The far-left chased Lieberman out of the party because he wasn't "liberal enough". They continue to alienate moderate democrats with their candidates and rhetoric. It goes without saying that the right is going to hate Hillary, but a sizeable percentage of democrats won't vote for her either.
I can't say I agree with everything Tim Kreider writes, but I like this recent quote in one of his rants: I don't understand why the Far Right, which believes that dinosaurs are fake and that very shortly Jesus will return and Christians will be lifted bodily into Heaven, has to be taken seriously as a major political constituency whereas the Far Left, which believes that invading Iraq was a mistake and maybe we should have national health care, is dismissed as a bunch of crackpots.
Leiberman found himself on the wrong side of history on the war in Iraq and instead of acknowledging what more than half of the country now believes, he opted to continue to try to play the "anti-American" card and claim that he has some special insight into what a brilliant plan the war was. Just look at who unseated him. I can't see how anybody can paint Lamont as Marx reincarnated. The fact is, Leiberman has shown nothing but contempt for the rational people who opposed his hawkish foreign policy, and he's continuing to do so by pretending that his Senate seat is some sort of birth right rather than a short term of service at the pleasure of his constituents.
It doesn't help that most of the Democrats I know tend to be of the socially liberal / fiscally conservative bent rather than Leiberman's fiscally liberal / socially conserviative position. I don't know if that's the trend nationwide, but if it is, it's a wonder Leiberman held his seat for as long as he did.
The point is not that they're affiliated with the USPS, but rather thatthat the prepaid presorted bulk mail is easier to deal with and generates more surplus for the USPS, allowing them to charge less for their general services (being nonprofit, that extra money doesn't get paid out to shareholders...it either goes to expanding services or keeping other prices lower). If $0.39 is too much to get a sheet of paper across the country in a few days, you could always carry it yourself.
Likewise, it's my choice to wear a cup to protect myself against random people kicking me in the balls for no reason, and if I don't, its my own problem. If it were necessary for me to do so, it certainly wouldn't be any indication that the person doing the kicking is an inconsiderate asshole, right? No, it's definitely all on me.
Is this kind of like apologizing to Dick Cheney for being shot in the face by him?
Not to get into a theological debate, but I see this statement a lot, and it's almost always associated with some strange handwaving or equivocation over the definition of the word "information." The statement is absolutely true if you define information as something that comes from intelligence, but if you don't define it that way, I don't see how one can come to the conclusion that it's true. Too often, I see a statement like this thrown out and then a bunch of calculations and use of things like Kolmogorov complexity and Shannon information, ignoring entirely that the definition of "information" they're using changes from one part of their argument to another.
I suppose the point I'm trying to get at is this: There are a lot of philosophical arguments for and against the existence of deities. I have never, however, seen a mathematical one that didn't fall on its face somewhere. Some tools just aren't the right tools for the job at hand, and I'm fairly certain that empriricism and mathematics are not the tools for this one.
There is a cap. The whole point of emissions trading is that polluting industries are allowed a certain amount of emssions. If a company pollutes less, it can sell its emissions credits to another company to offset their excess pollution. By buying up those credits, one drives up the price of those credits and reduces the number of credits available on the open market. End result: Polluters are given a greater economic incentive to clean up. Systems liek it have been very effective in the past. Check out the sulfur dioxide trading program that was used to combat acid rain.
Well, it certainly helps that there is a very simple and complete theoretical model that explains how CO2 can cause temperature shifts. The avenue of causation is anything but a mystery.
And that's great for the local economy (although I strongly doubt that the lack of this bridge is what's holding back the local economy). It's also a good way of getting things up and running again when you're stuck in deflation like the Great Depression. The question is, could that $300M be better spent on other infrastructure or other goods and services that contribute to the economy? Certainly, on a national level, it's hard to argue that this isn't the case.
Of course a free bridge is great for the local economy. Just dumping $300M in cash on the local economy would be great for the local economy. The question is whether it's justified, given that the local government has the money to pay for part of the project and isn't willing to do so. Opportunity cost is especially important to consider given that Stevens threw a hissy fit over the fact that Senator Coburn wanted to redirect that money to rebuilding infrastructure destroyed by hurricane Katrina.
