Links

[chris_gerrib]

1) A very interesting article: why you should stop believing in evolution. TL;DR version = one believes in religion and comprehends science.

2) Yet another Republican-led House panel finds no misconduct or attempt to misled in Benghazi affair.

A twofer from Gin and Tacos:

3) a lack of constraint. Constraint is used in the technical sense to mean people should believe things that make sense together. In other words, if balancing the budget is important, raising taxes should be okay.

4) We Americans have little faith in special knowledge, and only with the greatest difficulty is the idea being forced upon us that not every man is capable of doing every job. But Mr. Ford belongs to the traditions of self-made men, to that primitive Americanism which has held the theory that a successful manufacturer could turn his hand with equal success to every other occupation.

This quote above shows one of the (many, many) failures of libertarianism. There really is "special knowledge" and we ignore that at our peril. ETA This is more a critique of people who are self-described libertarians vs. the philosophy as a whole. See, for example, how we can't trust climate scientists because reasons.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The last paragraph of this post makes no sense whatever - unless you have a “special definition” of libertarianism, the which I've occasionally suspected.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

“special definition” of libertarianism, more accurately, of individual libertarians. I see many self-described people of that persuasion arguing that, for example, we can't trust climate scientists because, well, reasons.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, some of them, you can't!  Likewise some of their critics, and for the same reason:  Ideological axes.  It's unfortunate that the issue has become so political, because it's something that should be discerned by clear observation and cautious deduction.  I don't recall where you stand on the issue, but that global warming is happening is pretty unmistakable, and to me it seems obvious that you can't dump a million years' worth of petrocarbon deposits into the atmosphere in a century and expect no effect!

With that said, one should beware the neoLuddites of the Anti-Industrial Left, who are determined to impose their religion of power and permanent poverty upon as much of mankind as they can reach. If 98% of the human race vanished tomorrow, this would still take some fifty years or more to play out. As is, we've got to do something ourselves, and banning what isn't regulated by a French-style bureaucracy, or regulating what isn't banned, isn't a good answer!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Yes, but here you're making the same error that many on the right accuse the 'left' of that there is a monolithic thing that is the 'left'.

There are actually very few people demanding we deindustrialize but it's a useful strawman to hit people who are worried about climate change with.

I think a shift to a nuclear/electric with renewables future, with a better blend of rail and air travel would be a net economic boon myself.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

By the bye, if balancing the budget is important but the tax burden is already crippling the economy, to where imposing further burdens will result only in mass tax-evasion, capital flight and steadily dwindling revenues, raising taxes ISN'T a good idea.

In the days when you could still find manufactured goods that said MADE IN USA, the budget was balanced - indeed, showed surpluses! - without destructive confiscatory taxation.  Reduce spending, and you can actually ease the tax burden!  Wow, lookathat - jobs!  People taking home real paychecks!  One income sufficient again!  Gosh.  

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

You mean, when we had Bill Clinton's tax rates? As I recall, he left office with budget surpluses that Bush The Younger tax-cut is way to deficits.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

No, I was thinking more the Truman-to-Johnson era.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Max tax rate until JFK was 70%. JFK cut it to 50%. Current top rate is 32%. Again, you want to argue tax rates are too high?

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Are you including all the other taxes, “fees” and other nickle-and-diming that's been added on with happy abandon by Washington wannabe's all the way down to the county level, or are you merely talking about the Federal income tax, and not even the State?

It's more than just a simple percentage - way more.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I was quoting the Federal tax rates. But as was reported on USA Today (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2011-05-05-tax-cut-record-low_n.htm), "Americans are paying the smallest share of their income for taxes since 1958, a reflection of tax cuts and a weak economy, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
The total tax burden — for all federal, state and local taxes — dropped to 23.6% of income in the first quarter, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data."

I know you really, really don't want to hear this, but current tax rates are really, really *low* compared to the WWII era.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

No, that's fine!  Happy to hear it!  Let's LEAVE IT that way, eh?

