“…a contracting economy is only a surprise if you’re an idiot. Or a member of this Administration and the press. But I repeat myself.”
Based on Megan McArdle’s assessment that the economy is bad news for Democrats (but, again, good news for liberty in the long run).
The irony is that social policies on the left designed to to “help” the poor and middle class are responsible.
Home mortgage guarantees lead to home inflation.
Student loans and grants lead to education inflation.
Medicare and Medicaid have led to health inflation.
Simple historical charts will show that I’m correct.
Expansion of the money supply can lead to price inflation. This is simple economics, but it goes over the heads of those who don’t use rational thought properly, like Jim and Dn guy.
Let me talk about home mortgage guarantees for a moment just to illustrate the problem more clearly.
Start with the premise: owning a home is a good thing.
Then, naturally, move on from there to some seemingly logical steps: increasing home ownership is good, therefore encouraging more people to get mortgages is good.
But everything goes off the rails there. Because there is a significant difference between owning something and holding a mortgage. What is actually valuable is having positive equity. Holding a mortgage is merely the mechanism by which one typically achieves that. Holding negative equity is, in fact, really impressively shitty. But if you encourage the system and individuals to get more mortgages you don’t necessarily end up with a lot of people holding positive equity. Instead you end up with, as we saw, a lot of people holding negative equity. As shitty as that is on the individual scale it’s unimaginably more shitty when it happens to millions of people all at the same time.
And that’s just one example of the classic law of unintended consequences (or perhaps something about paving stones, intentions, and perdition).
The thing is, when government meddling screws people over it’s always the people at the bottom who get screwed over the most. Lacking wealth and disposable income they are the most impacted by changes to their wealth and income, which can dip them below the waterline between increasing and decreasing prosperity.
In many ways it’s remarkable that things aren’t worse considering the savaging that the bottom quintile or two has experienced at the hands of progressive policies going on for decades.
The irony is that social policies on the left designed to to “help” the poor and middle class are responsible.
Nothing ironic about it. The left don’t want everyone to be rich, because then they’d stop voting for socialists.
Hey, you remember “cash for clunkers”? Doesn’t that take you back? It’s amazing how this administration has just been unmitigated clusterfuck after clusterfuck and a crazy screwball idea that merely didn’t work and wasted single digit billions of dollars is now so minor in context to the many world-spanning or economy wrecking mega-fuckups that we’ve had to endure over the last half decade that it’s either immanently forgettable or even perhaps charming in its simplicity and scope.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of ruin in a nation. Maybe we can start to turn things around this fall.
Certainly. Which is why I’m still complaining rather than out in a shack in the wilderness somewhere with 50 years worth of tinned food and ammo. Even so, at this point I have to look at these monumental fuckups and just hope to myself that they won’t get worse. But to be honest I seriously have to wonder what the long term consequences are. As just a simple example, Iran is a nuclear power now. They have a greater capacity to produce nuclear weapons than the US did in 1945. They may not have actual warheads in their arsenal at the moment but I would be shocked if they didn’t have firm plans to transition to that eventuality very rapidly, likely being able to field working nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks or months at most.
Yet the world is so intent on looking the other way and ignoring this major geopolitical blunder (or perhaps it’s merely too ignorant overall to know better) that nobody seems to care. But this is a pretty big deal and likely one of the seminal events of the early 21st century. Perhaps it will be remembered along with Buchanan’s temporizing prior to the US civil war or Chamberlain’s “peace in our time”, it’s probably too soon to tell.
It would be nice, though, if we didn’t have to simultaneously concern ourselves with digging the world geopolitical situation out of the toilet (we may be heading out of the post-Cold War peaceful lull and into a new era of chaos that could make the Cold War or even the world wars look straightforward and civilized) while at the same time having to figure out how to unwreck the US economy (which, at this point, would require a delta measured in metric tons to the federal register).
What law says Iran can’t have nukes?
Pakistan has nukes, India has nukes, China has nukes.
The Saudi’s are working on nukes.
