Orson Scott Card is a great science fiction writer – and arguably a great author. I can’t stand his politics, but he once said something very wise about America at the turn of the century, which ran approximately as follows – that America is doomed because Americans have lost the will to be well led.
I first came to think he might have a point during the 2004 primaries, when Dean, daring to discuss America’s real problems – and daring to admit to real solutions (raising taxes, for example), was horribly punished both by the powers that be and by Democratic primary voters. Dean famously noted that capturing Saddam Hussein didn’t make America one bit safer – one of the many unspeakable truths that helped do in his candidacy.
This is America, in which Kerry, in the second debate was ambushed by a questioner who insisted that he say, directly and clearly, that he would never raise taxes. So this year the frontrunners have all played it safe, and kept their doses of truth and realism to a minimum.
Pierre Trudeau, the late great Canadian Prime Minister, once said to Canadians “I’m willing to give you anything you’re willing to pay for.”
I don’t, I simply do not, understand what is so hard for people to understand about this. While deficit financing, debt and trade deficits all have their place in national policy, you simply cannot forever live beyond your means without it all coming crashing down eventually. Debt rarely makes sense unless you are buying assets that will eventually lead to you having greater income in the future or which are improving assets which will increase at greater than the inflation rate.
That’s it. That’s all. It’s not rocket science, it’s not high economics, it’s just household budgeting and should be familiar to the vast majority of people.
But it’s not.
There’s an old saw that when an economist can’t explain something economically he resorts to bad sociology. But I was trained as a sociologist more than as an economist, so I’m going to flip to some moralistic sociology. Policies which encourage the moral degradation of a nation’s population are bad for the nation in the long term no matter how good they are in the short term. Credit’s a good thing – lack of access to credit strangles new growth and keeps the poor from improving their situation. When you look at new immigrant groups you find, for example, that what determines their success in their new nation is often their ability to access capital – and when you look at ethnic groups with problems (like American Blacks) you often find that lack of access to credit is a big problem.
But that’s investment credit – money used to open a business or make another investment in the future. Consumer credit is another thing entirely and it seems to have destroyed Americans’ sense that they must pay. Easy credit – pay nothing for a year, but get your fridge now – that sort of credit, has expanded far too much in the US. And it’s not just that such credit is encouraged, but that consumer credit is practically required. Try and travel in the US or Canada without a credit card, using cash, for example. Try and rent a car or book into a hotel. It’s practically impossible. From a nation whose motto might be “in God we Trust, all others pay cash” it has become a nation which says “show me the plastic, we don’t take legal tender”. What I’d like to see, in the blizzard of lawsuits in the US, is a suit which takes a major hotel chain to court for refusing to take cash – for insisting on plastic. I suspect it’s illegal.
To bring it back – many Americans expect to buy now, pay later and to revolve ever larger and larger amounts of debt – even to borrow against their assets (generally meaning their houses) for consumer spending. Such borrowing against assets for consumption should be understood by everyone with any sense as profoundly foolish and only to be engaged in if you are going to starve or go without a roof over your head if you don’t. It is destroying your seed to engage in gluttony. Yet many Americans do it every day and have all their lives.
So why should they be concerned that the US government is doing the same thing – that their state government is doing it and that the economy as a whole is doing it? They’ve been corrupted by easy credit.
There is a strong economic argument for easy credit. The more people spend, the more demand there is, the better the economy is. And if all boats are rising, then you can handle the increased debt servicing charges. But over the last thirty years all boats haven’t been rising – in fact for the middle and lower classes things have, most years, been slowly getting worse. Part of this is related to offshoring and outsourcing – borrowing money to buy things created outside of the US economy practically requires it.
But the bottom line is this – the electorate has been enfeebled and corrupted to the point where they refuse to listen to leaders who tell them truth and ask them to bite the bullet and make the hard choices now rather than the disastrous choices later.
Dean fell for a number of reasons, not all related to his message (in particular he was foolish enough to challenge the media barons while treating reporters with contempt, a deadly combination). But part of his fall was related to the simple fact that he talked about America’s real problems and wouldn’t rule out real solutions (like raising taxes). Clinton, with her gas tax rebate, has certainly learned the lesson, nor can I recall Obama talking about raising taxes.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Any nation whose population forgets that is in its twilight. There’s still a chance to turn the US around, and there are favourable signs that the US population is turning itself around (the huge surge in voter registration, for example, is promising.) But there are still too many US citizens who insist on being pandered and lied to. They refuse to be led well and as such they will be led badly. No leader can lead people where they refuse to go – no one can save you from yourself. First you have to want to be led, first you want to be saved – that’s the battle. The rest is hard work, but without that first step, the rest of the journey can never be taken.
Moralistic? Absolutely. Tripe? Alas no. Some things really are simple and really do boil down to very basic moral questions.
This is one of them. Make your choice. Do you want to be saved from yourselves? Are you clear America’s worst enemy is not bin Laden or China or Islamofascists, but America? Then demand your leaders, rather than pander and lie to you – lead you. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the fact that many of them would actually like to try and solve real problems. As for the rest, you’ll soon be rid of them. If you want to be led well, soon the bad leaders will fade.
It’s your choice.
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So, Ian!
Indiana! Glad it’s almost over…
guam is over and it doesn’t count
Edit…”well led”…?
Old news…
Thank you for making this clear. We have some important decisions coming up.
that it doesn’t count or that he won guam?
we also need to be much more active and involved in the governing of our country. apathy has cost us much
Title…led not lead..
Terrific post, Ian.
Pogoesque.
Aiieeee … The Canucks are invading … *g*
((( Ian ))) Excellent as always !
makes a good pun, though
Card is an interesting fellow. A good writer, certainly, not a great one. A participant in the Church of the Latter Day Saints (in the service of who’s missions he drew much of his subject matter from) and an inveterate Libertarian where all reason and cogent thought seems to fly out the window.
He perplexes me too. But the idea of being well lead, well I think there’s truth there. Americans are happy to shovel in the pablum of prime time television and the MSM. The ideas they are given to digest are what they do spend energy and effort in passing out their system; so they are lead, after a fashion. The easy credit you speak of, they are certainly lead to that and dive in head first. But *well* lead, no. That would take work.
I think a more simple truth is just this, “America is lazy.”
i don’t know why it is, but we seem to have a need to emotionally identify with some person “bigger” than ourselves. and once we’ve done that, even recognizing that we’re being lied to seems to cause all kinds of defenses to kick in. it’s been easy to see in republicans over the last few years. i have a few in my family who still think (or need to believe) that president bush is a “good” man.
but now i see us (dems) doing it too.
freaks me out a bit, because there is no way we can demand our leaders stop lying to us if we can’t face the evidence that they are doing just that.
