not much to say, except that he said what he had to say to answer the people who said he wasn’t saying enough. of course it all sounded a bit scripted, but the day of genius presidents who write their own speeches and talk reasonably honestly, or honestly reasonably have gone away forever.
i was glad to hear that the government had hired the best and the brightest to figure out a solution. don’t really expect anything that BP couldn’t have come up with if they weren’t trying to save money.
and of course i’d be glad to see this lead to some serious energy innovation, but i won’t hold my breath.
coberly: “i was glad to hear that the government had hired the best and the brightest to figure out a solution. don’t really expect anything that BP couldn’t have come up with if they weren’t trying to save money.”
Rachel Maddow has been doing a good job showing the less than honest efforts of BP in regards to their lousy performance from planning to clean up strategy. They seem to have never considered the possibility of a disaster. What would proper engineering and real safety precautions have cost in the light of BP’s extraordinary profitability. Add fourth quarter ’09 and first quarter ’10 and $Ten billion is the round figure. Add the one year compensation of the several oil execs sitting at the hearing table and you probably have enough to have planned and built more effectively.
Dale and Jack I do agree with your re: engineering and hiring the best and brightest. I do, however, have a problem seeing how more regulation prior to the event would have prevented anything. Decades between events leads to lax enforcement.
***and of course i’d be glad to see this lead to some serious energy innovation, but i won’t hold my breath.***
In the long run, it probably will divert some research money from gasoline/diesel based transport to other endeavors. That’s good, if it happens I reckon. The human race has maybe 50 years (three, maybe four, generations of vehicles) to pretty much pretty much reinvent transportation. Not that big a deal actually, Exactly that was done in much of the world between 1900 and 1950.
What I don’t see is any serious, pragmatic, approach to tighter regulation of mineral extraction, nuclear power and things like that. It’s a serious issue and one that needs real thought or we’ll end up with something inrusive, inept, and pretty much worthless like the Transportation Security Administration.
At the root of everything is the mother of all moral hazards. Your 10B company owns and operates a nuclear power plant. The question is, do you authorize spending $10,000 to mitigate a problem that has a one in a billion chance of blowing the plant sky high? Actuarilly, your shareholders are 1000 times better off if you don’t. If there are 1000 shareholders, each with an equal share, each pockets $10 if you don’t spend that $10,000. Of course there is a one in a billion chance that they will be wiped out since the net present value of a radioactive hole in the ground that is going to be sued for a gazillion dollars is not likely to be positive. But if they diversify their investments over enough companies, they will be money ahead if they do not spend money preventing unlikely accidents. Now the neighbors downwind of the plant ….
I do believe that if he forces through a Cap & Trade or Carbon Tax Bill over the objections of the voters as was done on the Healthcare Bill, he will doom the Dem party to a Nov. disaster.
I will try again to get a discussion going re: possible Fed budget actions.
Given that there are only two areas in which the budget can be effected: 1) spending and 2) revenues, what would you do to make budgettary changes?
Do you beleive that we should be working toward balancing the budget?
When?
How?
How long for your plan to accomplish a balanced budget?
There is a precautionary not. If you do not beleive in balancing the budget, please explain why you believe the Fed. Govt. deserves more/less than it needs to spend?
Do you beleive that we should be working toward balancing the budget? YES
When? NOW , with some concern for double dip potential. How? Raise top brackets to: 70% over $500K; 85% over $750K Raise capital gains and dividend rates to Clinton era levels. Cut defense RTD&E and Investments by 50% in FY 2011. Raise user fees charged for FAA and Highways. Reinstate off shore drilling royalties. Tariff Chinese and Japanese imports. Impose national defense tax on imported oil to pay for US forces in Persian Gulf.
How long for your plan to accomplish a balanced budget? Depends on end of recession. Revenues and expenditures………
They are going down in a ball of flames reguardless in November. My guess is they will try every trick in the book to get Amnesty and Cap & Trade by November.
The old……”If I’m going down the rest of you are coming with me,” if you will!