I'm definitely not saying that public works projects are always a waste. I'm saying that they always have an opportunity cost, and sometimes that cost is tremendous. Ignoring the cost in favor of bringing home the pork for the locals is bad governance.
I see a good deal of evidence for the US central bank failing on that score. Just look at the county-level statistics for the 2004 election to see the failures.
Details, please? I didn't see prices spiraling out of control in either direction. Unemployment wasn't at record lows and GDP growth weren't at record, highs, but I'm definitely not seeing the economic argument for laying that at the feet of the central banking system.
After a period of irrational materialism, the economy grinding to a halt is what is needed. Think of it as the same as a family- microeconomics always makes more sense. If a family has gotten themselves into debt, which is better? Piling up more debt or paying it off?
I'm completely missing your leap from deflation and debt. I think I'm just not following your analogy.
Ah, but what is the purpose of the control? If the purpose of the control is to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, I'd agree with you- it's not in the best interest of the rich to allow the poor to stop consuming and pay off their debt from irrational consumption. But if the purpose is the end of capitalism because there's no longer any need for even 60% of your population to work to maintain the status quo- then a period of adjustment will be needed.
The purpose of the control is mainly to ensure price stability and prevent massive unemployment. If you want to read a deeper social agenda into it, I suppose you can, but it seems like you're advocating bringing the economy to a screeching halt and replacing it with a simpler one that grows more slowly and discourages capital investment. We'll have to agree to disagree there.
Thus returning to my point of DECENTRALIZED banks run by LOCAL governments, and taxes being replaced merely with the profit that comes from being able to print one's own money. Local governments will do local pork projects- and being able to print their own money, will be able to afford to do so- which will create local jobs. Those local jobs produce local consumers- which will want services the government doesn't provide, providing an opportunity for local businessmen, who create even more jobs. By keeping the communities as small and local as possbile, you encourage economic growth LOCALLY. And by limiting the money supply to government spending, you avoid the fake money of banks extending credit, which by ABCT theory is what causes boom/bust cycles.
So, how exactly is fiat money "fake" when it's used to buy bonds to control the money supply and "real" when it's used by the government to purchase goods and services? More importantly, given that this system guarantees steady money supply growth regardless of increases in productivity or money demand, how do you keep inflation from spiraling out of control, and how do you handle foreign trade with economies that aren't required to accept your devalued currency?
No, no. I'm arguing that if you can't pay for even a part of your own basic local infrastructure, you can't afford the tax rebate you're so proud of. Feel free to take federal dollars for transportation. It's a perfectly legitimate use of them in many circumstances. However, if you can't be bothered to pay for *any* of a project at all, even when you have a budget surplus to pay out dividends to state residents, exactly what justifies having the federal government pay for 100% of what is traditionally a shared responsibility (or entirely local) project?
Military bases support the common welfare and are paid for by federal money in every state. Bridges are less common goods and are generally funded largely by local money. Why should a bridge with no obvious nationwide benefits be funded entirely by federal tax dollars, especially when the state government is clearly not impoverished? If you have enough money to pay "dividends" but you're not willing to foot the bill for even 5% of the cost of a bridge, the bridge just isn't important enough to take $300M out of the national economy to pay for it.
I tend to think of things more as an economist would. No, the bridge certainly wasn't to "nowhere." People would use the bridge. There's no question about that. My question is what the opportunity cost is. What would an otherwise healthy, functioning market economy have spent that $300M on, and what would the yield on those monies be? Government intervention can sometimes do a good job of creating better long economic outcomes than a short-sighted market alone, but it tends not to be the case, and given the history of Senator Stevens and the particulars of this bridge, I have a very hard time believing that this is one of those cases (or even believe that the Senator has been a serious part of any such decisions at all).