Okay it is a beautiful day and I’ve been sitting outside….
phonebanking to Kokomo and Mishawauka in Indiana and just finished a list to a lil area outside of Luisville right before the Derby (i’m nothing if not sensitive to local goings on)
Urgh, thanks for the catch.
Ian, in my opinion it all started back in the Carter Administration. When confronted with the Arab oil shocks, Carter put forth an energy bill that emphasized coal and nuclear, which understandably did not inspire people. The bill got destroyed in Congress, which felt it had to pass an energy bill of some kind and eventually produced what might be called a “rump” bill. It was the first time America backed down from an important challenge.
Tired out from Vietnam, Watergate, and the energy crisis, we elected Reagan who told everyone what they wanted to hear, that it was “Morning in America.” He also peddled the supply side nonsense that said we could get something for nothing. And instead of learning to live within our means, both in terms of money and energy, we went for hyperconsumption: SUVs, exurbia, everything over the top. We went for a military buildup that we financed with borrowing as we built up a fiscal deficit We went for consumer goods that were vendor financed by our trade partners as we built up a current account deficit. And we have yet to be willing to listen to any politician who will tell us it can’t go on forever.
I think he’s written a couple books that are great, and that’s all most authors are remembered for. But obviously this is a matter of opinion, unless he fades fast, it takes a couple hundred years to really know.
Old habits die hard. It’s hard to break a habit if there is no alternative to the addiction.
We really need folks to get involved but that is not easy. They would rather just be part of the whine brigade
Great post BTW.
Louisiville, that is
Total agreement. Don’t spend more than you take in. Inability to face the money reality permeates this culture. It is a breath of fresh air to hear Obama speak truth about the gas tax proposal. But I don’t hold out much hope for a cultural shift of the necessary magnitude.
Oh, the ‘Bigger’ idea is an interesting one as explored by Richard Wright in Native Son. And the Jeremiah Wright controversy is decidedly a fight against that ‘Bigger’. I wonder if all Wrights rail against the wrongs of the Biggers?
I think you’re right. I think it also has to do with the fact that by 1980 the majority of the electorate didn’t remember the Great Depression all that well, and those who did didn’t want another big struggle, having been through more than a few.
neither do I
Careful, Petro you just may in the event of a major domestic crisis…!
I have a soft spot for the Ender series, I must admit.
Consumer debt-to-income ratios have been rising pretty steadily during the entire post-WWII era. Financial market deregulation, into which Carter was the first to dip his baby toe, did accelerate it somewhat.
In truth, people borrow “because they can,” and will continue to do so “until they can’t.” Since the U.S. is too big to fail, it’ll go on borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and …
We need a major shift of attitude in this country and I try to look at the economic meltdown as a wakeup call for us to make some serious changes from what we do in our own households all the way up to the POTUS
I find them all over the place, honestly. Some are awful, but some are breathtaking.
The problem with Card as an author is that he is extraordinarily manipulative. He is always trying to take a fistful of your heart-strings and move you around. When it works, when you don’t really notice, his books can be emotionally wracking in the best way. When it fails, when it’s visible, it leaves me completely cold. No one likes it when they see how they’re being manipulated.
That question of lack of subtlety might be where he falls down most, but yet it has produced some amazing books.
We are a country of ostriches and lemmings that grow up on cartoons and war games and brainwashed in nationalism…spoon fed pablum by corporate-driven MSM…addicted to entertainment, and we call our men and women who lay their lives down “kids”…The country is addicted to fatty, artificial fast foods, big gas guzzling SUVs and unlimited spending on credit…
Only rude-awakening types of events seem to have any effect.
Ugh.
break is over. time to do a bit more phone work. catch you pups in a bit.
ate la (until then)
Yeah, I have an old chart somewhere. And yet, there definitely was a chance in ethos that went along with it. I don’t think it’s exactly chicken and egg, at one point a lot of businesses just wouldn’t accept credit.
seems like a bad dream you get from binging. what a hangover we’re having
Looks like the recession will be shallow, not a meltdown. (”Saucer-shaped” as they described the 1970 one, perhaps.) Too soon to be conclusive, but that’s what the current evidence suggests.
Well, I can pretty much pinpoint the credit thing – it was certainly after 1980. Even with both of us working and making $25-$30K between us, my husband and I did not qualify for a credit card. Once we could get one, though, the offers came thick and fast.
i thought the ender’s game and one of the others in that series (either speaker for the dead or xenocide?) was great (maybe the novella moreso – iirc, it was a long time ago). but everything else i read of his was, imo, crap.
It sometimes seems like a bad dream you just can’t seem to wake up from…
Yes, yes! Some capture a kind of magic — Speaker for the Dead — and others remind me of albums Dylan made just to fill out a record contract.
on a local level, it’s a meltdown (at least here) but I can’t speak for the nation as a whole. I hope it is as you say
I’m tending to think it’ll feel a lot worse than that, unless you’re near the top of the economy. Stirling talks about why.
We might indeed wish to be well led, but I fear we aren’t very intelligent as a nation in choosing wise leaders.
Yep, worse for consumer real incomes than would be typical in a recession. Continuing the rise of the profits share, relative to past economic performances.
If I had access to easily manipulable databases, I could run a comparison. But no more. Sigh.
Not so sure about that. I think it’s truer to say that people borrow for as long as other people let them “because they can,” and will continue to do so until other people refuse to lend to them at which point they can’t.
I’m not convinced that the USA is “too big to fail” either, my hunch is that the Chinese (and the others pumping money into the US) are between a rock and a hard place and will eventually decide that the hard place is better than being ground to pieces on the rock.
What does any of this have to do with Ashlee Simpson?
Or Britney Spears?
Or Paula Abdul?
If you’re going to write about what concerns Americans, Ian, stick to the fundamentals, please.
“Yeah, I have an old chart somewhere. And yet, there definitely was a chance in ethos that went along with it. I don’t think it’s exactly chicken and egg, at one point a lot of businesses just wouldn’t accept credit.”
Wouldn’t extend credit.
And it take a person from Canada to write this truth (althou Ian is not long out of the UK, I believe)? Where are the people in the US willing to be so blunt?
But the government has the advantage and the complicity of the Federal Reserve Bank in managing a fiat currency system. How would you describe this rather interesting relationship in terms of bad sociology?
I call it living in the Age of Stupid where most people prefer politicians who promise them simple, cheap solutions to complex, expensive problems even when they know those politicians are lying to them.
Les jeux sont fait.