Bruce Barlett has a post on national security spending, budget cuts or raising taxes conundrum. Nice to see some thought on it as opposed to robbing SS as a solution.
in general the deficit is not a problem. but are we talking about ‘borrowing” money we have to pay back? or just spending more money than we take in in taxes and borrowing?
that said, it seems that deficits are a problem when they reach a point where “the bond market” worries about default, or inflation. i don’t think we are at that point, despite the rhetoric, or the interest demanded would be higher, or the bonds would not get sold at any price.
but for my ease of mind, i would like to see either a cut in defense spending… we simply are spending more than we need to given the world situation today. this does not make me anti defense. or anti defense- research. then i would like to see taxes rise to the pre Bush level to begin to pay down the deficit created by the Bush tax cuts. it’s that simple. we were promised the tax cuts would grow the economy. they didn’t. we still have to pay our bills.
a country can always run a deficit for the same reason a going concern can always borrow money to finance it’s long and short run expenditures. as long as it makes more money than it costs to service the debt. there is no mystery to this except to those folks who have to worry about bill collectors.
Dale this bothers me: “…i would like to see taxes rise to the pre Bush level to begin to pay down the deficit created by the Bush tax cuts. it’s that simple.” It may be that simple in your miond, but the truth of it is Bush was just unlucky.
He had a term that was book ended by recessions and an attack on the US. Where St Bill had a full 8 Yr term that went without a recession. Looking at the graph below you wills ee that if Bush had just the same level of luck, he would also have balanced the budget. That includes his tax cuts and fighting a war.
The key is simple. Get the economy going and growing.
The reality is: we are spending at a rate that is unsustainable. The FY 2010 budget went up by >18% and we still have 1/3 of the FY left. How long can these budget increases be sustained. How much longer can we continue to borrow 1 of 3 budget dollars spent?
Unlress we have an economic policy that expands the economy, in particlular adds significant jobs, we will spiral around like a top until we fall over.
CoRev: “however, have a problem seeing how more regulation prior to the event would have prevented anything. Decades between events leads to lax enforcement.” First, I made no mention of government regulation, but if producers don’t want to spend what it takes to produce safely and with proper planning then there is little other choice than government intervention. Decades between events? Not so!
Dan, when those memes are no longer in play, we will be well past worrying about any kind of meme. the situation will dictate action above all other considerations.
The issue that bothers me the most is: “entitlements are free.” They are not. Ask Californians, New Yorkers, Michiganders, etc. That list is growing, turning each into mini (or even major) Greece situations.
We can no longer coninue to spend big (adding new and expanding existing entitlements) during flush periods, and then try to cut spending in lesser times. We have to live below our means not within them.
Entitlements and fixed costs make up nearly 2/3s of our expanding budget, and that’s without calculating the impacts of the Healthcare Bill. How much higher does that percentage need to go before we recognize the cliff’s edge upon which we are standing?
“Balancing” the budget does NOTHING to promote growth in the economy. The two are completely unrelated. Whether our taxation matches our govt outlays is irrelevant to growth.
You whine about Bush being maligned for his deficit being the result of his tax cuts and want to blame recessions and an attack (that we recommended everyone to “spend” their way through or we’d be conceding to the terrorists) for ALL his bad numbers. You actually have a grain of truth here and arent sure why, because you also enjoy pointing to the current deficit as being a result of Obama spending policies. It is true that virtually all our deficits are ENDOGENOUSLY created. They are the result of private spending collapses (recessions). Bush had one early (thanks to Clintons insane pursuit of budget surpluses which drained private sector wealth) and helped to facilitate one late (by helping to promote the biggest credit bubble, via housing, in history)
Our budget deficits are the “fault” of the private sector pulling back, usually for good reasons (fixing their balance sheets). Our public sector can only help by allowing us to save more without creating a further collapse in incomes by SPENDING more.
Your contention that spending is out of control and wanting the economy to grow are mutually incompatible. There is no growing economy with a decrease in spending. Its impossible. One must spend to grow.
Greg, why all the angst. Making a claim of “You make no frikking sense CoRev” Then later saying “You actually have a grain of truth here and arent sure why, because you also enjoy pointing to the current deficit as being a result of Obama spending policies.” makes not frikkin sense. At least part of what I said you agree.
Noooo. I did not ever say the deficit was a result of O’s spending policies. It has been exacerbated, but not caused by his policies.
I do agree that the public sector must take up the slack when the private sector pulls back. I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE CURRENT STIMULUS STRATEGY. Spending that does not accelerate the economy immediately JUST PROLONGS THE AGONIES of the instant recession. I am also afraid that this current strategy will just prolong this recession, and that we may be on a course to repeat the 30s.
