Hating America First

This first ran on Splice Today
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It appears there’s a chance our Congressional representatives will decide en masse that financial apocalypse is preferable to a possible primary challenge. What this would mean exactly is unclear; I guess the first consequence would be a stock market nosedive. Longer term, presumably, it would involve a downgrading of U.S. debt, which means we’d have to live within our means, which would result in a sudden and vicious fall in our quality of life. Unemployment would skyrocket, production would grind to a halt—we’d be looking at a massive contraction of the economy that would make FDR sit up in his grave and say, “We have nothing to fear but…HOLY SHIT!”

Obviously, this would be bad, and nobody but nobody wants this to happen… not even the wind-me-up-and-I-drool-great-gobs-of-stupid animatronic joke that is Michele Bachmann. If the Dow plunges to 3000, I lose my retirement savings, my kid can’t go to college, and quite possibly my freelancing income will dry up. My wife could lose her job. We wouldn’t be able to make our mortgage payments… though maybe that wouldn’t matter so much if all the banks holding the mortgages collapsed. So we’d have a place to stay at least. But, yes, I would prefer overall to have a retirement and a job and to send my kid to college and just generally for things to continue as they are with my fairly affluent lifestyle in the Greatest Nation on Earth, thank you very much.

And yet. Affluence, Greatest-Nation-On-Earthing, strutting about the globe with my kid’s college fund and my new Prius… is it really all good? Or could there be some upside to financial apocalypse?

If the US did default, as I said, it would mean a huge drop in standards of living, definitely in America, most likely throughout the entire globe. China’s economic boom, fueled in large part by US debt, would come to a screeching halt. People everywhere would buy less and make less. Using fewer resources would be a major boon for the planet. We’re probably too far along at this point to actually do anything about curtailing global warming, but still, it’s hard to believe that the assembled frogs, whales, and plant life wouldn’t appreciate a reduction in emissions, plastic crap, and deforestation. If humans regress to the Stone Age, the only things on the planet that’ll really be upset are humans and, possibly, stones. (Okay, Siamese cats and little lap dogs too. But that’s it.)

The other major benefit of the U.S. buying less of everything is that it would mean, logically, that the US would buy fewer guns. In 2010, the U.S. accounted for 43 percent of the world’s defense spending. It’s a familiar statistic, but its consequences remain staggering. Because of that vast outlay—because, in short, our standard of living is so high that we can’t figure out what to do with our money—we are currently fighting at least three wars, and have troops everywhere on the globe, from Germany to Korea to god knows where else. If a Muslim terrorist shakes hands with a drug dealer in the wilds of Northwest Upper Slabovia, we have the will and the excess capacity to bomb a wedding party somewhere nearby. If a client state defies us by egregiously oppressing its neighbors, we can speak to them sternly and, with a grave shake of the head, send them only twice as many missiles as they asked for.

It’s almost certainly true that the world would be less peaceful if America wasn’t playing global policeman. And, of course, if our standard of living goes down, everybody else’s will too. Still, despite all the good we do outside of bombing wedding parties and arming oppressors, there must be a moment or two when folks in the rest of the world look over at us, sitting on our nuclear stockpiles, and wonder, if only for an instant, how things might be different if we had something to worry us other than our neighbor’s business.

The U.S. isn’t going to collapse because of this debt ceiling nonsense. If we did, it would be bad for me, you, and the vast majority of people on earth. Getting punched in the face would hurt. But that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to be punched in the face.

76 thoughts on “Hating America First

  1. “It’s almost certainly true that the world would be less peaceful if America wasn’t playing global policeman.”

    I have some doubts about this statement. There’s everyone reason to believe that the world as it stands today would be a more peaceful place without constant American intervention. The world might become a less peaceful place if America wasn’t there to provide a counterbalancing power, but that’s not quite the same as being a “global policeman”.

  2. Hmm. That’s reasonable. “Playing policeman” doesn’t just mean intervening though; it means being around as a force to prevent other people from doing stuff because they’re afraid of you.

  3. You are joking, right?

    How can the U.S.A. be a policeman if they’re “out there” just to defend their plutocracy’s interests?

    On second thought, that’s what the police does. Whattdoyaknow? you’re right, after all…

  4. Yeah, that isn’t not what I meant. The police do make things more peaceful I think (or at least it’s arguable that they do), but it’s not necessarily a just peace, and in certain circumstances they do contribute to violence rather than reducing it (as in the drug war.)

  5. Also…I think our police state at home and our imperial project abroad are quite closely connected. It’s the same logic of fear, the same ideology of safety, and the same methods of repression in the name of freedom. And there are sometimes closer connections as well; the Abu Ghraib torture methods were committed in part by people who had worked in American prisons, and used some of those methods at home.

  6. I don’t doubt that, Noah…

    Changing subject: this one is too funny (in a black humor kind of way): “if our standard of living goes down, everybody else’s will too.”

    I imagened people in sub-Saharan Africa being more and more worried…

  7. I think it’s quite possible even really poor people would experience a drop in standard of living. Things can always get worse, and the west sends a lot of aid to those places. Not all the aid helps, of course, but I think some of it does.

    Revolutionary change is often really bad, especially for the least well off, even when the status quo is awful too. The best thing that could happen for the world is not for the U.S. to collapse, but for it to just cut out the empire bullshit of its own accord. If we cut our defense spending by even just half, we and the entire world would be in much, much better shape. I guess that’s too much to hope for though….

  8. “The other major benefit of the U.S. buying less of everything is that it would mean, logically, that the US would buy fewer guns.”

    To echo Domingos: you’re kidding, right? It’s unlikely that a default would lead to the US buying less of *everything*; it would instead lead to the US buying less of everything *except* guns. House Republicans agreeing to reduce defence spending is about as likely as them agreeing to increase taxes.

  9. If we actually default, I think it’s really hard to tell what would happen. It would increase the price of borrowing exponentially. There’d be less money, period. I don’t think the House Republicans would have a choice. If no one will lend you money to buy the guns, you can’t buy as many guns.

  10. Arguably, this is what the Tea Party supposedly wants. They say they hate government, so let it collapse. Maybe when things do fall apart (though it won’t, even the craziest Republican’s don’t want total apocalypse) and suddenly the government isn’t there to help with financial needs people will sing a different tune. “I hate the government!” “Well, it just went broke and now you can’t get your income tax refund, medicare, medicaid, interest rates have shot up, and you’re otherwise screwed” “Well damn…I love the government!” Yes, I’m being reductive.