[Since you're looking at 1958, look at what percentage of the GNP was consumed by government spending, and what the value of the dollar was in gold. “Run them presses - we got government programs to pay for!” And they've worked so well…]

Actually, you could get your wish:  Have the Federal Government stop borrowing - and borrowing and borrowing…  and extort the cost of those government programs (and the interest on the debt, which it is also borrowing!) fully and directly from the taxpayer each year!  We'd have a GNP and a quality of life on a par with Haiti in no time!

“Happy Days Are Here Again…”

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Gordon, I grow weary of being your research assistant. For GDP ratios, see Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/the-non-surge-in-government-spending/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0).

Gold, much like pork bellies, is a commodity. The price of gold will fluctuate as new deposits are found and old ones play out. In fact, during the 1800s, we had long-term deflation because new mines and new technologies flooded the market with gold.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

I grow weary of being your research assistant

Yah, and it don't pay, neither. On the other hand, you weren't hired for the position, so quit yer gripin'.

Or as they say in free markets, “If you don't wanna do it, don't!”

Certainly the price of gold fluctuates - but as a standard of currency value it's a benchmark, more indicative than, say, the cost of a loaf of bread, the other staple (so to speak) of economists.


The teal deer version of all this is, Raising taxes is Plan B.  before you raise taxes, be very sure of what you're funding.  If all you're doing is thickening the lard that insulates civil service bureaucracy and sweetening the barrelled pork…  Well, you might want to reconsider, Robin Hood, before you start playing Santa Claus with other people's money.


> In 2003, the [Department of Homeland Security] came under fire (http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/624011.html) after the media revealed
> that Laura Callahan, Deputy Chief Information Officer at DHS with responsibilities for
> sensitive national security databases, had obtained her advanced computer science degrees
> through a diploma mill in a small town in Wyoming. The department was blamed for up to $2
> billion of waste and fraud after audits by the Government Accountability Office revealed
> widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including
> beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats
> purchased at double the retail price (many of which later could not be found), and iPods
> ostensibly for use in "data storage"…

> In July 2006, the Office of Personnel Management conducted a survey of federal employees
> in all 36 federal agencies on job satisfaction and how they felt their respective agency
> was headed. DHS was last or near to last in every category including;

• 33rd on the talent management index
• 35th on the leadership and knowledge management index
• 36th on the job satisfaction index
• 36th on the results-oriented performance culture index
> 
> The low scores were attributed to major concerns about basic supervision, management and
> leadership within the agency…

Your Tax Dollars at Work!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

This comment makes absolutely no sense, you do know that right?

Just checking.

Gold is, in fact, no more useful a measure of anything than the price of a loaf of bread - it's actually essentially a feature of trying to use commodity values for anything really compared to fiat money.

And as regards waste in government departments... there is, as they say, a reason Dilbert is set in the private sector. I could tell you stories about fortune 500 software companies that make the government look like a paragon.

And, in fact, let's look at actual government run healthcare systems spending and outcomes versus private outcomes. How about that old UK versus US chestnut because as a realtively fiscally conservative person, I WANT the kind of spending and results profile of the NHS and not the cash wasting mess that is the US system.

I also don't want to force companies to essentially run healthcare services for their employees because, speaking as an employer, I'm not a frigging doctor.

Germany, for example, has a higher tax burden than the US and has a successful manufacturing and exporting base and spends a higher proportion of national income than the US does. That suggests there really isn't a problem with the size of the US government.

Secondly, and I cannot possibly say this any more clearly. THE SIZE OF THE US DEBT IS REALLY NOT THAT BAD. It's not actually that bad historically, note the net debt is much lower than it was in WW2 (again, Krugman is your friend for data) and the US economy is absolutely huge.

The real problem remains, as it has been since 2000, a bunch of unfunded wars, massive unfunded tax cuts, and a massive gift to seniors to buy their votes.

Take those 3 out of the equation and when the economy crashed in 2008 the US would have been able to deal with the catastrophe properly.

But it didn't. Rather than taking 5 years to fix, it's going to take 15-20.