Everyone has nukes when there is no more Pax Americana.
Democrats used to think nukes were bad now they want everyone but us to have them.
Who said their was a law against it, you moron?
So, you’re perfectly happy with all those countries having nukes?
Just more demonstration of what a moron you are.
It is my opinion that the perpetuation of the Iranian regime and the magnification of its power is counter to the interests of people who enjoy living in liberal democracy enjoying extensive individual liberties, ability to exercise freedom of speech, freedom of personal association, freedom of political thought, freedom of religious belief, etc. Further, I am of the opinion that an oppressive and theocratic government such as Iran possessed of nuclear weapons is an active hindrance to progress toward making the world a more peaceful and more progressive place.
Tell me, dn-guy, do you believe in freedom of speech and of the press? Freedom of religious belief? Freedom of expression? Freedom to choose ones own sexual and romantic partners (regardless of race, gender, and religion) without fear of government oppression? Or do you believe that people of certain religions, genders, sexual orientations, or ethnicities should be oppressed and punished by the state?
I think it’s silly for countries to have nukes.
You can’t really use them and it becomes a miserable toxic industry.
Iran can’t see any particular use to their nuclear ambitions.
If Tehran sends a nuke at Israel, the israelis will send 20 back.
No real purpose there.
Tehran and Israel can fight little proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq.
So what’s the point of a nuke?
As for Human Rights in Iran, “All governments derive their authority from the
Just consent of the Governed”. It’s up to the Iranian people to set their future.
If they want a Tehran spring, more power to them
I think it’s silly for countries to have nukes.
Well, that settles it. I’m sure they’ll all give them up now that some anonymous moron on the Internet says he thinks it’s silly.
“Iran can’t see any particular use to their nuclear ambitions”
Pay no attention to anything Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ever said. I’m sure when he spoke of wiping Israel off the world map, it was merely a rhetorical device. Even though it would only take three nukes to obliterate the entire country, let’s pretend that Iran’s leadership wasn’t serious about it then and aren’t developing orbital rockets now. Because Obama.
@dn-guy, if your intention is to convince me that you are a pseudo-intellectual dilettante, congratulations, you’ve succeeded heartily.
When arguing taxes, leftists talk like the only taxes people pay are federal income taxes and perhaps payroll taxes (SS and Medicare). Would that be the case. If you take the time to look at your personal situation, you’re paying many taxes known and unknown that cummulatively exceed your federal tax burden. Your specifics will vary by state, but they include: State income tax, sales tax, property tax (part of your rent if you’re a renter), utilities taxes: electric, gas, water, sewage, gasoline tax, vehicle use tax, taxes on your phone (land or cell), various fees that are really taxes. These are just the ones that come quickly to mind. Then there’s the portion of corporate taxes and regulatory compliance that get buried into the price of everything you buy. These are “stealth taxes.” Before my wife retired two years ago, I added up our visible tax burden and it typically varied between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, only to be told by greedy leftists that I wasn’t paying my fair share.
The same applies to businesses. Every year, they have huge tax burdens (highest or second highest corprorate income tax rate on Earth). In addition, they die the “death of a thousand cuts” as bureaucrats keep adding to the regulatory burden. Thousands of new regulations are added every year and the compliance costs can be horrendous. And then politicians wonder why the local factory closed and either went out of business or relocated their operations overseas. Duh.
This blog post is revealing and clarifies your point even further.
“Congratulations to Republicans and Democrats alike. On a chained-dollar adjusted basis (but not counting sales taxes, property taxes, fees, home prices, etc.), real average hourly earnings are back to a level seen in 1968. Counting taxes and fees, the average worker makes far less now. ”
So our wages our close to 1968 levels, but we are worse off because of taxation and fees that are out of control.
“…a contracting economy is only a surprise if you’re an idiot. ”
“Hey, it surprised me!”–Douchenozzle Guy
“it isn’t contracting, it’s just growing at a sub-zero rate!”
Baghdad Jim
Don’t worry things will turn around once those unemployment checks start rolling out to the recently fired.