Ian,
My favourite of Prime Minister Trudeau’s statements was: “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”
Blessed to be a sister Canuck,
Heather
And certainly timed well to be blamed on the incoming (Democratic) administration….
But John Kerry was an elitist. Surely it is better to sell your future to a man who you’d rather have a beer with (if he weren’t a dry drunk) than some guy who continually uses words you can’t understand. Why use a dictionary when you can vote fur a dummy, I always say.
Well no, unless Ds were in control before they were in control. But given how good Rs are at conveying message and how bad Ds are, perhaps people will believe it’s all the Ds’ fault!
“Alea iacta Est” :-) mind you Caesar won his wars both domestic and foreign which is more than can be said for the Cheney regime, who seem only to be able to win domestic fights.
How can you be wasting your time with such trivialities when we still don’t know the real reason why Baba Wawa went bwack.
-G
ian – since you are venturing into sociology today….. for the last few years i’ve felt as though we’re in the middle of zimbardo’s prison experiment or one of milgram’s studies – where external pressure (from authorities, from our culture…) all seems aligned encourage us to act in ways that our completely contrary to the values we claim to care about.
to be blunt, i really don’t know how to live in this society without taking advantage of workers who are exploited and without contributing to the destruction of our climate and ecology. under those circumstances, it’s hard not to feel alienated from nature and from humanity.
seems like a perfect set up to encourage either denial or someone who claims to have easy answers for us.
Well, consider the possibility that Cheney only intended to win an opportunity for Haliburton, Blackwater, and the major Oil companies to make just oodles of jing. By any measure, he has won many times over; and may he rot in hell for it!
LOL – reminds me, I’m going to watch Blazing Saddles tonight.
It seems to me there is another thing that Americans have gotten so used to that it has almost become a habit–that is bankruptcy. If you find you cannot pay later, you can always file bankruptcy and the unsecured debt goes away magically. Bank of America then gets to pay for your wardrobe and that new watch. You may or may not end up losing your house or your car, but you can do that if you’ve gotten in too deep. My question is, do nations file bankruptcy. I know that cities do and some have. But I don’t know how close we are as a nation to defaulting on our loan from China, Saudi Arabia, etc. etc. etc.?
Caesar needed to win both foreign and domestic, because he held power because of the loyalty of his legions. The Bush administration knows that failure in foreign wars will not cost him his power, the troops will not rebel, and the Senate will not vote him out of his command. (In Rome, of course, a commander might ignore the Senate, if his troops were loyal to him and not to Rome).
Better to rule in Hell, might be the appropriate phrase. They cast the die, but if they fail they still intend to be in charge of what’s left of the US and to be powerful and rich in relative terms.
we have a problem here. because even i think kerry is elitist.
not that i don’t wish he was president now, but i’m not going to use arguments i don’t believe.
I watch it once a year and laugh as if I have never seen it before. Enjoy !
Half of bankruptcies arise over medical debts.
Only the fights that are out of sight of the public. When they become public, he doesn’t do so well.
I wrote my congresscritter today, and sent this to Nancy also:
Yeah, Milgram and Zimbardo are perfect analogies. People are very plastic, and you can mostly get them to do what you want. My formulation is usually that about 80% of folks can be good people or bad people and it’s mostly a question of the environment they’re in and how they’re lead. Ask for the best from people and that’s what you often enough get. Not always, mind you, but more often than many think. (Carter may have said one thing, but many others were saying the opposite.)
As for the worst, or for people to just shop, well, you get that too.
Yes, we prefer the lies. But, to be fair, there’s a growth industry that’s been determined to spread lies about government and money for decades.
For 30 years, we’ve been lied to about tax cuts (”always good!”), supply side economics, the value of government investment in roads, science, healthcare, education (”government doesn’t do anything well!”)…..
In what may seem a tragic omen, the filly that Sen. Clinton bet would win the Kentucky Derby has been euthanized on the track after suffering two broken ankles.
-G
I certainly hope our current Congress won’t go along with this first-time-ever request to provide a Vice President with a security detail after he leaves office. Surely Darth has enough money to pay for his own.
Another good reason for a rump Congress to quickly impeach Cheney, post-November: emoluments of office are unavailable to the impeached!
mfi – if ian doesn’t mind, can you give us an update on sadr city and the bombing of the hospital? the latest post at gorilla’s guide is in arabic (or should we just wait for siun?).
Bankruptcy laws in the US have been quite slack for a long time, the recent tightening is against the US tradition. What has become more and more the case is the “too big to fail” – bankruptcy for regular folks is harder to get, while bailouts and subsidies flow to the rich. The removal of all responsibility from elites is, I think, a greater problem than general bankruptcy for ordinary folks. It’s not when people can go bankrupt that they are corrupted, but when they don’t need to because they are bailed out.
So, I went to the dictionary and I found out that ‘elite’ is generally a good thing. If you’re going to elect a leader, why the hell wouldn’t you want him to be zenith rather than nadir (I used the thesaurus, too ;-)
Go back and get a shitload of dimes.
-G
iirc, it was much higher than 80% if the experiment was designed to maximize compliance with authority.
Not at all. Also, mark, so glad to see you (so to speak) again.
i guess my ignorance is showing… appreciate the correction. i’ll go see if i can find a better/more accurate word.
Yikes, the poor horse. Yikes the poor Hill, pierced by the sharp spear of metaphor. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that costs her more votes than any Bosnian bufu she might have had.
Close to 95% if you really push it. But those were very controlled circumstances.
However the 80% figure (which is certainly not scientific) is based on my belief that about 10% of people really are basically good and have an internal fortitude to do what they believe is right when those around them are pushing them to do bad things.
About 10% of people are scum, and even if you treat them right and surround them with good folks, they’ll still act like scum.
The great mass of people will do whatever seems to be socially approved of, more or less. If that’s good, great, if not, that’s fine too.
Stuck-up?
From Webster’s:
revolution
2.a: a sudden, radical, or complete change
2.c: activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation
“…to effect fundamental changes…”
“…fundamental…”
I’m a revolutionary.
IAN!!! You Rock.
IIRC, M Trudeau was Canadian PM for a good, long time.
Back to read.
So much for Republics and their “government should be run like a business” crock. And why so many Americans buy it is beyond me.
FunnyDiva
Privileged.
Boy is this true. It wasn’t 70 years ago that consumer credit was simply not available. And when it got started, the financial barons cheated with interest rates calculated using weird rules like the Rule of 78s, discount interest and other tricks. These were used for the purpose of cheating people, but also for the express purpose of defeating usury laws. People took to credit in a huge way after WWII but at least they were mostly buying durable goods, so the explanation that they were paying as they were using the product made some kind of sense. Then on to today, when the powers that be want us to consume today rather than defer gratification. Actually plenty of us do that, and most of us are doing really well.