Think of it this way: our economy has a long history of healthy GDP growth and a good return on dollars invested by itself. There's no compellingly obvious reason to think that an investment of $300M on a bridge in Alaska is going to have anywhere near that type of return in the short run or the long run, and the Senator hasn't done a particularly good job of coming up with one. That there is some (a lot of?) local benefit to the bridge, I don't even think that the local interest is that high, given that the locals haven't expressed any interest in spending their money on the project, so it's hard to believe that it's going to generate a lot of local wealth that will come pouring out into neighboring states. It's much easier to chalk this one up to bringing home the bacon than it is to think of it as responsible governance.
Well, I can see the desire for more locally responsive money supplies. I was fairly well convinced that the Euro wouldn't work as the practical monetary policy for one country would almost certainly be wrong for another country in the worst case. I don't see any evidence that our central bank failing on that account in the US, though.
As for deflation, I can't think of any sensible argument to prefer it over inflation of a comparable scale, given that it's nasty to counteract and has a tendency to cause economies to spiral down to a halt. As far as history has shown, price stability is not really a reasonable option, and mild inflation is generally associated with a healthier economy, as well as being better understood and easier to control. Sure, a money supply that grew perfeclty with the needs of the economy would be great, but you can't have that with your money supply tied to an arbitrary resource. You can't even have it with a managed money supply, but you can come a whole lot closer.
Of course, even with that rule available, the PATRIOT act sailed through without being read by some of the people who voted on it. Kind of amazing, huh?
So states that are fiscally responsible (not saying Alaska is, but using it as an example) should be punished for it. After all, you are calling for a hold on federal money until the states are bankrupt, right?
No, I have no problem returning a tax surplus to the taxpayers. I do have a problem with doing that instead of contributing to what you claim is important infrastructure while getting federal dollars instead. As the grandparent said, if it's important, the locals should be able to raise at least a few percentage points on the total cost of the project. Federal dollars to help out important local projects that are of arguable national benefit are great. Federal dollars to help out a project that the locals don't think is important enough to spend any money on is not. Any purchase is worthwhile if it's 100% other people's money. That's why insurance payouts have copays and deductibles.
Anything that provides an American with a job is not useless.
Even if that job isn't doing something benficial to society, or when that benefit is far smaller than the cost incurred to purchase it? If I slashed all of the tires on my street, you can bet that the tire salesmen would be happy, but was that really a social good. Likewise, if I take money away from a company that employs engineers in order to pay an unemployed person to dance in the woods where nobody can see him, was that a net benefit? I think that there's a lot to be said for government programs to minimize unemployment, but they always come at a cost.
Right, and part of the problem that leads to inflation is that fact -- In reality, it's only worth the paper its printed on. Fiat money.
So, you're saying that you prefer the deflation that is a necessary consequence of tying the currency of a steadily growing economy to a finite natural resource over the mild inflation that is the result of a properly managed central bank?
What they notice, and what makes them like a given politician, are the big named projects that appear with his fingerprints on them.
But when those projects are bridges to nowhere, is that really a good thing? I'm all for federal spending on infrastructure that benefits a state as long as it has some arguable national benefit (and most of things you mentioned do), but racking up the dollars on random wasteful stuff doesn't strike me as particularly good behavior.
This "they're either with us or against us" mentality is both short-sighted and unsustainable.
No, that's not the mentality at all, and I'm not sure whether you're deliberately trying to misread my point. Pretending entire countries simply don't exist is the unsustainable behavior. You have a country that's supporting terrorism against you and otherwise trying to throw a spanner into the works. Obviously, this irritates the administration. They either need to do something about it or get the fuck over it and move on. The "La la la! I can't hear you!" foreign policy that has historically been adopted by so many administrations allows badly behaving countries to continue doing bad things with no consequences and doesn't get us any concessions for allowing them to continue. If you're going to allow them to continue behaving badly (and I certainly see no reason to start a war over the indirect antagonization going on here), it makes a lot of sense to open diplomatic channels and try to work on a generally more productive relationship. The "I have here no carrot and only a vague notion of a stick, and I have no intention of listening to what you want" form of diplomacy only works when they're already your friends and they owe you a favor.