  11. I seem to recollect that during the Great Depression, or around that period, taxes were raised to 80% for the richest.
    – It’s a lot of money (though probably not enough to repay the debt).
    – None of the people who were taxed this way at the time became poor, nor are their grandchildren (they’re certainly even more superrich, actually.

    And I’m sure it’s one of many apparently unpleasant decisions that saved the country at some point (though obviously, WWII helped A LOT).

    (sorry for the faulty English and the blurry history lessons, I’m French…)

  12. If no one will lend you money to buy the guns, you can’t buy as many guns.
    Oh, Noah.

    So naive.

    It’s kind of endearing really.

    I’m going to speak from my lower class background for a moment. Buy guns. Surely you’re joking. Most of the people I know who shoot guns have not bought their guns. That’s a very upper-middle class way of thinking about things.

    You don’t buy a gun. You borrow one. You steal one. You ‘find’ one. You scam a grandmother and then pass over some coke and get your buddy with a clean record to go get one. You have a girlfriend shoplift it from Walmart. Your buddy getting ready to do time in the pen gifts his stash to you before his sentencing hearing.

    There are so many ways to get weapons. Buying, that’s so….tidy.

    We have enough muscle, clout, tanks, nukes, money, crime, opium, real medicine, hard science, transportation systems, sex, and backroom politicians to make sure that we’re never out of guns when we want them.

    Naturally, getting guns in this other way tends to mean we’ll use those guns in even less righteous ways, but it will be done. There are few things in the world that sadists and power mongers like more than killing other people, and they are very very good at making sure they can still have what they want.

    Financial ruin will not mean less guns (or weapons or crime or whatever). Good lord. Grannies may flop around in the street, croaking from lack of heart medicine because Social Security is dead, but the army will have its war machine. Count on it. In fact, I would expect the army to get more, not less. It’s part of the pattern of of turning more towards facism.

    (For the record, I am a social liberal–shocker, I know, but I am quite financially conservative. I don’t even believe in the estate tax, for what it’s worth.)

  13. I should maybe also say, the whole point of this post is that you don’t want your kid to go to college on the pile of corpses of other people’s kids (or similar ills). That reveals the kind, compassionate person you are.

    Many of the politicians (like Palin) and businessmen (like Murdoch or the head of Bank of America) are functioning sociopaths and they just don’t think that way. If you want to try to predict what effect the crash would have, you have to set aside the good gentle person you are and think like someone who has far fewer limits. It would be ridiculously easy, for instance, for the US to run a protection racket, if we had fewer moral limits. Or win the war in Iraq, for that matter.

  14. Of the Tea Party, it’s worth noting that their platform (such as it is) tends to stress defense (national), which translates to taxes for guns but not much else (maybe some prisons). And defense cuts were one of the things the GOP balked at before the Obama/Boehner deal fell apart. So I’m less than sanguine about the less money-less guns hypothesis. I’m thinking all guns no butter is more likely.

  15. See, you people are not thinking apocalypse. If the U.S. defaults, and the economy actually collapses, I think anything goes. This is the appeal of revolutionary scenarios. I think a third party victory would actually be conceivable at that point…as would, in certain circumstances, rioting and/or a military coup. If the U.S. government ceases to be functional at a fairly basic level — government workers aren’t paid, social security checks aren’t paid, military personnel aren’t paid — it’s really hard to tell what would happen.

  16. Texas would secede, obviously.

    But more seriously, I suspect a lot of government infrastructure would continue to function even if pay got cut off. Government stiffs like me are odd ducks. Do you remember when all the Baghdad treasures disappeared from the museums before the bombings? A lot of them turned out to have been taken home and hidden by workers to keep them safe who eventually returned them. I think variations on that would happen, which would conteract a lot of the gun nuts. Probably not enough, but there would be some.

  17. Minor point: in the so-called 3rd world’s more impoverished countries, both gun availability and military spending tend to be very high. See Liberia, Bolivia, Pakistan, Somalia…

  18. None of those countries spend anything like the amount of money that the united states does on weapons. You add their yearly military budgets all together, and they could maybe fund the U.S. military for a day. Though probably not.

    That’s the point. If the U.S. economy collapsed, we would not enter an era of peace and prosperity. But we would enter an era where it would be much, much harder for the U.S. to project military power around the world.

  19. If there was a total collapse, as opposed to just a massive crisis, I agree that the we’d be less inclined to project military power around the world. That said, any reorganization will entail a guns and butter debate, and if recent history is any indication, social programs that disappeared in the collapse will stay disappeared, and the military will redouble its efforts to make the world a safe place for capital.

  20. Not exactly “criticism from the right,” given the state of the right at the moment, but libertarian economist Peter Schiff has written an interesting history of the debt ceiling. Money quote: “Capping U.S. debt at current levels means bringing a future crisis into the present where it can be dealt with in practical terms. This is something that nobody in Washington actually wants.”

  21. I think that qualifies as from the right, actually. The central faith of the right remains “no tax increases” — and Mr. Schiff manages to utterly avoid any mention of increasing revenue in his discussion of who is going to have to sacrifice if the debt ceiling is not raised. It’s all those slackers on social security and government employees who need a dose of reality. Multi-billionaires, on the other hand, presumably, will never face a reckoning of any sort.

  22. “None of those countries spend anything like the amount of money that the united states does on weapons. You add their yearly military budgets all together, and they could maybe fund the U.S. military for a day. Though probably not.”

    Actually, they all surpass the USA in military spending as a percentage of their GDP and of their government budgets.

  23. But you’re still just proving my point. They have far smaller GDPs, so even if it’s a larger percentage, it doesn’t come to anywhere near what we spend.

    If our economy crashes and our GDP nosedives, there will be less money to go around by a lot. Even if defense spending increases as a percentage of GDP, it will have to decrease as total outlay. And that’s what matters for the rest of the world. They don’t care if we beggar ourselves; they just care how many bombs we drop on them.

  24. We’ve got something like 400 nuclear warheads as it is. Don’t need to spend an extra penny to fuck up the planet and humanity for good…

  25. Oops, for 400 read 4000…

    interesting lapse, like I don’t want to think about the scale of potential horror.

  26. One does not say an infinity of things for everything that one does say. As far as I know, Mr. Schiff does not subscribe to the views you attribute to him.