So my contention is that spending is not just out of control but misaligned to meet the actual goals of QUICKLY stimulating us out of a recession. QUICKLY is important to alleviate the pain, and get us back to a point where we can control spending, raise taxes and balance the budget to stop the deficit bleeding.
If you see that strategy in any of today’s policies, please point them out, because they are not obvious to this ole fart.
Do you suppose W Bush is the model for Forrest Gump?
Actually, the bookend recessions did not have to be.
Under Bush’s watch the first recession was still born with fiscal and monetary policy driving unwise investments, wrong headed wars and a huge series of Wall St fiascoes.
All under W’s watch, and all supported by his cheerleaders.
This second bookend was predictable and caused by the W crowd. With help from Greenspan, Laffer, Milton Friedman and a gaggle of neocon pillagers.
When you use the word Meme don’t you mean “Meme Complex”.
A definition for meme is the following: Aunitofculturalinformation,suchasaculturalpracticeoridea,thatistransmittedverballyorbyrepeatedactionfromonemindtoanother.
A “memecomplex“denotesagroupofmutuallysupportingmemesthatformanorganisedbeliefsystem,suchasareligion, liberalism, or jihadism. Ism’s and ist’s seem to be based on memes (I guess “tea partyism” and/or “tea partyist” would also work).
Did your Spaceship have any trouble coming through our atmosphere when you landed on Earth? Please convey a very peaceful and heart warming message to your leaders when you head back, Oh…….and becareful about that exit out of the atmosphere….. we left a bunch a space junk up there…Good Luck and God Speed!
I looks like I’ve been banned from another econoblog (which shall remain nameless but it wasn’t DeLong). I remarked that modern professional economists show all the understanding of sustainability that a mediaeval schoolman would show towards the humanism of the Renaissance. None.
Connoisseurs of bannings might like to consider whether what I said was really a banning offense
It looks as though I’ve been de-banned and am back in business on that other blog. Makes me shudder a bit at the total control blogmeisters have over what gets said, and the lack of appeal.
don’t shudder too much. you and i are not going to change the course of human events. if you are reasonably sure you are being banned for your opinion and not for obnoxious behavior, figure the folks doing the banning just don’t want to have to think about it. and if you read the comments that don’t get banned, probably their audience agrees with them… about not wanting to think.
The “angst” is from all this obsession by virtually everyone on the right and too many on the left with “balanced budgets”.
Statements like….. “we are spending at a rate that is unsustainable”……or.. “The FY 2010 budget went up by >18% and we still have 1/3 of the FY left.” …. or … “How long can these budget increases be sustained.” do not demonstrate a coherent view of deficits. Whats unsustainable is decreases in spending (if your goal, as you claim, is to see a growing economy) and blind adherence to budget neutrality. If we have a neutral budget and 17% unemployment will you feel better?? And tell me how will decreasing spending by laying off teachers, reworking govt union pay contracts, or even decreasing military outlays make the employment situation BETTER?? That will take some serious fairy dust.
This totally unquestioned meme that we will be better off with a balanced budget or budget surplus is completely insane.
Yes spending is misaligned because its not directed at job creation DIRECTLY! Trying to stimulate hiring by giving tax breaks to businesses cant work because they are not avoiding hiring because their taxes are too high they’re avoiding hiring because there are no customers. People are not staying on unemployment because they prefer making 250 a week and doing nothing to making 500 wk for 50 hrs work, they CANNOT find a job.
Until people STOP asking “whats the budget deficit at” and instead say “put the budget deficit where ever it has to be to provide a job for everyone who wants one” we will be mired in this mess.
What Dale is saying is that growing the economy on private credit is NOT sustainable. Thats we mostly did under Clintion and continued (and worsened) under Bush. Our private sector was not spending their income to grow over the last twenty years they were using their income as leverage to borrow. They thought they would all have their jobs forever. They forgot that congress was trying to take away their job security by weakening unions, so they could off shore their jobs to cheaper labor areas.
Some people find dissenting opinion obnoxious. These are bad people and it’s a bad situation when they have too much influence over the discussion. But I guess this is the state of political discourse in 2010, and these minor annoyances don’t leave a mark.
i used to be in the business of “regulating” an industry. i agree to some extent with CoRev, when you can go a long time without a problem the regulating can get pretty sloppy. But the fact is that the regulating we did was what let us go a long time without a problem.