The importance–I think–of both Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s experiments is not that people are plastic or that one can be manipulated, but that many of us are willing to cede power to authority (eg., are authoritarian personalities). We will obey without question. Or, even if we question, a little, obey.
An interesting thing about the Zimbardo experiment in particular (I think) is that even while people ACT in accordance to authority, they IDENTIFY with the victims of authority. I have shown the Zimbardo prison experiment tapes in a couple of classes I taught years ago. Not one of my students imaginatively put themselves in the place of the guards. They all identified with the prisoners. Interestingly, they hated how the ‘prisoners’ initially accepted their roles, and always the discussion would go to how students would “never do that.” I believe that this is an example of precisely how unconscious our culture is with how we identify and accept authority in our lives.
(Hello mfi. I hope all is well with you and your dear family).
Yeah, and many are caused by divorce and other things that are basically beyond our control, like job loss or downsizing which ended up in lower income. But sometimes it’s just because we wanted what we wanted now and didn’t want to wait. Like when our President wanted to go to war and didn’t want to raise taxes to pay for it or put it on the budget–and we the people did not stop him!
Caesar’s victories flooded Italy with slaves which undercut both Rome’s economy and republican culture. Similarly, Spain’s conquests in the New World and in Asia flooded the country with gold and silver which gutted the domestic economy because whatever Spain needed it could buy more cheaply elsewhere.
Both great victories and great defeats can have disastrous effects on countries and empires.
Ah, dangerous ground, slippery slope and all that rot, old boy. There was none more privileged than JFK and yet none more loved.
Nations do go bankrupt. Argentina?
It’s called reneging on their debts.
lol… well, given some of the things i’ve done and regret – i prefer not to divide people into the good and the scum and instead to think that most of us are capable of both evil and good. sorta the schindler model. but, like i said, i have a strong personal bias for that view so i can’t really say.
It is my firm conviction that the next several years are going to provide us all a very ‘interesting’ educational opportunity.
Our complacent comfort is about to be disturbed.
Without a fundamental rethinking of our ‘economic’ notions, which really are just a ‘game’ which supposedly adult minds cobbled together, mostly for the benefit of a relative few, whether it be America’s current 1% or, historically, the American populace as a whole, more or less, the current ‘game’ fails to take fundamental realities into consideration.
And that failing, as regards ‘consequence’ and ‘energy’ consequences in particular, is NOT, in any fashion as yet, even beginning to include the ever growing reality of environmental ‘limitations’ and the possible total collapse of the capacity of the environment to sustain those conditions necessary to human survival …
America has sold its produtive capacity for a pittance to enrich a short-sighted and fearful ‘elite’ who have no intention, whatsoever. of relinguishing ‘control’.
And as Ian has stated some days ago, both Obama and Clinton are, at best ‘centrist’ Democrats and NOT progressives. That said, I am convinced that neither will rise to the FDR-like status we so deperately need, until and unless we take them firmly by the hand and insist, brooking NO backsliding, that they do so …
I would go so far as to suggest that humankind’s tenure is on the line, and it matters very much, henceforth, what the USA does.
Should we continue waging war and general mayhem, we will become, absolutely, the worlds second largest problem.
Problem number One will be hunger …
If WE allow things to reach that state of affairs, then it will pretty effectively, be too late …
A lot is riding on the maturity of the American people. A sobering, if not depressing thought.
Another version would say that Roman & Spanish Empires were ruined by constant war making.
The really weird thing about bankruptcy is that when people come in to talk to me and my colleagues about it, one of the first questions is always “What will this do to my credit?” The answer is, of course, absolutely nothing. After the discharge gets to the client, the credit card issuers are right behind with new offers. If you have a job, credit is fine within a short time.
But why do people care? When you file, you keep most, if not all, of your stuff, and if you just hang on for a while, you can save enough money to buy replacements for whatever breaks. It doesn’t matter. People want that high FICO score. The world just doesn’t make sense to my depression-raised parents.
“The Government should be run like a business”
Ah. Who might the shareholder be?
And if a Government is not there to protect its citizens from the depredations of its businesses, then who is?
Interesting. I’ve generalized from them, and perhaps too far, but then sociologists (and such training as I have is mostly in sociology) tend to think that people are very plastic — not just in submission to authority, but in the way they take on socially approved roles.
Aah, mods! I meant no harm…! ;-)
Your depression raised parents probably remember the events that gave rise to the Glass-Steagall Act. This generation will not even remember the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act that did away with most of those protections. More’s the pity.
Thanks Ian won’t be here much longer the current plan is to be back home in Irak sometime towards the end of next week. I’m only still here because it takes a bit longer to recover from doctors messing with your innards once you turn middle-aged and grumpy.
At present I’m working with Saba Ali, Fatima Jameel, and Omar on tonight’s updates. The strike was on a building used as a pilgrims rest stop very close to the hospital. (Contrary to what spokesliar central) Also contrary to what they say they didn’t just blow out all the windows. Walls inside the hospital have collapsed. A missile hit at least one of the genreators so everything shorted out. One of our team members works at that hospital and says that the ambulance drivers’ building is destroyed.
There’s a lot of fighting going on as I type this.
I think that even before Caesar slavery had almost completely destroyed Rome and Italy. By the time of Caesar all of Italy could raise about 5 legions, iirc, in the time of Scipio, you could raise 20 withing a couple days ride from Rome. The peasantry was pretty much all gone. That said, of course, Caesar’s conquests definitely did in what little Republican spirit was left.
Too much wealth too fast almost always destroys nations, just as it usually destroys individuals.
So was the British Empire, it was ruined by WW I & WW II.
no training in sociology here… but i have to agree. for example iirc, in milgram’s experiments when there was another person (not matter how lowly) who refused the authority figure’s instructions – that changed the entire dynamic and most people would then refuse to comply.
positive role models.
Mark, Erdla told me about it at M&C today, and, I posted on it today!
Why does this thing no longer have preview? We’ve a lot of coverage already both in Arabic and English. To take a look at how fast they got back into business you can go here:
Scenes From An Iraki Childhood Sadr City Hospital After The American Missile Strike May 3rd 2008
I believe that precisely because so many people unquestioningly accept authority in their lives is why our country has quietly become a fascist state. And why we don’t question that our press has become a propaganda machine.
(And why those of us who stand up are marginalized and seem like we’re paranoid kooks.)
The way I usually frame it is as a matter of Noblesse Oblige. “To those whom much is given, much is expected”. But I’m not sure how to say that in word.
