$2 trillion — Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
$1 trilliion — Republicans’ 2003 Medicare Part D, which was unfunded
$5 trillion — effects of 2008 global financial crisis incl. lower tax revenue and
automatic stabilizers. GFC happened on Republican watch
$1 trillion — Obama admin. efforts to fight global financial crisis
$9 trillion — Total

Those are the facts. Everything else is just prejudice and hysteria.

Regards  —  Cliff

Well, the federal government can print more money (isn’t that effectively what they did with the $789B Stimulus bill?). But, without a corresponding increase in value of some kind, more money merely diminishes the value of each dollar. So what things of value have the Stimulus spending created? I don’t think highway maintenance counts, and that is where a lot of the spending has gone. Propping up State and local governments do not create value either. However, improved education does, and technology advances for alternative energy should. I don’t know what percentage of the Stimulus spending went to create things of value, and what percentage merely helped fill the money void. But it is obvious we need to do more, as the economy is on a slippery slope to second class nation status.

An article in today’s Globe cites the average hours per week of independent study (homework) by college students in the US has fallen from 24 hrs in 1961 to 14 hrs today. That is not a good sign for future “value” creation.

Belfast officials noted that 27.8% of their adult population is “economically inactive” at the recent Innovative Cities Conference. Do we have more than a quarter of our adults not contributing to economic growth? If so, has the paternalism of the Democratic party contributed to that?

The Great Depression was preceded by a maldistribution of wealth, where too much of the money was in too few hands to sustain the economy. Those who had it couldn’t spend it fast enough to support the economy, and those that needed it and would spend it didn’t have enough of it. Does that condition exist today? If so, is it the philosophy of the Republican party to reward the rich with tax breaks and loopholes with the promise of “trickle down” to justify it?

What should the government do to help solve this economic death spiral? Certainly it should never have entered into the war in Iraq on false premises, and wasting $1T+ (plus untold human costs) with virtually no value obtained (maybe even negative value). Although that may be considered a “mistake” in foreign policy, it is a “catastrophe” in terms of our economy. The Stimulus bill was an attempt to bridge the gap to a better economy, but unless we do something to change the basic structure of the economy – it’s a bridge to nowhere.

But the government can’t do everything (and some say it can do nothing). It can change tax policy, however. It should start with the “loophole” used by fund managers that allow them to declare their 20% cut of investment gains (with other people’s money at risk) as a capital gain on their personal income tax. But it must go far beyond that to reward work, instead of penalizing it, and eliminate the many loopholes in tax code enacted to satisfy special interest lobbyists. The tax code should be so simple that it is isolated from the influences of politics – and that is from both parties.

And the people should do something, like valueing education and hard work. That is the more difficult task, but it is what the country was built on in the first place.

No, Andrew, the majority of the current deficit over the next decade comes from money being spent over the next decade by the current administration and the current (D-controlled) Congress. Dubya isn’t spending it. He left office some time ago. Or didn’t you read the papers?

The graph you cite contains no explanation for the $1.5 extra trillion in spending. Sure, it lists some of the Iraq/Afghan campaigns/wars spending, and the recovery/bailout measures currently being promoted by the current administration and (D-controlled) Congress, but nothing to explain why THESE are the items blamed for the deficit, and not, for example, the portion of the Coast Guard budget being spent within the state of West Virginia, which, I would posit, has more to do with our deficit than most other spending going on, but I digress.

What is actually needed is an examination of what is being spent in the budget overall, not a wholly made-up number represented by taxes not levied to explain why we don’t have a balanced budget. (Kennedy cut the Federal revenue stream by 8.8% back in the 60′s–I didn’t see it noted here, though, by the logic of the graph, it should have been).

Tell me, Andrew… If I don’t make my mortgage this month, is it the fault of my employer for not paying me enough?

The Telegraph opinion piece is interesting, but doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. No one is saying that we don’t have a long-term deficit problem. What is being said is that we don’t have a short-term deficit problem (leading to investor anxiety). There’s simply no evidence of that. The key right now is timing; at some point, we need to begin addressing the deficit. But doing so before the Recession ends is a mistake. I again turn to the example of World War II.

I am perfectly aware of what occurred in the Soviet Union; I’ve read first-hand accounts of both the Revolution and The Terror. (This is why I have absolutely no patience when the word “tyranny” is thrown around to describe the Democrats. Or the label of “socialists,” which in American politics seems to be “Soviet-style-Communists.”) I’ve actually never heard of Duranty, but from the context I can infer what he did. I was in no way arguing for a planned economy; I was merely throwing the USSR out there as an interesting topic of study. While planned economies do very well in crises (eastern Europe recovered faster after WWII than western Europe), having a planned economy is what doomed the Soviet Union financially.