    That said, at this point you could raise taxes all you want and it’s not going to cover federal expenditures at current levels. Walter E. Williams explained as much in an article that you’ll probably find less amusing than I did. As such I apologize for linking to it, but the economics are on his side.

  27. Sure, but I don’t expect someone to talk about fishing or juggling in an article about the debt ceiling. I do expect some acknowledgement that you can raise revenues through increasing taxes as well as through cuts.

    I’m aware that cuts alone probably wouldn’t work…though, you know, for every twelve economists you’ll get thirty or forty opinions on that sort of thing. Still, raising taxes on the wealthy is quite popular, and would mitigate cuts to some extent. It’s not clear to me why they shouldn’t be on the table (including in the form of means testing social security, and raising the amount of income taxed for social security.)

  28. From that article:
    “we must keep in mind that rich people didn’t become rich by being stupid.”

    Right. Most of them got rich by being lucky. Or inheriting it, same difference.

    Also…people who make $250,000 a year are quite wealthy by any sane determination.

  29. I do expect some acknowledgement that you can raise revenues through increasing taxes as well as through cuts.

    One should acknowledge no such thing. You can’t raise revenues through cuts. Cuts decrease liabilities. Sure, raising taxes on the wealthy is popular and it would mitigate cuts to some extent. At which point the country would still be spending more than it raises in taxes by an absurd margin and the basic problem would remain unsolved.

    How the rich got that way is immaterial to your argument.

  30. It’s not immaterial, actually. Economic arguments have a moral dimension. It’s important to point out that the rich don’t get that way because they deserve the money, or are better people. Most allocation of wealth is fairly random (as in, based on where and with who you happen to grow up.) The argument for higher taxes is much stronger if you admit that that’s the case than if you believe that wealth is a natural adjunct to superior morality.

    I agreed that there have to be cuts. I’d basically cut defense spending by at least three-quarters, means test social security, legalize drugs, tax marijuana, go to a single payer healthcare system, and then see where we’re at. Perhaps we’d still need cuts and we could start talking about those. But one thing I wouldn’t do, as a fairly wealthy economist, is write lots of articles about how taxing me is pointless and everybody else needs to stop being so frivolous and accept that they can never retire from their crappy jobs. But that’s me.

    And you’re right; I misspoke. You can’t raise revenues through cuts. My apologies.

  31. Uh…lots of people? There’s even a quasi-Christian movement devoted to the idea; it’s called prosperity theology. That’s an extreme version, but it’s just an extension of a widespread American ideology which believes (for example) that Bill Gates got his millions because he’s very intelligent, or that Warren Buffet gained his millions through hard work, or just in general the idea that if you work hard you will rise and be successful (the Horatio Alger myth.) It’s roots go back certainly at least to the old testament; as Thomas Sedlacek says in his book “The Morality of Good and Evil,” the Jews believed that “At times when Israel maintained law and justice, when widows and orphans were not oppressed, and when the Lord’s commandments were obeyed, the nation prospered.”

    Christianity divorced morality and prosperity in this world…and there are parts of the old testament that do so as well (Job especially.) But it’s an idea of long-standing, and one that’s certainly very much alive and well in the U.S.

  32. Perhaps you’ll recognize it more clearly if you think about how many people believe that poverty correlates with *immorality*? That equation was the driving philosophy behind welfare reform, for example.

  33. It drives me crazy that despite a Democratic president and a fairly large percentage of a Democratic Congress, basically cutting a bunch of sacred cow social programs IS on the table, but raising taxes for the wealthy (and cutting defense spending significantly) is not. Isn’t a compromise doing things that BOTH sides don’t like for the greater good….not knuckling under to the lunatic fringe…? Unfortunately, lunatics refuse to compromise, so compromise ends up meaning doing what they want.

    I’m not rooting for economic armageddon, but it would only be what we, as a country, deserve. When my home state elected Rick Scott, it showed just how dumb we all are (regardless of income bracket!)

  34. “Who believes that wealth correlates to superior morality?”
    There’s that whole Protestant work ethic. I’ve also heard it bandied about that we shouldn’t tax success. And then there’s the linguistic jiggery-pokery that turned the estate tax into the death tax, which was a way to obscure the fact that wealth has a tendency to accumulate. I think it was the radical scoialist Andrew Carnegie that first pointed this out.
    But what I find more disturbing than the notion that the rich deserve what they get, (I’m enough of an existentialist to find the idea sort of quaint), is that we’re all beholden to “job creators,” and that we mustn’t upset them by, I don’t know, asking them to pay their fair share of their taxes. Don’t anger the gods of capital.

  35. —————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Also…people who make $250,000 a year are quite wealthy by any sane determination.
    —————————-

    What does sanity have to do with it?

    —————————–
    Four in 10 Millionaires Don’t Think They’re Rich
    Many say they’d need $7.5 million to feel really wealthy
    —————————–
    Read it and weep: http://www.newser.com/story/114114/four-in-10-millionaires-dont-think-theyre-rich.html

    —————————–
    The Fidelity survey found that 42 percent of millionaires still do not feel wealthy, compared to 46 percent, who said they didn’t feel wealthy in 2009….

    Even the self-aware 58% claimed that they needed $1.75 million to feel wealthy. For context, the median net worth of an American household in 2007 was around $120,000. And that included real estate.
    ——————————
    http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/14/survey-wealthy-americans-bury-their-heads-in-piles-of-money/

    …Which explains why you have not only millionaires, but billionaires screaming for constant tax cuts: they’re “hungry ghosts”:

    ——————————-
    In Buddhism, Hungry Ghosts are ghosts only in the sense of not being fully alive; not fully capable of living and appreciating what the moment has to offer….

    Phantomlike creatures with withered limbs, grossly bloated bellies, and long thin necks, the Hungry Ghosts in many ways represent a fusion of rage and desire. Tormented by unfulfilled cravings and insatiably demanding of impossible satisfactions, the Hungry Ghosts…are beings who have uncovered a terrible emptiness within themselves…

    In Tibetan Buddhism Hungry Ghosts are represented…with bloated stomachs and necks too thin to pass food such that attempting to eat is also incredibly painful. Some are described as having “mouths the size of a needle’s eye and a stomach the size of a mountain”. This is a metaphor for people futilely attempting to fulfill their illusory physical desires…
    —————————–
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost

    —————————–
    eric b says:

    It drives me crazy that despite a Democratic president and a fairly large percentage of a Democratic Congress, basically cutting a bunch of sacred cow social programs IS on the table, but raising taxes for the wealthy (and cutting defense spending significantly) is not…
    ——————————

    Same here! Though what a brilliant propaganda move it was to change the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense. How much more difficult it is to argue for cuts in “Defense”: “What, you don’t think America should be able to defend itself?