There’s not a lot of difference between how large businesses and how governments are run. Shareholders don’t have a lot more power than voters. It’s called the “agency problem.” Both are run by agents of the beneficiaries, i.e., bureaucrats, whose goals do not necessarily coincide with those of the beneficiaries. Both can be run well or poorly, depending on the people in charge. There is a somewhat greter discipline of the marketplace over corporations, i.e., bad behavior tends to get punished a little sooner, but in practice that difference is exaggerated.
I’m so glad you are here to report this…we were just listening to the MSMliars and wondered what the real story was…
Stay safe.
Off topic update:
Obama appears to have won the Guam caucus.
Obama’s horse he wanted to win at the Kentucky Derby did indeed win.
The horse Hillary wanted to win at the Kentucky Derby was euthanized shortly after it went over the finish line in 2nd place.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/polit…..horse.html
How are you doing? LOL
That too and really bad leadership and misplaced priorities.
Not to mention the fundamental moral (pun intended) of the story: SPEAK UP!
Ah Ian! You present one of Mr Heinlein’s favorite acronyms (spelled out):
And he was correct.
thank you mark.
How do Laura?
Completely agree with all of your comments.
Not part of the job description but thanks anyway :-)
F*ckers used five missiles on the ’shack’, I made a plea to make contributions to the Red Crescent…
Hey there, friend.
Seconded! Thanks, mark!
What I’m curious about is how the wall building is going. The Sadrists need to make sure they don’t go up. Once they do it’ll be Fallujah time – all women and children told to get out, all fightin age males left in, then destroy Sadr City to save it. I’m not on the ground, and doubtless missing much, but I think Sadr would be wise to rise to full fighting force if he needs to stop those walls.
I saw. I left a note on the McClatchy article about the missles and their size. When last I looked, it was yet to be posted. Don’t know why…
(I drop by your site daily, CT!)
Great letter. Simple, straightforward, and true. Hard to beat that. (Although I’d still vote for the dem so they could have the increasing majority.)
Yes, I use it often. One of my favourites as well. Someone’s always paying, if you don’t know who it is, it’s probably you.
I want to know exactly “when” the plans for the “Embassy” in Baghdad were drawn up originally and who and how it was ordered.
But thaat’s HISTORY, how could it apply to us?
Well, we have both our Augustus (Bush) and Livia (Cheney).
I wish that were funny …
Well, I just listened to am 84-tape course on great thinkers of the Western tradition. Somewhere in there, someone said that the mission of empires & nations was warmaking. As a short version, it’s hard to argue against. And a sobering wake-up call for anyone who thinks nations should be more benign.
daniel ellsberg (who glenn called “one of the greatest American political heroes of the last three decades” in the previous thread), tells the story (in his book, Secrets) about seeing anti-war protesters willing to go to prison in order to resist the warmaking.
and then it occurred to him to consider – what if he was willing to go to prison? what action could he take?
he had never considered the possibility before having it modeled for him – by a DFH.
Ouch. You’re asking a very important question, you know, the kind of question that is swept under the rug and one that will land you in prison to be tortured endlessly. How dare you!!!! ;-)
Actually, it’s called sovereign default. Economics has terms that roll off the tongue in interesting ways. Autarky is another one. (An autarky is a nation which is self-sufficient and does not trade with the rest of the world.)
Ian – I’ve been thinking about the no-taxes-for-me! problem. A large cause is the $250,000 households who think they are middle-class but are actually in the top 4%. People who live the same lifestyle their parents did tend to see themselves as being of the same social class their parents were. But they aren’t. Living in a leafy inner suburb is wealthy now. The neighborhood where I live now was high-end blue collar, long term government employees and union reps. Now it is financial people, doctors and programmers. The union reps house was bought as a tear-down and two $860,000 houses were built on the lot. They sold before they were finished. (Note: we are within the public transportation ring, so house values have held.)
I think a lot of people in this situation don’t want to give up the fantasy that they are middle-class, because they know that if they’re wealthy, it means we are screwed.
I know this is an economic thread but this is on topic even though it has very little to do with economics;
get ready for a dictatorship
that’s a very nice blog post I just linked to, it has oodles and oodles of links with excellent documentation
we also know about this president’s “executive order” which declares himself ruler of the world if their is a catastrophe and he is the decider of what or is not a catastrophe, this can happen anywhere in the world by the way, not just on our soil
we also know about “the shock doctrine”, where an event that is catastrophic will convince the people to go along with just about anything
and “shock” can come from an attack, a natural disaster but it can also come economically
for instance, FDR used the crash to promote progressive programs, he used “the shock doctrine” to serve the middle class, those in power now use it to serve the upper class
anyone think that the gas explosion of price might be engineered shock doctrine?
anyone?
read the link I posted, then decide for yourself if this administration who did not win an election, which took office in a silent bloodless coup, a group of sick maniacs in a fraternity of bigots and misogynists, members of the pnac, have amassed all this power to hand it off willingly to a women, a black man or both
I want to know how long it’s going to take them to find the audio bugs in the walls that Ahmedinejad had installed.
The wall building is going in fits and starts but still going on. I don’t think it will be like Fallujah for a start its a lot bigger and much more like a warren. The other thing is that there are a hell of a lot of Mahdi Army resistance fighters in other parts of the country. It won’t take much for them to decide to rise whether al-Sadr tells them not to or not.
At which point a lot of that death squad in uniform known as the US Armed forces are going to have interesting, lonely, and very short lives.
SCREAM! I hadn’t heard of this request. I suppose Cheney would like to pick his own
spiessecret service people as well. It might be find of fun to give him another kind of secret service, though…one that would report his every move to the FBI/CIA so he could be easily rounded up for the trials…My guess, Ian, is that, of the ‘players’, Sadr is the wisest …
Very interesting. I think it’s important to remember not to underestimate how far out the ripples we create can go.
Exactly. You point out some of the reasons why I call that line of BS a crock of sh***.
Though I’d argue that all of the governed are stakeholders at least.
FunnyDiva
Grace
Apropos that, here’s an article noting that prosecutors are seeking as long as possible jail terms for protesters, in an effort to dissuade folks from protesting
The woman and chillins are crying for dinner. God’s speed to markfromireland, and peace to all.
“Where do we get our energy from? Not stars or galaxies, but from dead plants, oil and coal.” While some physicists like Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study estimates that we are 200 years away from Type 1, Dr Kaku estimates that we may attain that status in as little as 100 years. “We can already see the beginning of a Type 1 civilization.” The European Union, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) – these are the seeds of a Type 1 economy. “The Internet is the beginning of the Type 1 telephone system. English or a subset of it will be the Type 1 language. We already see the beginnings of a planetary culture – Hollywood, rock, rap, TV. We will also have local cultures co-existing with the global culture. That’s the way it already is with most elites. You can go to any country in the world and you will find the elite have a planetary (global) culture, but with a strong local root existing. In the future, everyone will have it.”