If there had been a government inspector on the construction of that rig, he would have said, or should have said, “this is not according to spec. shut down until you fix it.” and with just a little bit of esprit de corps, he could have made it stick.
until of course their boss took his boss out to lunch and “reasoned” with him.
we could “regulate” that business by just saying “hell no. we don’t need to go to the bottom of the ocean to get oil when we can still build smaller cars and give up those twenty mile commutes.”
i agree. but there are a couple of regular posters here i wish would go away. i mostly don’t believe in banning unless they take over the discussion and won’t quit.
i may have been guilty of that myself from time to time. although if there is anyone out there who had a hand in that… you know, if you could talk straight, we could have fixed that.
(translation: i was banned from a “closed site” because people didn’t like what i was saying. but the owners of the site could not bring themselves to make clear what the problem was. they thought i would be smart enough to take a hint expressed in diplomat-speak. not this boy. i keep thinking that half the problems we have in the world is because half the people can’t talk honestly, and the other half can’t listen honestly.)
It is not Unions who are keeping jobs here, it is unions that are driving jobs out. The manufacturing didn’t leave because congress weaken union strength, they left because union strength made it impossible to be profitable.
Most of the need for oil is for Trucking, Shipping, Rail, Airplanes and Plastics, (all of which are absolute staples and any modification has a result is severe economic pain). The demand used up for civilian driving is very insignificant.
You can’t build battery operated airplanes, super tankers, trains and semi trucks. Maybe 100 years from now, we will unlock technology to get there, but it isn’t even on the horizon yet.
Oops…Lakers and Celtics game…sorry I was late. Bye.
Anyone care to discuss last night’s speech?
CoRev
not much to say, except that he said what he had to say to answer the people who said he wasn’t saying enough. of course it all sounded a bit scripted, but the day of genius presidents who write their own speeches and talk reasonably honestly, or honestly reasonably have gone away forever.
i was glad to hear that the government had hired the best and the brightest to figure out a solution. don’t really expect anything that BP couldn’t have come up with if they weren’t trying to save money.
and of course i’d be glad to see this lead to some serious energy innovation, but i won’t hold my breath.
coberly: “i was glad to hear that the government had hired the best and the brightest to figure out a solution. don’t really expect anything that BP couldn’t have come up with if they weren’t trying to save money.”
Rachel Maddow has been doing a good job showing the less than honest efforts of BP in regards to their lousy performance from planning to clean up strategy. They seem to have never considered the possibility of a disaster. What would proper engineering and real safety precautions have cost in the light of BP’s extraordinary profitability. Add fourth quarter ’09 and first quarter ’10 and $Ten billion is the round figure. Add the one year compensation of the several oil execs sitting at the hearing table and you probably have enough to have planned and built more effectively.
Didn’t expect him to say much. Didn’t listen. Just read the transcript : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/us/politics/16obama-text.html?pagewanted=4 As far as I can see, he didn’t say much
Dale and Jack I do agree with your re: engineering and hiring the best and brightest. I do, however, have a problem seeing how more regulation prior to the event would have prevented anything. Decades between events leads to lax enforcement.
(He shrugs walking away.)
***and of course i’d be glad to see this lead to some serious energy innovation, but i won’t hold my breath.***
In the long run, it probably will divert some research money from gasoline/diesel based transport to other endeavors. That’s good, if it happens I reckon. The human race has maybe 50 years (three, maybe four, generations of vehicles) to pretty much pretty much reinvent transportation. Not that big a deal actually, Exactly that was done in much of the world between 1900 and 1950.
What I don’t see is any serious, pragmatic, approach to tighter regulation of mineral extraction, nuclear power
and things like that. It’s a serious issue and one that needs real thought or we’ll end up with something inrusive, inept, and pretty much worthless like the Transportation Security Administration.
At the root of everything is the mother of all moral hazards. Your 10B company owns and operates a nuclear power plant. The question is, do you authorize spending $10,000 to mitigate a problem that has a one in a billion chance of blowing the plant sky high? Actuarilly, your shareholders are 1000 times better off if you don’t. If there are 1000 shareholders, each with an equal share, each pockets $10 if you don’t spend that $10,000. Of course there is a one in a billion chance that they will be wiped out since the net present value of a radioactive hole in the ground that is going to be sued for a gazillion dollars is not likely to be positive. But if they diversify their investments over enough companies, they will be money ahead if they do not spend money preventing unlikely accidents. Now the neighbors downwind of the plant ….
