Showing posts with label political economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political economics. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Friday, September 26, 2014
Gotta Love The Onion
Woman Worried Student Loans Could Prevent Her From One Day Owning Entirely Different Kind Of Crippling Debt
PHILADELPHIA—Lamenting that she will spend the foreseeable future paying off her college expenses, local 23-year-old digital marketing assistant Ashley Orlinsky expressed concern Wednesday that her student loans will prevent her from ever owning an entirely different type of utterly crippling debt. “Realistically, it’ll take years or even decades to fully repay $50,000 of loans, which makes me worried that I’ll never qualify for a backbreaking mortgage on a house that I can in no way afford,” said Orlinsky, adding that with $350 in monthly student loan payments, she will likely struggle to even borrow money to purchase a new car that will destroy her credit rating and may one day be repossessed by the bank. “I have dreams of starting my own company at some point in the future, but I just don’t see how I’ll have the opportunity to be saddled for my entire adult life with a suffocating high-interest small business loan if my student debt is following me wherever I go. It’s awful.” Orlinsky was reportedly encouraged, however, after coming to the mistaken conclusion that she could just default on her student loans and have them discharged in a bankruptcy filing.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Let's Try Something Else
Retribution and punishment. That's what is seems we're all about now.
But peace-making isn't what's cool now. It isn't sexy like blowin' shit up. When you've trained an entire generation to be soldiers (a shitload of rookie cops are coming straight outa the US Military these days), and you've reduced everything to the binary - "you're either with us or you're against us" - when it's always and only either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white - what you end up with is the mindset that wearing the uniform makes you the hero, and that means everybody else is the bad guy.
So the default position is Shoot-First-And-Fuck-You-And-Your-Questions, which doesn't leave a lot of room for anybody who wants to do the real work involved in keeping the shit from hitting fan in the first place, which is what makes it way too extraordinary when real cops like Ron Johnson come along who understand what the job is supposed to be all about, with the first tenet being that a fellow American is not the fucking enemy.
Prevention is always more cost-effective than remedy. It costs us a lot less to provide food, clothing, housing and a decent education for a kid in the first 18 years of his life than it does to hunt him down, arrest him, put him on trial and to keep him in jail for the next 3 or 5 or 10 years. And the costs of grinding him up in the "Justice System" are only the direct costs; the ones we can easily see and identify. There are plenty of other costs associated with whatever his "crimes" happened to be that we usually don't even acknowledge - the Opportunity Costs of lost productivity, insurance, emergency response, recovery and rehab and on and on and on.
What's been going on in Ferguson is a really great example of all those hidden costs kinda poppin' up all at once.
And the question is: why do the people of Ferguson have to pay that price for us, instead of Wall Street and General Dynamics and Corrections Corp of America?
Mom Danielle Wolf was grocery shopping at a Kroger store in North Augusta, South Carolina when she was arrested for disorderly conduct after cursing in the presence of her two daughters, WJBF News Channel 6 reports.--and--
Ms. Richardson, 28, was arrested after an officer saw the kids playing in the park with no adult supervision, parked her patrol car, and saw the kids waving her over. What then, Bay News 9?Maybe the cops involved in those incidents could've just done a little mediating and defusing and admonishing; or maybe they could've concentrated a little more on the whole "To Serve" part of the customary motto that's supposed to be kind of a guiding principle for Law Enforcement.
But peace-making isn't what's cool now. It isn't sexy like blowin' shit up. When you've trained an entire generation to be soldiers (a shitload of rookie cops are coming straight outa the US Military these days), and you've reduced everything to the binary - "you're either with us or you're against us" - when it's always and only either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white - what you end up with is the mindset that wearing the uniform makes you the hero, and that means everybody else is the bad guy.