The question then arises about what will be the biggest societal change when we move from Type 0 to Type 1. There are two things to consider, says Dr Kaku. “It’s a race against time. On the one hand, we have the forces of destruction. We have some people who don’t like this transition, who instinctively know that this is bad for them. And these are the terrorists. They know that a Type 1 civilization is modern, tolerant, multi-cultural, multi-religious; they can’t articulate this but that’s what is happening.”
Then we have the forces of chaos in the environmental arena like global warming and pollution. On the opposite side there are the competing forces of integration, tolerance and understanding. It is still not clear which is going to dominate over the other.
“And that may be why they are not out there. I would suspect that many civilizations reach near-Type 1 status but it’s the most dangerous of transitions. We have all the savagery of our past, the passions of the swamp – the fundamentalism, the sectarianism, racism – all this garbage from the past may prevent us from making the jump to Type 1.”
http://www.apexstuff.com/bt/200702/cover.asp
thank you for the link.
I think my family might possibly have qualified as ‘middle class’, but the folks next door always had more money than my father. (They were union, he was an engineer who never made as much as $30,000 in a year, even when approaching retirement.) Today I’m closer to ‘working poor’, but with an income that should be middle class.
I’d like to see higher taxes on 7-figure (and larger) incomes; say, 50 percent on 1 to 5 million a year, and 100 percent above that.
Oh, God, mfi. There are no words. It’s utterly barbaric, and I’m ashamed of my government.
BTW, was that AP photographer ever actually released by the US? Bilal Hussein, iirc?
FunnyDiva
Just for my own curiousity, who is behind the blog you are linking to and what is their individual credibility?
Not that I question what you are offering but I guess I want to know what style of tin foil is appropriate?
Because, really, 250K doesn’t go as far as one might think. (No, I’ve never earned that much). If you want the full lifestyle of a nice house, white picket fence, a car and a suv/van, only one of the two of you working, two kids and a couple holidays a year, well, you use up a lot of it if you want to live anywhere relatively central. Although, I think by 250K the fantasies are setting in, but the argument really does stand for around 80K to 120K or so, especially if that’s a combined income.
The converse of that is that I don’t think many such people really get how hard it is to live on minimum wage, or even say, 30K a year and have anything even remotely close to the “American” lifestyle so many of us think we should have.
Short answer to that is yes on April 16th.
Cool judge, though. That gives me hope that it’s not possible to destroy America in 7 years…
Bankrupt it, yes. Destroy it totally, no.
Darth ought to be able to pay for his own security. He has enough money, and he isn’t going to live long enough to spend all of it, not with his health problems.
I know why he wants it, though: he knows the peasants will storm the castle; professional armed guards are the only protection he’ll have, because everyone else will be with the peasants.
Yes, there is reason to hope. There are good people. But saving our country is going to be one hell of a long and drawn out fight.
Al-Sadr as we at Gorilla’s Guides keep on pointing out has excellent relations with large sections of the so-called “Sunni” resistance.
Why is it, do you suppose, that ‘money’ earning money is taxed at a lower rate than people earning money?
‘So that it will be invested’ is absolute rubbish.
Nothing short of a 100% re-’vision’ of the ‘game’ will suffice.
But your ideas, with my question thrown in, might at least get the old grey matter working ….
You know the ground better than I do. When I see areas of guerilla support being isolated like that, however, I start to get worried.
there might not be a free lunch but three are possibilities that will be just as good or better
we can claim the highground and turn our economy around and it will cost us nothing
nothing
this will look like a “free lunch” but it won’t be since we will use middle class assets that have been stolen from that middle class, we will reclaim those assets to drive the economy
since the assets were stolen it will appear to those who get them back to be a free lunch
it will of course appear to those that we reclaim the assets from to come from their bank books but we will give that no play
I can demonstrate what I mean by reposting something I wrote yesterday, a very important strategy democrats need to adopt;
first things first;
reagan did NOT lower taxes and democrats need to HAMMER that point, reagan raised taxes MORE then any peacetime president in history before him, not only by dollar figures but by gnp
and in raising taxes he then went on to give middle class assets to the wealthiest people on the planet
so these wealthy people get to THINK there was a decrease in taxes but even if we consider that tax give away, the net and the gross of taxes went UP UNDER REAGAN
however since the middle class cannot shoulder the burden of the giveaways to the wealthiest people on the planet, those funds must come from somewhere
they come from our infrastructure, we are no longer inspecting our infrastructure to the level they need, we are no longer prosecuting those that violate safety standards
this is what MUST be pointed out by the democrats, that WE will be the party that LOWERS taxes
we will say the following;
“the democrats plan to remove the tax increases of the reagan adminsitration, contrary to republican propaganda reagan raised taxes he did NOT lower them
we will lower taxes to those levels, the revenue to fund this lowering of taxes will come from those assets that were deliberately taken from the middle class and our infrastructure, we will re claim these assets which belong to our infrastucture and our middle class
this will indeed restart the American economy, the engine of the American economy is NOT the upper class it is the middle class and the tax strategy that turned this economy into the beacon of progress is all the wold once admired is the strategy that targets the middle class, NOT the strategy that targets those who have more wealth then they can possibly spend
the DEMOCRATS will lower taxes back to the levels before reagan raised them”
get me a democrat to say that and watch the republicans heads explode
Far too utopian for my tastes.
I have no idea who that was, I just read it from another link and thought the links it posts for sources are good ones
dakene01 it is always in our best interest to challenge everyone for accuracy so please feel free to do it with whatever I post whenever you like
I agree with your point, the author is a nobody as far as I can tell
however I agree with his opinion
Here is a bright spot of news for war criminal watchers. The new president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, is considering signing treaties of extradition. I hope he has many and excellent guards. Where or where can Cheney and Bush go to hide, if he does?
I don’t understand money, and I don’t know what Reagan did or didn’t do in all honesty…but if what you are saying is true…Snap!
Kevin Phillips disagrees, he says there is so a free lunch, but not for you and me.
mark, thanks for the link and your presence here.
I always appreciate it when you can spend even a short while with us.
LOL, no, Kevin Phillips knows there is no free lunch. The people who are eating lunch are the people who took that lunch from you and me.