I do believe that if he forces through a Cap & Trade or Carbon Tax Bill over the objections of the voters as was done on the Healthcare Bill, he will doom the Dem party to a Nov. disaster.
I will try again to get a discussion going re: possible Fed budget actions.
Given that there are only two areas in which the budget can be effected: 1) spending and 2) revenues, what would you do to make budgettary changes?
Do you beleive that we should be working toward balancing the budget?
When?
How?
How long for your plan to accomplish a balanced budget?
There is a precautionary not. If you do not beleive in balancing the budget, please explain why you believe the Fed. Govt. deserves more/less than it needs to spend?
Check out economists’ view: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/06/the-national-security-shell-game.html
CoRev,
Do you beleive that we should be working toward balancing the budget? YES
When? NOW , with some concern for double dip potential.
How? Raise top brackets to: 70% over $500K; 85% over $750K
Raise capital gains and dividend rates to Clinton era levels. Cut defense RTD&E and Investments by 50% in FY 2011. Raise user fees charged for FAA and Highways. Reinstate off shore drilling royalties. Tariff Chinese and Japanese imports. Impose national defense tax on imported oil to pay for US forces in Persian Gulf.
How long for your plan to accomplish a balanced budget? Depends on end of recession. Revenues and expenditures………
Let’s leave the grandkids a bankrupt polluted country! I would certainly vote for that.
Corev,
They are going down in a ball of flames reguardless in November. My guess is they will try every trick in the book to get Amnesty and Cap & Trade by November.
The old……”If I’m going down the rest of you are coming with me,” if you will!
Bruce Barlett has a post on national security spending, budget cuts or raising taxes conundrum. Nice to see some thought on it as opposed to robbing SS as a solution.
Corev,
With or without the memes around cut taxes raise taxes? Also I assume where to cut without the memes of NIMBY?
CoRev
well here is some oil for your fire.
in general the deficit is not a problem. but are we talking about ‘borrowing” money we have to pay back? or just spending more money than we take in in taxes and borrowing?
that said, it seems that deficits are a problem when they reach a point where “the bond market” worries about default, or inflation. i don’t think we are at that point, despite the rhetoric, or the interest demanded would be higher, or the bonds would not get sold at any price.
but for my ease of mind, i would like to see either a cut in defense spending… we simply are spending more than we need to given the world situation today. this does not make me anti defense. or anti defense- research. then i would like to see taxes rise to the pre Bush level to begin to pay down the deficit created by the Bush tax cuts. it’s that simple. we were promised the tax cuts would grow the economy. they didn’t. we still have to pay our bills.
a country can always run a deficit for the same reason a going concern can always borrow money to finance it’s long and short run expenditures. as long as it makes more money than it costs to service the debt. there is no mystery to this except to those folks who have to worry about bill collectors.
Dale this bothers me: “…i would like to see taxes rise to the pre Bush level to begin to pay down the deficit created by the Bush tax cuts. it’s that simple.” It may be that simple in your miond, but the truth of it is Bush was just unlucky.
He had a term that was book ended by recessions and an attack on the US. Where St Bill had a full 8 Yr term that went without a recession. Looking at the graph below you wills ee that if Bush had just the same level of luck, he would also have balanced the budget. That includes his tax cuts and fighting a war.
The key is simple. Get the economy going and growing.
The reality is: we are spending at a rate that is unsustainable. The FY 2010 budget went up by >18% and we still have 1/3 of the FY left. How long can these budget increases be sustained. How much longer can we continue to borrow 1 of 3 budget dollars spent?
Unlress we have an economic policy that expands the economy, in particlular adds significant jobs, we will spiral around like a top until we fall over.
CoRev: “however, have a problem seeing how more regulation prior to the event would have prevented anything. Decades between events leads to lax enforcement.”
First, I made no mention of government regulation, but if producers don’t want to spend what it takes to produce safely and with proper planning then there is little other choice than government intervention. Decades between events? Not so!
Dan, when those memes are no longer in play, we will be well past worrying about any kind of meme. the situation will dictate action above all other considerations.
The issue that bothers me the most is: “entitlements are free.” They are not. Ask Californians, New Yorkers, Michiganders, etc. That list is growing, turning each into mini (or even major) Greece situations.
We can no longer coninue to spend big (adding new and expanding existing entitlements) during flush periods, and then try to cut spending in lesser times. We have to live below our means not within them.