I can't think of a lot of historical occasions when having no diplomatic relations with a potential enemy has made that enemy "see the light" and stop behaving badly. We may be able to (unproductively) ignore Cuba (although I think it's to the detriment of both nations) because they aren't playing a key role in our foreign affairs right now, but we're trying to exert a huge amount of influence on the Middle East. Syra and Iran are likewise making a huge power play (and doing a much better job at it). We may not become major allies with either of them, but to think that we can be puppet masters in their back yards without either finding common diplomatic ground with them or bombing them into submission is lunacy. Personally, I prefer the diplomatic approach.
Please explain how evolution meets the "repeatable" criterion. Given the same initial conditions, will you arrive at the same outcome?
Read carefully: "repeatble observation"
This means that, "I saw X happen, but I have no evidence that I saw it and there's no way for you to see it" isn't allowed. For example, if I claim that I found a fossil but now it's gone, it's not a repeatable observation. Claims that dinosaurs are still around because some guy saw the Loch Ness monster don't fly because the observation isn't repeatable. If I can produce the fossil for everybody to examine it and show others where I found it, then it becomes fair game.
We need to go to wherever the terrorists are. If they're in the middle east, we need to be in the Middle East.
Well, the "Middle East" is an awfully big place with lots of countries in it. I think we may have missed the target by landing in one of the places where the government made it difficult for them to operate. I was all for jumping into Afghanistan because that's where the terrorists were. I suppose that there are plenty of terrorists in Iraq now that we've stirred up the hornets' nest, but Iraq is only a front in the "war on terror" because we stupidly made it so. Were we looking for terrorists there because the light was better?
Why is it the federal government's responsibility to pay for one state's city?
When that city is a major shipping center for international commerce, the federal government might do well to peek in from time to time. Not that there weren't big screw ups at all levels, but it's worth noting that the federal government ought not to be ignoring important cities based on some vague notion of states' rights.
I have a similar issue with a tropical aquarium that I maintain at 82-84 degrees F. It's only about 300W of heating at its maximum, but it heats the room around it to an unpleasant temperature. When we're home, if we want to keep the apartment to a more reasonable temperature, we have to counteract what amounts to a surprisingly large influence on the ambient room temp. Of course, a big slug of water with lots of surface area is really efficient at transmitting heat into the room, but it's roughly an analogous situation.
Yeah, I found that too. I currently have a supposed-100 watt equivalent going, but I'd say it's more like 60.
That's a really important issue that irritates me immensely. The average consumer doesn't know that "watt" means "energy consumed per second of usage" in this context. They think it means "light brightness" so we're stuck with these useless marketing equivalent values. I don't understand why they just don't bump up the output of the CFL a little bit at the cost of efficiency and *actually* make it equal to a 100 watt bulb. Yes, it will use a smidge more power, but it's still a *lot* more efficient than what it replaced.
Slashdot Mirror
Leiberman found himself on the wrong side of history on the war in Iraq and instead of acknowledging what more than half of the country now believes, he opted to continue to try to play the "anti-American" card and claim that he has some special insight into what a brilliant plan the war was. Just look at who unseated him. I can't see how anybody can paint Lamont as Marx reincarnated. The fact is, Leiberman has shown nothing but contempt for the rational people who opposed his hawkish foreign policy, and he's continuing to do so by pretending that his Senate seat is some sort of birth right rather than a short term of service at the pleasure of his constituents.
It doesn't help that most of the Democrats I know tend to be of the socially liberal / fiscally conservative bent rather than Leiberman's fiscally liberal / socially conserviative position. I don't know if that's the trend nationwide, but if it is, it's a wonder Leiberman held his seat for as long as he did.
Question: How many acts of software piracy equals one sexual assault, morally speaking?
Littering isn't that big of a deal either. What's a McDonald's bag in terms of clean up effort? Why the $1000 fine in CA?
Of course, if everybody litters willy-nilly, the answer to that question becomes obvious.
The point is not that they're affiliated with the USPS, but rather thatthat the prepaid presorted bulk mail is easier to deal with and generates more surplus for the USPS, allowing them to charge less for their general services (being nonprofit, that extra money doesn't get paid out to shareholders...it either goes to expanding services or keeping other prices lower). If $0.39 is too much to get a sheet of paper across the country in a few days, you could always carry it yourself.