    ——————————-
    I’m not rooting for economic armageddon, but it would only be what we, as a country, deserve. When my home state elected Rick Scott, it showed just how dumb we all are (regardless of income bracket!)
    ——————————–

    We do deserve it; what a shame that, thanks to democracy, the idiocy of the masses — “Republicans can be more trusted to protect Social Security than Democrats,” for instance — gets shoved down everyone’s throats.

    We’re suffering under the reign of Scott here in Florida, and he’s abysmal…

    ——————————–
    Nate says:

    …what I find more disturbing than the notion that the rich deserve what they get, (I’m enough of an existentialist to find the idea sort of quaint), is that we’re all beholden to “job creators,” and that we mustn’t upset them by, I don’t know, asking them to pay their fair share of their taxes…
    ———————————–

    There’s a right-wing tax preparer near our home in Tallahassee who features various specious “talking points” (doubtless cobbled up by the same right-wing propaganda mills that came up with “death tax,” that taxation constitutes “punishing success,” and referring to the wealthy as “job creators”) on the sign outside his biz. The latest gem is “You can’t multiply wealth by dividing it.”

    Guess no one told him how potatoes are planted…

    (For the agriculturally challenged, it’s by cutting up a potato into small chunks, each with an “eye,” then planting these separate bits; which will each grow into the full-sized tubers…)

  36. I guess I haven’t been keeping up. The last time I heard someone associated with Christianity assert a correlation between wealth and morality, it was Jesus, and the correlation was inverse.

    Maybe it’s splitting hairs, but these don’t look like apt examples. Prosperity theology, which is new to me, correlates faith and wealth. Jewish thought correlates wealth and justice, conceived on a societal scale. (This strikes me as a convincing assertion, and a liberal one.) Even the Protestant work ethic correlates morality and labor moreso than morality and wealth. Family fortunes came to many men who did not turn them into Microsoft or Berkshire Hathaway, and while labor and intelligence may not have been the whole story, it’s pretty bleak to not recognize the part they played.

    It’s important not to mistake the political theater for reality. Congress is probably going raise the debt ceiling for reasons cited by Schiff. Meanwhile, Social Security is on schedule to run out of money in 2037. Here’s your question: do you want to elect to take some austerity measures now, or do you want live in austere circumstances later?

  37. Yep, it looks like splitting hairs.

    Lots of people work hard and are smart, but make no money. Many people are stupid as fuck and don’t work particularly hard, but end up wealthy. The people who work the hardest at the most difficult jobs tend to not be wealthy. Yet people who have money tend to attribute their success to hard work and intelligence rather than to luck. This is natural, but it makes for crappy public policy.

    “Here’s your question: do you want to elect to take some austerity measures now, or do you want live in austere circumstances later?”

    Nope, that’s not the first question to ask. The first question to ask is how can we make life as meaningful and/or happy for ourselves and our children as possible. Starting by asking about austerity now or austerity later presupposes the solutions and the values. Yes, we have to make choices about what to spend money on, but those choices should be based on our values, not on scare talk from the well off about how the less well off need to tighten our belts and learn that pain is good for us.

    I mean, I’ve already said that what I want is to cut the defense budget by three quarters (or more) and means test social security. Ending all our outstanding wars (many of which are off the defense budget, I believe) would probably be helpful too. That’s what I would elect to do right now. I’d get rid of ethanol subsidies too, and of agricultural subsidies in general; I think they’re counterproductive and immoral as far as the world economy goes. In return for that, I’d probably cut all foreign aid, which isn’t a whole lot of money, but which I think would overall be a boon (because, for example, we’d no longer be funneling money to Israel.) I could come up with a number of other things I’d do before slashing social security benefits for the poor too (increase the estate tax radically, increase the capital gains tax, put a value added tax on internet commerce, legalize drugs, eliminate prison sentences for non-violent offenders, eliminate the home mortgage tax deduction). But nobody’s listening to me anyway, so presenting me with the “austerity now or austerity later” question is just nonsense.

  38. Ron and Rand Paul are listening to you! No, really, they support most of your list there: ending all outstanding wars, means-testing Social Security (Rand, anyway), cutting ethanol and agricultural subsidies, cutting foreign aid, legalizing drugs, and eliminating prison sentences for nonviolent offenders. Sure, they oppose taxes and you want more of them, but either choice has so little effect on the problem being discussed here that you’re more on the same page than you may realize.

    Yes, much of the cost of the wars is off the books. This is also true of SS and Medicare. If you want to ruin your week, search for “total unfunded liabilities” regarding any of those three topics. They cause the debt calculations to go from trillions to hundreds of trillions.

    Yet people who have money tend to attribute their success to hard work and intelligence rather than to luck.

    Come on. You have some money, if only enough for your next meal. Did you not acquire it by some mix of luck, intelligence, and work? Who are these people whom you know to think otherwise? For that matter, who do you know who attributes his poverty only to stupidity and sloth, and not bad luck? If no one, why would the converse be true? These generalizations are silly.

  39. Few people attribute their poverty to stupidity. But many, many people attribute other people’s poverty to moral failings. That’s what the epithet “welfare queens” is all about.

    I have some money, sure. And I worked for it. But lots of people work. Lots of people with more intelligence than me have been less successful. The vast majority of my success is attributable to having parents who had a certain amount of money and a lot of cultural capital. I am in no way better, smarter, or more deserving than millions of people in other countries who live on less in a year than I spend in the average hour.

  40. Oh, and I don’t hate Ron Paul or Rand Paul. If a miracle occurred and Gary Johnson won the Republican nomination, I’d be very tempted to vote for him.

  41. But likewise, many people attribute other peoples’ wealth to moral failings, and that’s where the whole “tax the rich” impulse comes from. I’m meeting you generalization for generalization here.

  42. No; the tax the rich impulse comes from the sense that people with a lot of money can afford to help others out. Which is true; it’s less painful for people towards the top of the income bracket to part with cash than it is for those towards the bottom.

