama — harmonicminer @ 12:34 am

We can tolerate some redistribution.  Government always does some of it.  But it is toxic for economies, because it distorts markets, which means it distorts production that sells to those markets.  Nevertheless, some toxicity is tolerable (medicine is toxic, too, after all, in a good cause), and governments seem unable to resist the temptation to pick winners and losers.

But as with most toxic things (medicines as well as simple poisons), there are 4 dosage ranges.

Continue reading “On Redistribution”

Tags: , ,

« Previous Page — Next Page »