Likewise, it's my choice to wear a cup to protect myself against random people kicking me in the balls for no reason, and if I don't, its my own problem. If it were necessary for me to do so, it certainly wouldn't be any indication that the person doing the kicking is an inconsiderate asshole, right? No, it's definitely all on me.
Is this kind of like apologizing to Dick Cheney for being shot in the face by him?
I suppose the point I'm trying to get at is this: There are a lot of philosophical arguments for and against the existence of deities. I have never, however, seen a mathematical one that didn't fall on its face somewhere. Some tools just aren't the right tools for the job at hand, and I'm fairly certain that empriricism and mathematics are not the tools for this one.
Come on, people, get with the times!
There is a cap. The whole point of emissions trading is that polluting industries are allowed a certain amount of emssions. If a company pollutes less, it can sell its emissions credits to another company to offset their excess pollution. By buying up those credits, one drives up the price of those credits and reduces the number of credits available on the open market. End result: Polluters are given a greater economic incentive to clean up. Systems liek it have been very effective in the past. Check out the sulfur dioxide trading program that was used to combat acid rain.
Well, it certainly helps that there is a very simple and complete theoretical model that explains how CO2 can cause temperature shifts. The avenue of causation is anything but a mystery.
And that's great for the local economy (although I strongly doubt that the lack of this bridge is what's holding back the local economy). It's also a good way of getting things up and running again when you're stuck in deflation like the Great Depression. The question is, could that $300M be better spent on other infrastructure or other goods and services that contribute to the economy? Certainly, on a national level, it's hard to argue that this isn't the case.
Of course a free bridge is great for the local economy. Just dumping $300M in cash on the local economy would be great for the local economy. The question is whether it's justified, given that the local government has the money to pay for part of the project and isn't willing to do so. Opportunity cost is especially important to consider given that Stevens threw a hissy fit over the fact that Senator Coburn wanted to redirect that money to rebuilding infrastructure destroyed by hurricane Katrina.
I'm definitely not saying that public works projects are always a waste. I'm saying that they always have an opportunity cost, and sometimes that cost is tremendous. Ignoring the cost in favor of bringing home the pork for the locals is bad governance.
I'm completely missing your leap from deflation and debt. I think I'm just not following your analogy.
The purpose of the control is mainly to ensure price stability and prevent massive unemployment. If you want to read a deeper social agenda into it, I suppose you can, but it seems like you're advocating bringing the economy to a screeching halt and replacing it with a simpler one that grows more slowly and discourages capital investment. We'll have to agree to disagree there.
So, how exactly is fiat money "fake" when it's used to buy bonds to control the money supply and "real" when it's used by the government to purchase goods and services? More importantly, given that this system guarantees steady money supply growth regardless of increases in productivity or money demand, how do you keep inflation from spiraling out of control, and how do you handle foreign trade with economies that aren't required to accept your devalued currency?
No, no. I'm arguing that if you can't pay for even a part of your own basic local infrastructure, you can't afford the tax rebate you're so proud of. Feel free to take federal dollars for transportation. It's a perfectly legitimate use of them in many circumstances. However, if you can't be bothered to pay for *any* of a project at all, even when you have a budget surplus to pay out dividends to state residents, exactly what justifies having the federal government pay for 100% of what is traditionally a shared responsibility (or entirely local) project?
Military bases support the common welfare and are paid for by federal money in every state. Bridges are less common goods and are generally funded largely by local money. Why should a bridge with no obvious nationwide benefits be funded entirely by federal tax dollars, especially when the state government is clearly not impoverished? If you have enough money to pay "dividends" but you're not willing to foot the bill for even 5% of the cost of a bridge, the bridge just isn't important enough to take $300M out of the national economy to pay for it.