    Some people do attribute the acquisition of wealth to moral failings, like greed. Not infrequently, those attributions are shown to be correct, as with Enron or the more recent collapse. Either way, though, the fact remains that the people with the most power (that is, the people with lots of money) don’t tend to feel that way. And since they have the power, what they say goes. Which is why we don’t actually tax the rich much in this country compared to other nations. Or compared to twenty years ago, for that matter.

    You’ve got a weird bee in your bonnet about generalizations, especially for someone who seems to put some store in economics.

  43. Noah brought up the Bible, so I’m adding some verses and commentary. I recommend reading the passages in context for fuller meaning than my comments will provide. I’m using the New King James translation and the Holman Christian Standard Bible. They’re both formal equivalence (“word-for-word”) translations, but the former is more poetic.
    “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” Matthew 25:29
    This is part of a parable about investing whatever God gives you (monetary or otherwise) and making the most of it in His service. As such, it may not really relate to what Noah is saying about wealth accumulation, but whenever the rich-poor divide comes up, that verse comes to my mind.

  44. On abuse of power and “Hungry Ghosts” –
    Ecclesiastes 5
    8 If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice and righteousness in the province, don’t be astonished at the situation, because one official protects another official, and higher officials [protect] them. 9 The profit from the land is taken by all; the king is served by the field.
    10 The one who loves money is never satisfied with money, and whoever loves wealth [is] never [satisfied] with income. This too is futile. 11 When good things increase, the ones who consume them multiply; what, then, is the profit to the owner, except to gaze at them with his eyes? 12 The sleep of the worker is sweet, whether he eats little or much; but the abundance of the rich permits him no sleep. (HCSB)
    19 As for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage and rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God. 20 For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart. (NKJV)
    I just want to make a plug here for Ecclesiastes (my favorite book – and a fifteen minute read, natch). All the writings (or collections) of Solomon are outstanding, but Ecclesiastes is stark, naked truth – a description of the way the world really works and what really matters, free from platitude or spin. For example, this is the part of the Bible that recommends against being too righteous.

  45. On greed, 1 Timothy 6:
    9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root [e] of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

  46. On Covetousness:
    Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Exodus 20:17
    Chris Hitchens has interpreted this tenth commandment (very incorrectly, to my mind) as forbidding any desire to increase one’s material quality of life. By extension, he believes Christianity is against any Adam Smith-style free market capitalism. This interpretation is inconsistent with the whole rest of the Bible and almost all of the history of Judaism and Christianity. P.J. O’Rourke interprets it more to my liking in his comedic commentary Eat the Rich (there’s that phrase again). He says the commandment is not saying we can’t get our own McMansion, hot wife, and Ferrari, but that wanting the other guy’s is wrong. It leads to resentment, violence, thievery, and the If-I-can’t-have-it-no-one-can mentality that enervates progress in a lot of the developing world. I met a Russian poli sci professor who used to tell a joke from the rodina about this mentality under communism. Vanya the farmer finds a magic lamp while plowing. The genie offers him a wish. Vanya tells the farmer about his neighbor Sasha, whose family has prospered because Sasha has a productive milk cow, and Sasha has been able to sell milk on the side. Genie says, “I see. You want a milk cow of your own.” Vanya says, “No. I want you to kill my neighbor’s!” Ecclesiastes is again contrarian on this, as it acknowledges that covetousness can be productive, even if the product is meaningless (4:4): “And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

  47. Finally, regarding the link between social justice and prosperity – Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Amos, and Micah are all crystal clear: Be generous and help the poor, and God will see you through, even in times of want. Cheat or otherwise oppress the poor, and you are simply a shiny nail awaiting a divine hammer (not intended as a Thor reference). The hammer may not fall immediately, but it is on its way nevertheless. This applies at the individual level and the societal level, at least for the nation of Israel. I would presume it applies to any nation that claims to follow God. This is similar to karma, but in Middle Eastern theism, there’s a personality and will behind the reward and punishment.

  48. On a personal note, I’m against Noah’s idea of scrapping foreign aid. It’s a miniscule portion of the budget, and it does much good. In places like Africa, it saves the lives of millions (see Bush’s push on malaria and HIV) and buys enormous good will. That’s not only altruistic, it also leads to self-serving benefits like depriving Al Qaeda of potential safe havens.

    Admittedly, much aid is misspent, but that applies to many other portions of the budget. I think most of the ideas I hear about cuts now are equally indiscriminate – like an obese man reaching his goal weight by crash dieting or even amputation, instead of following a well-thought out diet and exercise plan. Systemic process changes (say to Social Security, Medicaid, and military acquisition) would be far more beneficial than the current hack and slash exercises.

  49. You’ve got a weird bee in your bonnet about generalizations, especially for someone who seems to put some store in economics.

    Economics has data, at least. This kind of thing…

    No; the tax the rich impulse comes from the sense that people with a lot of money can afford to help others out. Which is true…

    …is an evidence-free claim that, not coincidentally, flatters your assertions. Humans being what they are, some of them have good motives for wanting to raise taxes on the rich or not raise the debt ceiling or what have you. Some do not. Discussing their motives in aggregate is presumptive, and you are not going to persuade me to any conclusion on the basis of presumptions.

  50. Data isn’t any more true than looking at human nature and thinking about it. It can be less true, in fact, because folks like you decide it has something to do with reality, and dismiss other kinds of evidence on that basis.

    For example, in claiming that I made an evidence-free claim, you carefully excised the part of the sentence that included the evidence (from historical examples.) It isn’t that there’s no evidence; it’s that you refuse to think about evidence that doesn’t fit into a very narrow box.

    Economics is entirely about discussing motives in aggregate, without admitting what the presupposition are, and then putting them on a graph and claiming that it’s telling you something about reality. While jumping up and down and saying, “look, data!” Some people find this really convincing. Not me so much, but if it makes you happy, I guess that increases your utility, and you can put it on a graph.

    John, thanks for the quotes. I’m iffy on foreign aid. I know it’s not much money, and some of it does good. A lot of it is just military aid in another form though, or goes to prop up regimes that do really ugly things. Ideally, one would go through and keep the things that help and eliminate the things that hurt. I’m sure that’s the right approach, though there is an impulse too to just throw up one’s hands and chuck the whole thing and be done with it….

  51. Oops; relooked at my initial comment, and saw that I didn’t provide hisotircal examples there. My apology; got it confused with another passage.