Entitlements and fixed costs make up nearly 2/3s of our expanding budget, and that’s without calculating the impacts of the Healthcare Bill. How much higher does that percentage need to go before we recognize the cliff’s edge upon which we are standing?
You make no frikking sense CoRev
“Balancing” the budget does NOTHING to promote growth in the economy. The two are completely unrelated. Whether our taxation matches our govt outlays is irrelevant to growth.
You whine about Bush being maligned for his deficit being the result of his tax cuts and want to blame recessions and an attack (that we recommended everyone to “spend” their way through or we’d be conceding to the terrorists) for ALL his bad numbers. You actually have a grain of truth here and arent sure why, because you also enjoy pointing to the current deficit as being a result of Obama spending policies. It is true that virtually all our deficits are ENDOGENOUSLY created. They are the result of private spending collapses (recessions). Bush had one early (thanks to Clintons insane pursuit of budget surpluses which drained private sector wealth) and helped to facilitate one late (by helping to promote the biggest credit bubble, via housing, in history)
Our budget deficits are the “fault” of the private sector pulling back, usually for good reasons (fixing their balance sheets). Our public sector can only help by allowing us to save more without creating a further collapse in incomes by SPENDING more.
Your contention that spending is out of control and wanting the economy to grow are mutually incompatible. There is no growing economy with a decrease in spending. Its impossible. One must spend to grow.
Greg, why all the angst. Making a claim of “You make no frikking sense CoRev” Then later saying “You actually have a grain of truth here and arent sure why, because you also enjoy pointing to the current deficit as being a result of Obama spending policies.” makes not frikkin sense. At least part of what I said you agree.
Noooo. I did not ever say the deficit was a result of O’s spending policies. It has been exacerbated, but not caused by his policies.
I do agree that the public sector must take up the slack when the private sector pulls back. I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE CURRENT STIMULUS STRATEGY. Spending that does not accelerate the economy immediately JUST PROLONGS THE AGONIES of the instant recession. I am also afraid that this current strategy will just prolong this recession, and that we may be on a course to repeat the 30s.
So my contention is that spending is not just out of control but misaligned to meet the actual goals of QUICKLY stimulating us out of a recession. QUICKLY is important to alleviate the pain, and get us back to a point where we can control spending, raise taxes and balance the budget to stop the deficit bleeding.
If you see that strategy in any of today’s policies, please point them out, because they are not obvious to this ole fart.
Do you suppose W Bush is the model for Forrest Gump?
Actually, the bookend recessions did not have to be.
Under Bush’s watch the first recession was still born with fiscal and monetary policy driving unwise investments, wrong headed wars and a huge series of Wall St fiascoes.
All under W’s watch, and all supported by his cheerleaders.
This second bookend was predictable and caused by the W crowd. With help from Greenspan, Laffer, Milton Friedman and a gaggle of neocon pillagers.
Robbing SS is the plan of the warfare state to try and keep their plundering of the economy on schedule.
The economists’ view thing was about questions put to H Clinton at the den of warmongers also called Brookings.
The US could scarcely be worse off if the Horde were running amok in the countryside.
Jack is correct. We seem to have had ~3 blowouts this decade. One, Ensco51, was in the Gulf, and under US jurisdiction.
Rdan,
When you use the word Meme don’t you mean “Meme Complex”.
A definition for meme is the following: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.
A “meme complex“ denotes a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion, liberalism, or jihadism. Ism’s and ist’s seem to be based on memes (I guess “tea partyism” and/or “tea partyist” would also work).
Islm,
Did your Spaceship have any trouble coming through our atmosphere when you landed on Earth? Please convey a very peaceful and heart warming message to your leaders when you head back, Oh…….and becareful about that exit out of the atmosphere….. we left a bunch a space junk up there…Good Luck and God Speed!
No….I am sticking to a particular belief no matter party etc.
CoRev
unlucky or not, the fact is we got the tax cuts and the promise they would grow the economy.
the economy didn’t grow. now we need to pay our bills.
Dale said: “unlucky or not, the fact is we got the tax cuts and the promise they would grow the economy.
the economy didn’t grow. ” Didn’t grow the economy?
I think you need to join ILSM on the space ship.
Try these charts: http://www.data360.org/graph_group.aspx?Graph_Group_Id=149
I looks like I’ve been banned from another econoblog (which shall remain nameless but it wasn’t DeLong). I remarked that modern professional economists show all the understanding of sustainability that a mediaeval schoolman would show towards the humanism of the Renaissance. None.
