Plunging Towards Gomorrah
Posts tagged Economy
Do Progressives Really Care About the Economy?
May 23rd
The right to free ice cream isn't spelled out in the constitution, but when has that ever been a problem for "progressives."
I have to admit I’m growing a little weary of politics. Perhaps it’s the Arizona controversy and the left’s ability to ignore logic and its apparent inability to read. It seems our population is fine with being ignorant. It’s easier to be angry and upset with Arizona than to actually realize that its law not only mirrors the federal law, but provides additional protection from racial profiling. So if we boycott Arizona, shouldn’t we boycott Washington?
Then, on the other side, there are those who spend time theorizing about the President’s birth certificate. The Republic has a lot of problems, but the President’s birth certificate isn’t one of them. The average American’s knowledge of our current fiscal situation is abysmal. Sure, most Americans can tell you that the economy is not doing well, but how many people cared before 2008? Most Americans are frustrated by the business cycle, not the 40-plus years of governmental mismanagement of finances.
For the United States to right this fiscal Titanic it would take a huge majority in Congress to do it. I don’t see how this is possible as long as the Democrats have the support of 40 percent of voters. The Democratic party doesn’t have a plan to balance the budget or reduce our debt, only plans to run us into the ground financially. Sadly, neither does the Republican establishment. Eventually this economic policy leads to California.
“So goes California so goes the nation,” or so the saying goes. California is our homegrown version of Greece. The citizens of California want big government, but they don’t want to pay for it. The indelible Mark Steyn has an article about the situation in Greece, but it’s just as relevant to California and the United States.
The problem facing the Western world isn’t very difficult to figure out: we’ve spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we’ve already burned through. When you’re spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you’ve no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it.
Most liberals I know haven’t thought this far ahead. They’re in favor of free health care like they’re in favor of free Baskin Robbins ice cream. The ice cream tastes good, it’s available in 31 flavors, and no one really cares who’s paying for it. I too am in favor of free ice cream because providing it to Americans would be a helluva lot cheaper than free health care.
Eventually we end up like Greece, except there will be no one left to bail us out. There’s no Tea Party in Greece. It’s the Government Party there. Almost everyone is employed by the state and they all want to keep their 14-month annual pension (that’s not a typo; they get paid for 14 months of work in a 12-month period). Think that can’t happen in the United States? It’s happening already.
In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.
It’s what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. “I don’t understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem,” he said.
“It’s what the system promised.” What happens if the system is broken? I apologize, but I really don’t feel sorry for able-bodied men who retired at the age of 40. What are these people contributing to society? Being a police officer is a respectable job, but it shouldn’t mean that 15 to 20 years service equals 30-plus years of pension. Obviously some of these pensions are related to disability, but not all of them. Until progressives take this problem seriously the United States is headed to bankruptcy.
The V-Shaped Recovery
Apr 11th
Here’s a hat tip to Mark J. Perry who has one of my favorite economics blogs. He’s been beating the “economic boom” drum for a few month and I believe he’s correct. Here’s a video from Larry Kudlow’s The Kudlow Report.
The short term looks good, but the long run is very very bleak unless we change our fiscal problems. It’s good news for President Obama and bad news for whoever replaces him in the future.
The Economy is Bouncing Back
Apr 6th
I mentioned a few days ago that the economy is slowly starting to turn the corner. It’s unclear if this will be a fast economic expansion or a slow crawl; however, things are going to get better before they get worse. Another good sign is that Home Depot is hiring for the first time in four years. New housing construction has taken a beating the past few years and is starting to turn around. Chris Burritt at Bloomberg has more:
Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-improvement retailer, is adding store jobs for the first time in four years in anticipation of a rebound in sales.
“We have already added to our payroll this year,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frank Blake said in an interview yesterday in Atlanta, where Home Depot is based. “As you have positive transaction growth, you need more associates to handle that in the stores. We are going to lean into our skis a little bit.”
Other areas that are showing improvement are railway freight and an increase in private sector jobs. What is driving the rebound? It’s not the government. It’s the American entrepreneurial spirit. The business cycle isn’t dead and as the Dow marches closer to 11,000 it’s worth reminding people that the United States is still a very prosperous nation.
What Would I Do: The Economy
Feb 5th
If I was in charge I would push for enormous changes to fix the economy. Here is what I would do.
- Abolish several departments. Agriculture, Education, and Homeland Security do not need entire departments. These departments are either too big, obsolete, or just useless. I’m sure there are other departments that can go as well. One of Bush’s biggest mistakes was creating the Department of Homeland Security.