    But…for heavens sake, what sort of evidence do you need to assure you that a person making a dollar a day can less afford to lose a dollar than you or I can? Or that a person with a million dollars will be less hard pressed by losing 1000 dollars than a person who earns 10,000 a year? Does the quest for “evidence” mean we have to utterly abandon any kind of common sense?

  52. Let me put it this way: It is easier to claim that Peter Schiff thinks that “slackers on social security and government employees … need a dose of reality” on the basis (if it’s really a basis) of what he didn’t say than to go find where he ever said such a thing. (Far easier in this case, because he did not.) So common sense, yes, but within the limits of what is common.

    I guess your characterization of economics is not worse than mine of postmodernist philosophy, as a set of stock linguistic tics by which irrational people attempt to make themselves appear smarter and more moral than they are. But my limited readings in economics have been illuminating and not at all what you describe. Naked Economics is worth your time.

  53. ——————–
    Franklin says:

    Economics has data, at least…
    ———————

    That remark rankled; after doing some other stuff on the Web and taking a break to scrub out a bunch of pots and pans, came back to see Noah had addressed that comment.

    My two cents’ worth:

    Sure, there is data out there. But it’s a psychological truism that people with a certain frame of mind or attitude, or ideological slant, focus sharply on and emphasize that which fits their view; ignore, minimize, or dismiss that which doesn’t.

    Then, there’s the fact that many factions of “the dismal science” just happen to preach that which benefits the wealthy ruling class; and, for some mysterious reason, just happen to receive all manner of funding, donations and outright payments from the megarich.

    Making these schools of economics — like the Free-Market-touting Chicago School — little more than pseudoscientific propaganda mills for policies which just happen to benefit the rich.

    Re the thoroughly vile Chicago school of economics:

    ——————
    Definition

    Major ideological defender of conservative economics and capitalism it has been one of the most influential bodies of economic thought in recent times. This monetarist (see monetarism) school is associated with the economics department at the University of Chicago, specially during 1970s and particularly with professor (1948-79) Milton Friedman (1912-2006) who won 1976 Nobel Prize in economics for his theory of natural rate of unemployment. His colleagues went on to win seven more Nobels, including George Stigler (1911-91) in 1982 for deregulation theory, Merton Miller (1923-) in 1990 for financial economics, Ronald Coase (1910-) in 1991 for Coase’s theorem, Gary Becker (1930-) in 1992 for application of microeconomics to non-market behavior, and Robert Lucas (1937-) in 1995 for the theory of rational expectations. Its basic tenets are that (1) markets allocate resources more efficiently than any government, (2) monopolies are created by government’s attempt to regulate an economy (3) governments should avoid trying to manage aggregate demand and, instead, (4) should focus on maintaining a steady and low rate of growth of money supply. It relies to an extraordinary extent on mathematical models through which, its critics charge, it can prove anything it wants to. Also, some of its assertions end us as absurdities such as criminal activity is a career choice, and that smoking is an example of making an informed choice (between cancer risk and immediate gratification).
    ——————-
    http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Chicago-school-of-economics.html

    “Deregulation theory”? Monopolies are created by governments? Criminal activity is a “career choice,” and “smoking is an example of making an informed choice”?

    ——————-
    The Chicago school, which advocates for unfettered free markets and little government intervention…came under attack in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The school has been blamed for growing income inequality in the United States. Economist Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley says the Chicago School has experienced an “intellectual collapse”, while Nobel laureate Paul Krugman of Princeton University, says that recent comments from Chicago school economists are “the product of a Dark Age of macroeconomics in which hard-won knowledge has been forgotten.” Critics have also charged that the school’s belief in human rationality contributed to bubbles such as the recent financial crisis, and that the school’s trust in markets to self-regulate has offered no aid to the economy in the wake of the crisis…
    ——————–
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_of_economics

    Ah, yes, their “belief in human rationality”; that, all pesky real-world evidence to the contrary, people act like living computers, calmly calculating the financial odds, and acting logically in all their economic decisions. Messy stuff like panic, emotion, irrationality, fear, greed take no part here…

    ———————
    Academic Freedom? Conservative Billionaire Charles Koch’s Donation to FSU Buys Veto Over Economics Faculty Hires

    An article by Kris Hundley at the St. Petersburg Times describes how conservative billionaire Charles G. Koch bought himself a veto over the faculty hired to teach at Florida State University’s economics department. David W. Rasmussen, dean of the College of Social Sciences, says it would be “irresponsible” not to accept a large donation. Jennifer Washburn, author of University Inc., a book on industry’s ties to academia: “This is an egregious example of a public university being willing to sell itself for next to nothing. In addition to FSU, Koch has made similar arrangements at two other state schools, Clemson University in South Carolina and West Virginia University.
    ————————-
    http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/the-future-of-economics.html

    ————————–
    Silent partners
    When economists advise the government, who else are they working for? A UMass professor decided to find out.

    Two years after the economy careened to the brink of Armageddon, a key question remains: How did so many smart economists miss the financial crisis?

    Was it too much math, and not enough focus on real-world problems, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has argued? Or did economists simply put too much faith in the power and wisdom of markets, and ignore the flaws that ultimately led to them to crash?

    Two University of Massachusetts researchers suggest another possibility: The vision of economists may have been clouded by their own financial interests.

    The nation’s top academic economists — who advise policy makers, testify before Congress, and publish influential papers and articles — are also much sought after by the financial industry as speakers, consultants, and corporate board members. Though typically portrayed as independent experts, they can reap huge fees from financial firms, including those that profited during the housing and the credit bubbles.

    In a new paper, Gerald Epstein, chairman of the UMass Amherst economics department, and Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, a graduate student, examined a group of influential economists, scoured publicly available resumes, biographies, articles, and interviews, and found that the majority had made money from financial institutions — but very few had disclosed these connections when writing, speaking, or giving interviews on public policy…
    ————————–
    http://articles.boston.com/2010-11-21/bostonglobe/29316482_1_economists-financial-crisis-financial-industry

  54. But…postmodernists (to the extent that there’s a collective) argue that in fact their philosophy (and everyone’s) is language and irrational. Economists (to the extent that there’s a collective) often make a claim of special access to rationality and reality.

    Some economics is interesting and illuminating, sure. I just read the Economics of Good and Evil by Thomas Sedlacek (an economist) which is a lovely book (sort of anti-economics economics.) Economists have so much influence, and their philosophy is taken as such a basis of all political discussion, that I think a healthy dose of skepticism is in order.