I’ll try to figure out if WordPress has such a feature. I’ve had great success with the spell check (or rather, dictionary) add-ons for Firefox and Chrome; it makes life much simpler. I have no idea if one exists for IE.

As for the Soviet Union in the 1930s, they had not only a command economy, but they also killed off 20 or 30 million people (e.g., the Kulaks), making the USSR somewhat analogous to France and its war-dead, reporter Walter Duranty and his Pultizer notwithstanding.

I am giving up and going to bed—I am several books behind and a blog post or two behind myself.  Although I have finished Troublesome Young Men.

And, no, there has never been a comments preview on this blog.  There is on mine (and Kad’s) and I think it is great, as I have trouble picking up some of my own typos.

Regards  —  Cliff

I’m not as familiar was the UK and France as the US and USSR. However, I do know that the British government focused first on balancing the budget and got the same results Hoover did. I know even less about France, so the best I can do is the Wikipedia article, which basically says too many Frenchmen had been killed in WWI for there to be high unemployment. The truly interesting case is the Soviet Union, which basically did not experience a Depression, or recession for that matter.

Smoot-Hawley is somewhat controversial. It was a Republican attempt at protectionism that is often seen as setting off a chain reaction of protectionist policies around the world that drove up prices. It’s understandable why it was passed; it was a standard policy in previous recessions. Professor Ferguson argued in the class I took with him that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in fact had only a minor impact on the severity of the Depression. Of course, as we walked out of class, one of my friends remarked that “the problem with Professor Ferguson is that he thinks he knows more about economics than economists.” So I’ll leave it at it had some negative effect that most economists say was of a significant magnitude because of the global increase in tariffs that followed.

You’re right; the Democrats shouldn’t get a free pass. The initial blog post, as I wrote in it, was directed at conservative Democrats. Though I’d also criticize the leadership for not passing a large enough stimulus package in the first place. The great fear right now is that that package has run out and, without a new one, we’ll experience a double dip recession.

The post from the CBO blog is a nice summation of the situation: we can balance the budget now or deal with unemployment. However, I again refer to what’s happened to Ireland, which began the crisis by balancing the budget; it still has very high unemployment and has been hemorrhaging investors. And as I quoted above, Mr. Elmendorf has said that there is “no contradiction” between stimulus spending now and long-term deficit reduction. The fear is that, if we allow the Recession to grow worse again, the long-term deficit outlook will only get worse because of decreased tax revenue. This would force drastic cuts in spending, which would reduce the amount of money being spent by individuals who receive money from the government (whether as salary, unemployment benefits, SS, etc). This would create a self-reinforcing downward spiral.

That’s not what I was saying at all. (On a side note, I’d like to point out that government salaries are the only ones that have kept pace with inflation and the cost of living; private sector wages have stagnated for 30 years or so). But to address your point, stimulus spending means putting money into the economy to generate business, which both generates tax revenue and creates private sector jobs. I’m certainly not arguing that the government hire everyone, though that’s how we got out of the Great Depression. (You can think of WWII as the greatest public works project in American history). You’re right to ask about inflation; as far as I know, the economists have no idea when it will start to be a problem. However, as of right now, there are absolutely no indications that it is becoming a problem. I’d suggest watching the Fed’s handling of interest rates as a metric for this; Bernanke isn’t exactly some radical Keynesian. Every time the Fed declines to raise interest rates, we know that inflation isn’t becoming a problem. I’m afraid I don’t read Mr. Nutter’s blog (there’s only so much time in the day). Would you mind giving me the link to where he makes that claim? Or better yet, the data he uses to back it up?

I honestly don’t know enough about the $19 billion in taxes in question to deal with whether they were the right decision or not. My criticism of Brown is that he is Not looking for offsets. Rather, he has said that he opposes the tax and that the Senate needs to find offsets and then left it to the Democrats to figure out where to find the money. This is what my problem with the Republican Party is. I can live with policy disagreements and I know the Democrats have not always and will not always be right. But how am I supposed to argue against Brown’s position? He hasn’t said what he would cut. It’s the same as the quote I mentioned in the previous comment from April. And it’s been the standard mentality in both the Reagan and Bush administrations. They campaign on cutting wasteful government spending and then never do it. I wish they would take a concrete position; what do they stand for other than rhetoric?

