Posts tagged Economy
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.
obama’s populist nonsense
Mar 22nd
It appears as if the White House really starting to lose its grip of reality. If the following story is true Obama has no clue what he’s doing. Calling for populist nonsense isn’t the answer, and it’s certainly not good leadership.
One proposal could impose greater requirements on the boards of companies to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to assure that outsize bonuses are not paid before meeting financial goals.
The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving U.S. government bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last month, as part of the stimulus package, Congress barred top executives at large banks getting rescue money from receiving bonuses exceeding one-third of their annual pay.
I’ve purposely avoided this AIG bonus thing because frankly I could care less about $130 million dollars (the government authorized) when the government is wasting much more money every day. Other than upsetting Wall Street what does this piece of regulation accomplish? The current economic problems aren’t because executives received too many bonuses.
The past couple of months have been terrible for Capital Hill. The president is clearly adrift. He’s reacting to every political issue with reactionary policy and the Congress is a an unrestrained mess. The president seems more concerned about his cratering approval numbers than about being a leader.
Obama needs to concentrate on policy that will free up the investor class instead of alienating Wall Street. These are the people who will help the economy get back on its feet. Every time Obama attacks Wall Street his presidency moves one step closer to colossal failure. Obama has no real control on the economy; however, he can cause it to stagnate it by freezing the hands of investment. Investors aren’t stupid. If Obama makes it clear he’s going to try to tax and regulate every facet of business investors are going to wait until he’s out of office.
Iraq and the Ecomomy
Apr 22nd
There have been a few pundits and politicians blaming the current economic problems on Iraq. I expect more and more people to make that claim as the year progresses, especially since around 67% of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has contributed a lot to the U.S. economic problems.
It’s not news that Americans are woefully ignorant on economic issues like immigration, free trade, etc. This ignorance is why so many bad policies are created and rewarded. Many of these problems are documented in Bryan Caplan’s book the Myth of the Rational Voter which I read last year.
The press has helped this Iraq myth along by not reporting specifics. The real answer is that Iraq really hasn’t effected our economy at all. Energy prices have been going up since 2000 and the housing bubble has nothing to do with Iraq. Greg Mankiw shares my sentiment on the New Your Times poll on Iraq and the economy.
I have never taken a public position on the Iraq war: The issue is a hard one, and foreign policy and military matters are well beyond my area of expertise. But I am confident that it would be a mistake to view the war primarily through the lens of economics. My guess is that if this poll question were asked of professional economists, most would answer “Not Much.”