    As for Peter Schiff…refusing to think about implications and to place arguments in context when evaluating them is just not more objective in any sense than nailing oneself to a wall of denotations.

  55. I would regard a discussion of the shortcomings of the Chicago School as a derailment of this thread, but I’m not the editor. Noah was denigrating economics as whole. Mike, are you saying that the Chicago School proves the lack of value of economics? Are you aware that there is a wide range of political affiliations among economists? By the way, the man who first called it the “dismal science” did so because he was arguing against the free market as morally inferior to one in which slave labor was available.

    Noah, I can’t parse the last sentence of your comment at 6:35. As for this:

    Economists (to the extent that there’s a collective) often make a claim of special access to rationality and reality.

    Show me a single example.

    A healthy dose of skepticism is applicable to everything.

  56. “Show me a single example.”

    But if I show you a single example, then I’m just generalizing, and it’s not really evidence, yes?

    Economists are constantly presenting economic forecasts. We go to them all the time to tell us what is going to happen in the future. That suggests they believe that they have a unique access to reality, yes?

    Here for example, from Mr. Schiff:

    “If we do today what we have failed to do in the past, we very may well default on a portion of our debt. No doubt our creditors will suffer. But such near term pain will lead to a quicker and healthier recovery. Out of control Federal spending will have to be dealt with now. A downgraded credit rating will make it harder for the United States to continue borrowing, and as a result should be viewed as a blessing in disguise. ”

    For Schiff, failing to raise the debt ceiling “will lead to a quicker and healthier recovery.” That’s a statement about the future, presented as rational and factual rather than as what it actually is, which is reading tea leaves.

    And here’s the real smoking gun:

    “A reduction in debt levels is good economics. ”

    The assumption there is that economics is some sort of objective measure; a scientific, rational system. But there’s no such thing as “good economics” even in the sense of “good mathematics” — economics is not a sufficiently rigorous system to allow that kind of pronouncement. You can’t evaluate “good economics” without referring to actual squishy values and morality. How do we want to treat people? What is human nature like? How do those two things fit together? Shiff is predicting the future and then claiming he is doing so on the basis of rationality and (something like) science. He’s claiming a special access to rationality and reality. And, to provide a healthy dose of skepticism, in doing so, he is full of shit.

  57. Oh, and go ahead and talk about the Chicago School! The thread’s already wandered far afield, but the discussion has been entertaining. I generally only shut things down if there’s excessive trolling….

  58. No, you are generalizing until you show a single example, at which point you are specifying, and we can then discuss whether your evidence supports your assertion. In this case, it does not.

    That suggests [economists] believe that they have a unique access to reality, yes?

    How so? Do meteorologists claim unique access to reality because they forecast the weather? The germane observations are widely available in both fields. The future is of some interest, and we are all free to argue about it to the extent that our expertise allows (and legally free to do so far beyond it). Does expertise constitute unique access to reality?

    It would be terrible writing to reiterate “in my opinion” and “I believe” and pepper subjunctive language all over an essay that was understood to be one person’s opinion. You know this, because you make similarly unqualified statements in your commentary all the time. You want common sense? It is common sense that Schiff is expressing his opinion. It cites facts because any convincing, rational argument does.

    The context of “good economics,” which is clear as day from the rest of the paragraph, is economics that leads us out of massive debt and into solvency. This does not require an extensive examination of human nature and relationships. It requires agreement that solvency is better than debt, and that a strong economy is better than a weak economy. If you want to argue against that, fine, but the problem with the statement isn’t some kind of normative use of the word “good” into which you infer “special access to rationality and reality.” That’s all projection on your part.

    I would still like to hear what that bit about “denotation” was about.

  59. No, I don’t agree with any of that. Meteorologists make predictions with much less certainty than economists. For one thing, they always state percentages, yes? “75% chance of rain.” Of course, the percentages are very fuzzy too, but it’s at least clear that they are saying what may happen or what they think is likely to happen, not what will happen.

    As for me; I do in fact make sweeping statements…but usually about aesthetics. “This book is crap” is quite different from “we will be better off if the debt ceiling is not raised.”

    I don’t think it is at all “common sense” that Schiff is expressing his opinion. The appeal to “good economics” is an appeal to expertise which is supposed to demonstrate that it is *not* his opinion, but truth. If, instead, he is simply saying that solvency is better than debt, then his statement is completely tautological and meaningless. Look at the statement.

    “A reduction in debt levels is good economics.”

    If, from your reading, “good economics” means “solvency is better than debt”, then all he is really saying is “A reduction in debt levels is good because debt is bad.” Or “debt is bad because debt is bad”. The statement is meaningless as denotation. The whole point is the connotation — which is that economics is rational and objective and Schiff’s opinion is not an opinion, but is instead rational and objective.

    “This does not require an extensive examination of human nature and relationships. It requires agreement that solvency is better than debt, and that a strong economy is better than a weak economy. ”

    Sorry, but that’s nonsense. Discussions about whether solvency is better than debt, and about whether a strong economy is better than a weak economy, or what a strong economy and a weak economy even mean, is entirely dependent on moral stances on human relationships and human well-being. You don’t see it as such because you accept the presuppositions.

    You may say, well, we don’t want to go back to first principles every time we have this discussion. But economists today hardly ever go back to first principles. They just assume that they know how reality works, and then make predictions which they defend on the basis of the well known expertise of economists, who, after all, always predict things like bubbles, which is why we’re not in a horrible economic crisis at the moment.

    It would be much, much more useful for Mr. Schiff to talk about what he believes is valuable, and what is valuable for human beings, in terms of morals and values, rather than attempting to browbeat his audience with visions of possible futures to which he has no access on the basis of credentials which, in terms of predicting the future, are utterly worthless.

  60. “Good” as a descriptor always reduces to tautologies.

    All statements about the future are opinions. Some of these opinions are more informed than others.

    It is possible to have a rational opinion.

    I would rather be solvent than indebted. So would you. So would most people.

    Every action you perform is based on an assumption about how reality works.

    If you disagree with the above, then we disagree, and no more need be said.

    Mr. Schiff is in the investment business. The correctness of his economic forecasts has consequences for both himself and his clients to the tune of billions of dollars. It behooves him to get them right. It does not behoove him to discuss morals and values on the website of his investment company. I don’t know why you would expect otherwise.