I do agree that Brown is, relative to his Republic colleagues, a “free agent.” However, the issue I care most about is climate change. And Senator Brown has come out against any attempt to reduce carbon emissions. Prior to that, I would have considered supporting him; having Republicans in the Senate who want to do something about climate change would be a major step forward and this issue is much more important than which party holds the majority. I’m very disappointed in him for that position.

I realize I wasn’t clear about my argument about science. My point was more that the scientific way of thinking, of relying of evidence regardless of whether it agrees with your hypothesis or not, is the best way for government to make decisions. I welcome, even plead with the Republicans, to begin providing evidence instead of rhetoric. I wish they would shove data in my face and shut me up. But it hasn’t happened.

However, I do take issue with your point to some extent. Eugenics was a disgrace as a scientific movement. Darwin condemned it for good reason; common sense told him it was wrong, even though he never lived to see the genetics that would prove the eugenics were at best naïve and at worst pathetic excuses for scientists. Ethics aside, the eugenicists allowed their preconceived notions get in the way of common sense; they didn’t pick up on the fact that behavioral traits are controlled by more than one gene. It takes about 3 minutes of learning population genetics to see why achieving their goals is impossible.

Now, I am not saying that scientists don’t fall into that trap anymore; it happens. But this is not Francis Galton’s time; you can’t publish in a peer review journal without data. And peer review journals are the only source of argument taken seriously (plus a few books, but those deal more with paradigm shifts than answering questions).

DDT is a mixed bag; you get rid of malaria, but you cause mass birth defects. I’m not familiar with the Vioxx controversy, but that story is fairly common. That has more to do with poor regulation and poor standards of testing than anything else; it’s not common for there to be a panic and for a drug that doesn’t actually cause negative side effects to be pulled without serious scientific data to support the decision.

We’re nowhere near knowing everything. It’s been said at many points in history, and it’s always been wrong. And it will continue to be wrong for as far forward as we can project. I’m told by my physics friends that they’ve exhausted most of what there is to know; they’re rather jealous actually. All they get to do know is crash protons together at 7 trillion electron volts. In biology (evolutionary bio, neuroscience, molecular biology, regenerative biology, medicine…basically ever field) there are still an untold number of questions to be answered. It’s a rather exciting prospect.

Have we ever had a “preview” button for comments? I know I don’t have one as an administrator on the current form of the blog. I’ll look into seeing if we can add one.

While you attack the Republicans for this current mess, and I agree they bear a great deal of responsibility, I don’t believe that the Democrats, who have been in charge for almost three years get a free pass.

The CBO Directors blog says:

“Keeping deficits and debt from growing to unsustainable levels would require raising revenues as a percentage of GDP significantly above past levels, reducing outlays sharply relative to CBO’s projections, or some combination of those approaches. Making such changes while economic activity and employment remain well below their potential levels would probably slow the economic recovery. However, the sooner that long-term changes to spending and revenues are agreed on, and the sooner they are carried out once the economic weakness ends, the smaller will be the damage to the economy from growing federal debt. Earlier action would require more sacrifices by earlier generations to benefit future generations, but it would also permit smaller or more gradual changes and would give people more time to adjust to them.”

A lot has changed since 1933, including the larger salaries of government employees.  It sounds to me as though you are saying that we can sustain the recovery by making sure all those government workers, from federal, to state, county and local are paid.  Through their spending we will generate jobs in the private sector.  Do we know that will be the case?  Do we know at what point inflation will kick in?  Do we think blogger Gerry Nutter is correct that it takes 5 people in the private sector to sustain 1 in the public sector?

I applaud Senator Scott Brown for looking for offsets for this spending.  It is what Congress (The Democratic controlled Congress) voted to do.  I would like to know more about the taxes he is trying to avoid in the banking business.  But, as someone who is willing to be flexible, his being from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and all, he has more power at this moment than a lot of people.  I am sure he is feeling his way.

Thus, Senator Scott Brown is as close to a Kad Barma free agent as we are likely to see at this time.  He should be encouraged, not condemned.  And, the work of compromise is not about the President, but about the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House.  To forget that is to risk being tripped up.

As for scientists guiding public policy decisions, that has, in the past, been a mixed affair.  I applaud science for giving us the nuclear weapon.  Others strongly disagree.  I will pass over eugenics as I have to drag that out for a book review I am doing for my own blog.  Is DDT a good thing or a bad thing?  And where do we stand on Vioxx?  A letter in The Globe today suggests it was killed too fast and people suffer for it.

What science knows changes over time.&nbnsp; Well, unless we think that we are now at the end of scientific discovery and we now know all there is to know, from a scientific point of view.

And where is the “Preview” for comments?

Regards  —  Cliff

That being said, there will be more posts about science in the future.