I tend to think of things more as an economist would. No, the bridge certainly wasn't to "nowhere." People would use the bridge. There's no question about that. My question is what the opportunity cost is. What would an otherwise healthy, functioning market economy have spent that $300M on, and what would the yield on those monies be? Government intervention can sometimes do a good job of creating better long economic outcomes than a short-sighted market alone, but it tends not to be the case, and given the history of Senator Stevens and the particulars of this bridge, I have a very hard time believing that this is one of those cases (or even believe that the Senator has been a serious part of any such decisions at all).
Think of it this way: our economy has a long history of healthy GDP growth and a good return on dollars invested by itself. There's no compellingly obvious reason to think that an investment of $300M on a bridge in Alaska is going to have anywhere near that type of return in the short run or the long run, and the Senator hasn't done a particularly good job of coming up with one. That there is some (a lot of?) local benefit to the bridge, I don't even think that the local interest is that high, given that the locals haven't expressed any interest in spending their money on the project, so it's hard to believe that it's going to generate a lot of local wealth that will come pouring out into neighboring states. It's much easier to chalk this one up to bringing home the bacon than it is to think of it as responsible governance.
Well, I can see the desire for more locally responsive money supplies. I was fairly well convinced that the Euro wouldn't work as the practical monetary policy for one country would almost certainly be wrong for another country in the worst case. I don't see any evidence that our central bank failing on that account in the US, though.
As for deflation, I can't think of any sensible argument to prefer it over inflation of a comparable scale, given that it's nasty to counteract and has a tendency to cause economies to spiral down to a halt. As far as history has shown, price stability is not really a reasonable option, and mild inflation is generally associated with a healthier economy, as well as being better understood and easier to control. Sure, a money supply that grew perfeclty with the needs of the economy would be great, but you can't have that with your money supply tied to an arbitrary resource. You can't even have it with a managed money supply, but you can come a whole lot closer.
Of course, even with that rule available, the PATRIOT act sailed through without being read by some of the people who voted on it. Kind of amazing, huh?
No, that's not the mentality at all, and I'm not sure whether you're deliberately trying to misread my point. Pretending entire countries simply don't exist is the unsustainable behavior. You have a country that's supporting terrorism against you and otherwise trying to throw a spanner into the works. Obviously, this irritates the administration. They either need to do something about it or get the fuck over it and move on. The "La la la! I can't hear you!" foreign policy that has historically been adopted by so many administrations allows badly behaving countries to continue doing bad things with no consequences and doesn't get us any concessions for allowing them to continue. If you're going to allow them to continue behaving badly (and I certainly see no reason to start a war over the indirect antagonization going on here), it makes a lot of sense to open diplomatic channels and try to work on a generally more productive relationship. The "I have here no carrot and only a vague notion of a stick, and I have no intention of listening to what you want" form of diplomacy only works when they're already your friends and they owe you a favor.
I can't think of a lot of historical occasions when having no diplomatic relations with a potential enemy has made that enemy "see the light" and stop behaving badly. We may be able to (unproductively) ignore Cuba (although I think it's to the detriment of both nations) because they aren't playing a key role in our foreign affairs right now, but we're trying to exert a huge amount of influence on the Middle East. Syra and Iran are likewise making a huge power play (and doing a much better job at it). We may not become major allies with either of them, but to think that we can be puppet masters in their back yards without either finding common diplomatic ground with them or bombing them into submission is lunacy. Personally, I prefer the diplomatic approach.
This means that, "I saw X happen, but I have no evidence that I saw it and there's no way for you to see it" isn't allowed. For example, if I claim that I found a fossil but now it's gone, it's not a repeatable observation. Claims that dinosaurs are still around because some guy saw the Loch Ness monster don't fly because the observation isn't repeatable. If I can produce the fossil for everybody to examine it and show others where I found it, then it becomes fair game.
I have a similar issue with a tropical aquarium that I maintain at 82-84 degrees F. It's only about 300W of heating at its maximum, but it heats the room around it to an unpleasant temperature. When we're home, if we want to keep the apartment to a more reasonable temperature, we have to counteract what amounts to a surprisingly large influence on the ambient room temp. Of course, a big slug of water with lots of surface area is really efficient at transmitting heat into the room, but it's roughly an analogous situation.