  61. ———————-
    Franklin says:

    I would regard a discussion of the shortcomings of the Chicago School as a derailment of this thread…
    ———————–

    …And your bringing up the superiority of economics, ’cause it supposedly depends on data, isn’t?

    Actually, in a talk set off by Noah’s piece about the possible “financial apocalypse,” economics is a highly appropriate subject…

    ———————–
    Noah was denigrating economics as whole. Mike, are you saying that the Chicago School proves the lack of value of economics?
    ————————

    No; just pointing out that having “data” to support one’s arguments, ideology, or economic “school” hardly necessarily leads to accurate insights.

    ———————–
    Are you aware that there is a wide range of political affiliations among economists?
    ————————

    I did mention there are “many factions” and “schools” of economics, which kind’a implies awareness that there are…

    Though I’m far from an economics wonk, the overall balance and avoidance of all-or-nothing thinking of Keynes has my respect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics .

    ————————
    By the way, the man who first called it the “dismal science” did so because he was arguing against the free market as morally inferior to one in which slave labor was available.
    ————————–

    Interesting; thanks for the info! (Must…Google!)

    ————————–
    “The dismal science” is a derogatory alternative name for economics devised by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century. The term is an inversion of the phrase “gay science,” meaning “life-enhancing knowledge”…

    …the full phrase “the dismal science” first occurs in Carlyle’s 1849 tract entitled Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, in which he was arguing for the reintroduction of slavery as a means to regulate the labor market in the West Indies:

    Not a “gay science,” I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.

    Developing a deliberately paradoxical position,[citation needed] Carlyle argued that slavery was actually morally superior to the market forces of supply and demand promoted by economists, since, in his view, the freeing up of the labor market by the liberation of slaves had actually led to a moral and economic decline in the lives of the former slaves themselves.
    ————————–
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science

    Hm, “deliberately paradoxical”; does that mean he was taking the darkly satiric “A Modest Proposal” approach? With that “dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing” characterization, it hardly sounds like he’s truly championing slavery.

    Checking out the actual essay in question, we see it was described at the time as “a piece of pungent satire,” allegedly written by a Dr. Phelin M’Quirk, hardly made to appear a credit to society.

    M’Quirk’s windbaggy speech, supposedly delivered to a group of philanthropists weeping for the plight of these blacks (as Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was supposedly driven by concern for the Irish), describes plans “To have ’emancipated’ the West Indies into a black Ireland — ‘free,” indeed, but an Ireland, and black!”; is crammed full of satire, not least of which this “reasonable” argument:

    —————————-
    …if “slave” mean[s] essentially “servant hired for life,” or by a contract of long continuance, and not easily dissoluble — I ask, Whether in all human things, the “contract of long continuance” is not precisely the contract to be desired, were the right terms once found for it? Servant hired for life, were the right terms once found, which I do not pretend they are, seems to me much preferable to servants hired for the month, or by contract dissoluble in a day. An ill-situated servant, that — servant grown to be nomadic; between whom and his master a good relation cannot easily spring up!

    …Alas, look at that group of unsold; unbought, unmarketable Irish “free” citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my lord of rackrent and the constitutional sheriffs have evicted them; or at those “divine missionaries,” of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what “freedom ” really is…
    —————————–
    http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm

    (BTW, great Bible quotes, John…)

  62. I agree, having data does not necessarily lead to accurate insights. I’m saying that insights with no data can’t be proven to be accurate.

  63. Good is tautological, maybe, but you can spend some effort to try to explain why you believe what you think is good is good, rather than just throwing it out there to bolster weak arguments through the invocation of a phantom authority.

    Statements about the future are opinions. But since you can’t predict the future, and you can’t test future predictions in any meaningful way, the assumption that some predictors are “more informed” than others is itself an opinion. Claiming that one’s predictions are better than others on the basis of expertise and “information” is simply an effort to claim that your opinions aren’t opinions. It’s duplicitous nonsense.

    The claim “I would rather be solvent than indebted” is nonsense devoid of content as to what those situations involve in a particular instance. If people really believed that indebtedness was bad, there would be no credit cards, no mortgages, and no use of credit in general. Credit, the leveraged use of indebtedness, is in large part what modern economies are built on. You can certainly argue that that is a bad thing if you wish — that massive growth is not worth the candle, and that it is somehow immoral in and of itself to be in debt. But presuming you think *some* debt is worthwhile and good, the question of what is *too much* debt become relevant — and too much in relation to what? Is it worth slashing the deficit right now if that means we will go into another recession? Who suffers and what are the options? Stating that it is “good economics” to not be in debt is just a way of obscuring your motivations and decisions. It’s sand in the eyes, not an argument.

    It behooves Mr. Schiff to tell his investors what they want to hear. Thus his avoidance of any discussion of taxation.

    You really think investment economists predict the future correctly because otherwise the invisible hand of the market would remove them from their positions? Please. And, oh, I’ve got billions of dollars in mortgages to sell you. Trust me, you’ll love them!

  64. I don’t know; just to maybe fill in my position a little more…. I think we are spending too much, a lot of it on things that are actual evils in my way of thinking (like, weapons and wars and drug prohibition and idiotic, pointless security lines at airports.) It seems logical (though possibly erroneous, but still) that you can’t keep spending more than you take in forever.

    However. Creating an arbitrary crisis in order to fix a long term problem seems to me like a political gambit rather than a practical one. It’s a way to force panicked solutions and push through very unpopular reforms at the behest of a minority of the powerful.

  65. …and this is especially the case because there are a bunch of debt reduction methods that are quite popular. Raising taxes on the wealthy and middle class has widespread support. So does ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which would free up a lot of money. Yet none of those is on the table.

  66. Yes, most people would prefer solvency to debt, but being in debt is not the same as being insolvent. I have student loan debt, but I am more solvent for it. Just ask my bank.
    To suggest that solvency demands an immediate pay-down of the deficit is silly. What’s at stake in these debates, and this is what Noah has been saying all along, is what we are willing to sacrifice in the short and the long to pay down the debt (which I think everyone here agrees we need to do).

  67. ” I’m saying that insights with no data can’t be proven to be accurate.”

    In that they’re often more honest. Because data quite frequently proves bupkus. And just because poets and philosophers and scholars don’t use charts that are acceptable to the religious inclinations of scientists, that doesn’t mean that they should be dismissed.

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