Double snap. Karma’s a biatch….
reagan began by changing the tax code for the wealthy
the deficit soared and unlike bush, reagan realized that wouldn’t fly and they had to find to regain that lost revenue
they raised taxes but they did not do it by rescinding the taxes on the wealthy, they did it by raising the taxes on the middle class
my point is we will reclaim the assets taken by the reagan cuts by re instituting the tax policies that were in place before reagan shifted the burden to bear heavier weight to the middle class
Ian wrote, “…consumer credit is practically required. “
This has actually been true for some time.
When I was starting my first full-time job more than 30 years ago, for the first time I was in a position to buy a car. I had my financing all figured out and was ready to pay most of the price quickly in cash, and the remainder a short time later. But the dealer would have none of it. I had no credit card history, So I had to get a friend of my Father’s to co-sign a short-term loan. Basically, the issue was that by paying all of my bills on time (which I provided as evidence of credit-worthiness), the dealer didn’t want to approve the loan because I hadn’t proved that I could go into debt.
Bob in HI
The mills of God….
And Rove, and Miers, and Addington, and Wolfowitz…and on and on. 10,000 acres? That’s a complex.
The mills of God….
(I meant. Didn’t catch that I failed to quote. Sorry for odd lack of context. And repetition.)
Yes. A guilt complex.
It was while Boesky was ‘at’ the B School that I first heard the expression bandied about, ‘Who shall we have for lunch’.
It struck me as very ’sick’ indeed.
But it did provide food for thought.
oh, guess what?
we are going to
surgeescalate into afghanistan nowfrome whence these assets come?
whoe the hell knows
Guess they are going to open some prisons.
Aargh, Oceanic Time-Warner went down state-wide…! Mahalo, Laura for your kind words! And, Mark, we’re treating Sadr City to the same shit as the Israelis are dissing on the Palestinians with the same woeful results… 8-(
This was so simple, that it was also beautiful. I gotta copy this and send it to all my lists! I wonder who will GET IT, and who will fight the message.
oh! and
Thank you once again, Ian.
It’ll be difficult or “interesting” in the Chinese sense of the word. I’m not too sure the Americans can bring this off. I agree with you – but as I say I’m not too sure they can bring it off. The Sadrist movement is a lot bigger than al-Sadr and if sufficiently provoked will rise anyway. 4 US marines were killed today you can expect that to go up by a large order of magnitude. You can also expect Kirkuk and Mosul to explode. JAM fighters have been streaming north to both places for a long time – as in for years. And are well entrenched.
Apropos Afghanistan, check out Barnett Rubin at Informed Comment, Global Affairs blog. He was absolutely boffo on the News Hour Wednesday (4/30). Decked David Ignatius, who deserved it.
I want an Escalade
;~P
ZOMG! Da playground bullies all done growed up and they’re STILL shaking us down for our lunch money!
I wish that was actually funny.
As for Cheney and his permanent SS detail…Suck. It. Up. Bastard.
We know he’s been the Shadow Pres and all, but this is ridiculous. Treat the entire country worse than SH*T so that most of us hate your guts, then demand that _we_ pick up the tab for protecting you from We the People who rightly hate you.
Just when I think these execrable excuses for human beings can’t be any more blatantly outrageous they manage it without even breaking a sweat.
Spit.
FunnyDiva
Especially since they’re electricuting our troops that are now there. It’s a strange thing. Send them over without armor, give them toxic water to shower with, and if that doesn’t work shock them to death.
And don’t forget to pay the contractors involved very handsomely.
I couldn’t believe that the Turks launched another air attack on the PKK too, 155 more dead “terrorists’… BTW, what was your personal feelings on Maliki’s threatening speech to Parliament the other day, saying; You’re either with me, or you’re against me…? Any discernible backlash yet?
here you go ls, from forbes magazine;
and here is the new york times
Per Azzaman, it seems like Mosul is heating up to be the very next battle ground.
I think he has no way out he can only try to plunge ahead on the path he’s chosen.
As to the PKK situation my sympathy for the KRG government is severely limited, ethnic cleansing has that effect on me, the KRG government encourages the PKK at every opportunity – well OK but if you want to play rough you can expect to get hurt.
Glad to see you stepped in to takeover from John at M&C btw.
The surge must be working. /snark
true enough
they get to use our assets, they get to shirk their expenses by exporting our jobs to counttries where they can hire slaves and children, where they can dump their crap in my kids air without cleaning it up
and then they import that product here at prices that put honest industry out of business, industry that pay their bills, clean up the crap they could have dumped in our envirnment and pay wages enough for a family to survive in health, those businesses are put out to dry so these people can have their lunch and retire with parachutes worth billions
Mahalo! Any, and all, insights from you are always welcome there…! 8-)
i think we have to find other things besides wealth to admire about people – sometimes i wonder if, after a certain point (don’t know what that is), most of the desire for wealth is really the displaced (and fucked up) desire for admiration and respect?
Fixed it. (I have foresworn snark).
I think the excessively rich who wish to be even richer are simply frightened little nothings, who ‘believe’ that wealth brings ’security’ and also, of course, so they hope … those ‘things’ you mention.
And, to top it all, they never discover themselves.
The real question is, why do the rest of us put up with it?
We’ve got a feed for the Mosul “surge” – at present it’s all in Arabic but checking out the Mosul feed will get you stuff in English. We’ve got feeds for pretty much everything which can be handy.
That would be so cool if MFI stopped in at your joint once in a while!
Hey, Laura, did you meet up with Mary today and got tell em?
what I want to do is re aquire the assets that protect our children, our future, our infrastructure, our envirnment.
those assets must come from those who should have never acquired them in the first place
we must rebuild our infrastructure and the middle class cannot bear the burden of cost, if they do then when the infrastructure is rebuilt the wealthy will steal those assets yet again
it’s not a question of admiring wealth it’s a question of insuring our future by reclaiming the assets that were taken from us
Thanks but it’s unlikely – I’ll be back in Irak shortly, and Siun can tell you once there I don’t even respond to emails from the US. I’m middleaged grumpy, and paranoid, the paranoia is a large component of how I managed to get to be middleaged (and grumpy) :-)
I wasn’t able to go (it was Thursday, May Day). Haven’t heard from Mary how it was, but from the news it seems like it was a hell of an event. UP the DOCK WORKERS!
Here’s a graph of time series on consumer debt outstanding (black line) and annualized wage&salary accruals (red line). The difference between the two lines takes off in the early or mid 1980s, which corresponds to the increasing ratio that eCAHNomics mentioned; then look at that debt curve threaten the vertical starting in the late 1990s or so.
your head is about to explode
I have not been this angry since highschool
how the HELL are they getting away with this crap?
It would be a step in the right direction to default on our obligations or to declare the equivalent of Chapter 11 and rewrite the national debt. It would be a painless way to solve our problems except bondholders are (with the exception of those loyal Americans who buy Series E or its equivalent) are rich. I don’t think our representatives will do anything to damage the rich.