- Reduce the number of government employees, reduce wages, and reduce pensions. Government employees’ wages have been going up the past two years. It’s time these people start sacrificing like the rest of us. Federal and State pensions are absurd. We’re basically paying able bodied people not to work.
- Raise the entitlement age for Medicare and Social Security. Don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen. If there’s one thing elderly people do well, it’s vote.
- Temporarily cut the payroll tax. This would be much more beneficial for the average American than the stimulus package.
- Halt the stimulus package. Use the allotted funds to help pay for the shortfall in payroll receipts.
That’s just a short list of things to do. I could think of others, but this would be a step in the right direction. I don’t expect Obama to take up any of these ideas any time soon. Politicians love to talk about reducing waste, but they lack the courage to do it.
ideology vs. common sense
Nov 7th
Unemployment is at the highest level since 1983. The stimulus bill was a failure. The economic outlook is dismal. Our generals have been waiting weeks for the President to make a decision about Afghanistan. So what are House Democrats working on Saturday to accomplish? A massive health care take over that will in no way help the economy. The massive entitlement will burden the nation with trillions of more dollars in debt. For those scoring at home the United States national debt is nearly $12 trillion. That’s only $128,105 per American taxpayer. Or in my case my income for the next three years. This is what happens when ideology overcomes common sense.
looking back at the stimulus
Oct 3rd
A few months ago with the White House and Congress were ramming the pork ridden stimulus bill through Washington the President’s economic team produced the graph below to justify the legislation. The stimulus isn’t helping, it never will help, and it was a colossal waste of money. The economy will eventually bounce back and if it happens during this administration the White House will cite the stimulus as the reason. The economy is the number one issue right now and the President seems more worried about health care, climate change, and the Olympics.
ht: Greg Mankiw
bread and circuses
Jun 26th
“Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar.”
-Gracchus in Gladiator
I absolutely resent the news media’s round-the-clock coverage of Michael Jackson’s death. I was hoping he would continue to fade into obscurity, become less crazy and die of old age at Nevemind Ranch. Why his death matters so much to the media is beyond me, but I also wonder why the media pays attention to what anyone in Hollywood has to say about politics or anything else of importance.
I’ll admit to a certain bias here: I hate Celebrity and the worship of Celebrity in America. Celebrity, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. But I suppose Celebrity is a religion in its own right with its own rites, altars and priesthoods, not to be confused with Jason Priestly, formerly of Beverly Hills 90210 fame.
The rise of Celebrity in America coincides with the willingness of the American people to cede their liberties to the state. Americans believe all kinds of myths because the celebrity culture anesthetizes them to the truth. Celebrity offers easy, pre-packaged answers that require little intellectual effort. Why look into an issue on my own when I’ve got Oprah, George Clooney, Pamela Anderson and Michael J. Fox doing the research for me?
For instance, it has become a truism via the Celebrity culture that embryonic stem cell research, of course funded by the taxpayer, is the only way to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In reality, the most successful research and actual progress has been made with adult stem cells. But let’s not let facts get in the way when said “facts” have already been cherry-picked for us, and when they happen to coincide with one of Celebrity’s favorite causes, abortion. Yeah for the death of those that are inconvenient to us!
“The science is settled” on any number of topics, according to Celebrity and its minions in Congress. All of the bad weather anywhere in the world is caused by man’s selfish consumption, and must be stopped. Of course, as a Celebrity (or a member of Congress), and because I’m so important, I cannot possibly curb my consumption. “Let them eat cake” has been replaced with, “Let them drive clown cars!”
That is why our spoiled aristocracy – the 21st Century Marie Antoinette – is in favor of the supremacy of the state over the individual. It’s very similar to the feeling a lot of Coloradoans have about their state, best summarized by the bumper sticker fashioned like a Colorado license plate that says, “No Vacancy“. I freely admit to feeling the same way. Now that I’m here, I’d like to fence off the state and not allow another person to darken its borders.
In the same way, celebrities and other hyper-rich, powerful people (such as Avon’s Andrea Jung mentioned in a previous Club Soda post) want to fence off the American Dream and keep the bounty and freedom of America to themselves. It’s a form of arrogance that says they’re individuals while the rest of us are simply numbers in a census (conducted by ACORN, of course).
So, while the media devotes itself to non-stop coverage and posthumous tributes to the King of Pop, Americans are being screwed by another unreadable, voluminous, multi-trillion-dollar bill that will finally defeat climate change and the American economy in one fell swoop.
The media, once again, is asleep at the wheel, celebrating celebrity and accepting at face value the pronouncements of the aristocracy that something “must be done.” Bread and circuses, if you will. When this monstrosity of a bill passes, Denver’s weather better be like San Diego’s year-round, or I’m going to be pissed.