Connoisseurs of bannings might like to consider whether what I said was really a banning offense
It looks as though I’ve been de-banned and am back in business on that other blog. Makes me shudder a bit at the total control blogmeisters have over what gets said, and the lack of appeal.
CoRev
look around you.
getting high on crack is not the same as “growing.”
gordon
don’t shudder too much. you and i are not going to change the course of human events. if you are reasonably sure you are being banned for your opinion and not for obnoxious behavior, figure the folks doing the banning just don’t want to have to think about it. and if you read the comments that don’t get banned, probably their audience agrees with them… about not wanting to think.
The “angst” is from all this obsession by virtually everyone on the right and too many on the left with “balanced budgets”.
Statements like….. “we are spending at a rate that is unsustainable”……or.. “The FY 2010 budget went up by >18% and we still have 1/3 of the FY left.” …. or … “How long can these budget increases be sustained.” do not demonstrate a coherent view of deficits. Whats unsustainable is decreases in spending (if your goal, as you claim, is to see a growing economy) and blind adherence to budget neutrality. If we have a neutral budget and 17% unemployment will you feel better?? And tell me how will decreasing spending by laying off teachers, reworking govt union pay contracts, or even decreasing military outlays make the employment situation BETTER?? That will take some serious fairy dust.
This totally unquestioned meme that we will be better off with a balanced budget or budget surplus is completely insane.
Yes spending is misaligned because its not directed at job creation DIRECTLY! Trying to stimulate hiring by giving tax breaks to businesses cant work because they are not avoiding hiring because their taxes are too high they’re avoiding hiring because there are no customers. People are not staying on unemployment because they prefer making 250 a week and doing nothing to making 500 wk for 50 hrs work, they CANNOT find a job.
Until people STOP asking “whats the budget deficit at” and instead say “put the budget deficit where ever it has to be to provide a job for everyone who wants one” we will be mired in this mess.
What Dale is saying is that growing the economy on private credit is NOT sustainable. Thats we mostly did under Clintion and continued (and worsened) under Bush. Our private sector was not spending their income to grow over the last twenty years they were using their income as leverage to borrow. They thought they would all have their jobs forever. They forgot that congress was trying to take away their job security by weakening unions, so they could off shore their jobs to cheaper labor areas.
Coberly,
Some people find dissenting opinion obnoxious. These are bad people and it’s a bad situation when they have too much influence over the discussion. But I guess this is the state of political discourse in 2010, and these minor annoyances don’t leave a mark.
jack
i used to be in the business of “regulating” an industry. i agree to some extent with CoRev, when you can go a long time without a problem the regulating can get pretty sloppy. But the fact is that the regulating we did was what let us go a long time without a problem.
If there had been a government inspector on the construction of that rig, he would have said, or should have said, “this is not according to spec. shut down until you fix it.” and with just a little bit of esprit de corps, he could have made it stick.
until of course their boss took his boss out to lunch and “reasoned” with him.
of, course, \\hold your breath guys\\
we could “regulate” that business by just saying “hell no. we don’t need to go to the bottom of the ocean to get oil when we can still build smaller cars and give up those twenty mile commutes.”
whitewater
i agree. but there are a couple of regular posters here i wish would go away. i mostly don’t believe in banning unless they take over the discussion and won’t quit.
i may have been guilty of that myself from time to time. although if there is anyone out there who had a hand in that… you know, if you could talk straight, we could have fixed that.
(translation: i was banned from a “closed site” because people didn’t like what i was saying. but the owners of the site could not bring themselves to make clear what the problem was. they thought i would be smart enough to take a hint expressed in diplomat-speak. not this boy. i keep thinking that half the problems we have in the world is because half the people can’t talk honestly, and the other half can’t listen honestly.)
Greg,
It is not Unions who are keeping jobs here, it is unions that are driving jobs out. The manufacturing didn’t leave because congress weaken union strength, they left because union strength made it impossible to be profitable.
Coberly,
Most of the need for oil is for Trucking, Shipping, Rail, Airplanes and Plastics, (all of which are absolute staples and any modification has a result is severe economic pain). The demand used up for civilian driving is very insignificant.
You can’t build battery operated airplanes, super tankers, trains and semi trucks. Maybe 100 years from now, we will unlock technology to get there, but it isn’t even on the horizon yet.