The US is in the enviable position of owing dollars. It can avoid default by printing more. Hate to think where that leaves us. China has a tiger by the tail (us) and we have a tiger by the tail (China) Don’t see either of us letting go any time soon.
He has, and, some others from GG… Sad to see him go back to the sand box and subject himself to the horrors again, but, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…! 8-)
God’s truth. Don’t prove you can pay for things, prove that you can go into debt for them. “No Credit History”, possibly the most farcical reason for denying credit there is! You’ve never asked for credit, never required it, so now, you may not have it!
GG is on my bookmarks bar. I check you folks at least once an hour while I’m at my desk. (Yes, I know about RSS but I feel about it the way I feel about sleeping on planes. What keeps it going if I’m not paying attention?) I think it’s my way of sending you all care and protection. Heal well and stay safe and grumpy, Mark. And please let the Guides know that someone is sending positive ki their way with every breath drawn.
but the kind of wealth you describe is, in large measure, collective wealth (environment, infrastructure)
in that case, mfi, stay paranoid.
Thanks, Ian. Your posts always provoke thought.
Irak is after all my home and has been for a long time now. I love the place and at this point most of my friends are there. It’s nearly 34 years since I first met Maryam for example. More than 20 since I met Laith and his family. And the food’s good – when there is food.
Anyone that thinks that anyone who runs for President ISN’T an elitist is likely nor a very good judge of the self-selection process involved.You have to be an elitist to think that your ideas are superior to the others running and that you can run the Executive Branch. It’s embedded in a republican (small “r”) Constitutional system (and I’m speaking here not of the Party) The fact is, that may be true. Some people ARE better skilled and have better ideas than others.
Where I have problems is with the sorts of elites that are created…not be merit or skills…but by birth, marriage, or class advantage…or who are willing to use skills of persuasion or coercion to the advantage of a small number to the detriment of the majority. In one case we have an elitism of qualification to power (a meritocracy), in the other we have an elitism of who gets to benefit from power.
May I second this Laura?
Ian!
That’s a sweet, sweet graph. I can almost guarantee I’ll eventually write a post that uses it. Very nice. Thank you.
johnSwifty corrected me, i did not mean to say that i do not value the merits of the best qualified. i meant more along the lines of unearned and unmerited self-importance…. i’ll try to come up with a phrase or word that better suits what i was trying to convey.
It’s called “entitlement complex” another example of it in an imperial context is when the legions overthrew the Marian reforms and refused to carry their packs.
yet that collective wealth was given to the robber barons, the fascists, the federalists, the libertarians the neo cons
we must reclaim those assets and rebuild
I was driving a parkway a few weeks ago and believe it or not the belgium bolders that border an overpass just fell down!
that’s right, they just fell down right on the parkway…nobody was hurt but this is where we are, nothing is maintained, the assets to do so are gone
we need to get those back
Damn! Well said!
I constantly have this argument with people who should know better about inheritance taxes. The argue that the money has been earned once, why should it be taxed again. I have to point out that all other types of money is taxed after being earned. You earn your salary, it is taxed. You buy gasoline or goods, it is taxed, Then the shopowner is also taxed, and the employees earning their wages from that are taxed. Then when they spend it they are taxed again.
Taxes occur when goods and services are exchanged for money. So when someone is NOT taxed for an exchange in which they did no labor why should that NOT be taxed. If anything the productyive and beneficial activity is the labor or production of goods, which should be less taxed than receiving a massive benefit for no labor.
Snobbery?
I don’t suspect any meaningful insight is possible for this empire, yet, mark.
After it gets its come-uppance, courtesy of the Iraki peoples, it might just begin to get the idea that karma bites HARD.
No, mark Irak has to suffer because we’re very, very slow learners. and ususally ‘undedfstand’ only when it is too late to make any ammends …
As I’ve said before, we owe Irak a thousand years of contrition and reparation …
But we will fail miserably because our hubris and arrogance are all we have … right now …
May you all have mercy upon us? Do we deserve it?
I do like how you think.
Your comments are always pithy, to the point and extremely ‘digestible’.
Many thanks and much appreciation.
worse.
it’s all about him. because he’s too important to even realize we exist? except as something to manipulate to his will without concern or respect for our own will?
Well said.
And I’ll add a couple other things.
Right around the time of “Morning in America”, the second household income became a necessity vs luxury.
Then, in the 90’s, with no one else left in the household to go to work, home equity became the way to keep the consumer spending.
Now, with housing prices dropping like a stone, that’s no longer feasible and those that chose to use their home equity like a piggy bank are now in a world of hurt.
Somerset Maugham once wrote, “Like all men of weak character, he placed exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.” That is a good description of GW Bush. But it also can be applied more generally to the American national psyche. When we see that John McCain has an even chance of winning the Fall election, we must realize that for at least half the electorate, staying the course actually is the preferred option.
And, I’m afraid I do not share any sanguinity about some kind of cathartic experience on the near horizon. America today is more like the brain-addled drug abuser in need of intervention. But, there’s no one except God himself to intervene in the coming disaster.
Thanks.
mp
Thank you Ian. Your posts are always so “understandable” and thought-provoking … I always send them to my kids. When I read posts like this it saddens me that they’re not in USA Today or other media that are widely read by “ordinary people”. You have a knack for not being condescending or patronizing … and I always learn something (and don’t feel stupid for not already knowing it!)
Glad to help!
You know, at that St. Louis Fed site you can make the usual kind of free account for yourself and just graph away. The only problems are that we can’t yet manipulate the data first, just show time series panels of the standard data, and that it can be difficult to find exactly the right series, even if it’s on site. For that one, I’ll probably download and do the ratios myself, but I just wanted to get it to people’s attention asap.
There are some free possibilities for displaying one’s own graphics online, too. Some people do it at the photo place whose name has fallen into one of my brain’s holes. I just found out about one called drop.in that I may try.
Do those last two sentences ever call to mind James R. Lowell’s “The Present Crisis”, especially his closing of the first verse.
(Lowell wrote the poem in opposition to the Mexican War. The UCC, among other places I’m sure, sing the poem often as a hymn, with some additional words that’ll really put the moxie in ya’.)
The Federal Reserve Banking System must cease to exist.
When NYC banks know that their private banker will bail them out, no matter how egregious their behavior, ruin comes begging.
Which in earlier times would have led to as many decimations as necessary to fix the problem. But then, in earlier times it would never have been an issue.
They were getting a bit sloppy even by the late Republic. Pompey was pretty lax in discipline, though Caesar and Lucullus weren’t.