So the default position is Shoot-First-And-Fuck-You-And-Your-Questions, which doesn't leave a lot of room for anybody who wants to do the real work involved in keeping the shit from hitting fan in the first place, which is what makes it way too extraordinary when real cops like Ron Johnson come along who understand what the job is supposed to be all about, with the first tenet being that a fellow American is not the fucking enemy.
Prevention is always more cost-effective than remedy. It costs us a lot less to provide food, clothing, housing and a decent education for a kid in the first 18 years of his life than it does to hunt him down, arrest him, put him on trial and to keep him in jail for the next 3 or 5 or 10 years. And the costs of grinding him up in the "Justice System" are only the direct costs; the ones we can easily see and identify. There are plenty of other costs associated with whatever his "crimes" happened to be that we usually don't even acknowledge - the Opportunity Costs of lost productivity, insurance, emergency response, recovery and rehab and on and on and on.
What's been going on in Ferguson is a really great example of all those hidden costs kinda poppin' up all at once.
And the question is: why do the people of Ferguson have to pay that price for us, instead of Wall Street and General Dynamics and Corrections Corp of America?
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
It Occurs To Me
What is it with "conservatives" that gets them so hung up on The Supply Side of every-damned-thing?
Wanna talk Economics?
They can't think of anything but cutting taxes for themselves, and a harsh dose of Austerity for everybody else. (Supply Side Economics, btw is self-defeating because it leads to a slow deflationary death spiral - which, in case ya hadn't noticed, is pretty much what we're in right now)
Global Labor Arbitrage
Supply Side Economics
How 'bout that War on Drugs?
We concentrate almost solely on interdiction and putting millions of users in prison (which may look like working the demand side, but actually only serves the purpose of the suppliers by conveniently gathering all the customers in one place) - again, just working the supply side.
Yeah OK, we try to get "our partners" in places like Afghanistan and Colombia to help us, but c'mon, they don't actually do anything helpful that I can see. And why is that? Because there's a huge demand for their #1 export, and they're not stupid enough to shut down the drug trade on their end because that's what keeps them all in power. Plus, you've been preaching Supply Side at 'em for 30 years - do ya really think the message they've gotten is that they should cut back on THE SUPPLY!?!. So what does it get us? Prisons that are so crowded they've become little feudal states that generally operate outside the control of anything "government" can do, for one thing. And don't get me started on the total FUBAR of the Privatized Prison Industry, and the connections to DoD and Defense Contractors and DEA and BATF and Capitol Hill and Wall Street and and and.
Well what about Abortion then?
"Conservatives" seem to think we don't need to do anything but shut down all the clinics and harass women at every turn in an attempt to shut 'em up - which means they're all over the supply side again, while fervently struggling against everything that's been proven effective in preventing the need (ie: demand) for abortion. Family planning and birth control. Equal pay for women. Early and honest Sex Ed. Free condoms. Public education. Lots of public information. Public women's healthcare centers. etc.
And wait just a damned minute there - in a system of unfettered free market capitalism, isn't it supposed to be a good thing to have lots and lots of clinics doing all manner of abortions on demand? As long as they turn a profit, isn't that what y'all keep telling us is what god intended?
So guess what, kids - there are actually two sides to these things, and if you just stop for a minute, you might see that working the Demand side is a lot more effective in practically every instance. At the very least, ya gotta work the Demand side as well as the Supply side.
Every time you turn around, it's like "conservatives" are boosting the fuck outa the Supply Side approach (which doesn't work, tho' they keep insisting it must), while slashing and bashing away at Demand Side solutions (which they insist can't work, when it's actually and obviously what does work).
Why do ya suppose they do all that?
Wanna talk Economics?
They can't think of anything but cutting taxes for themselves, and a harsh dose of Austerity for everybody else. (Supply Side Economics, btw is self-defeating because it leads to a slow deflationary death spiral - which, in case ya hadn't noticed, is pretty much what we're in right now)
Global Labor Arbitrage
Supply Side Economics
How 'bout that War on Drugs?
We concentrate almost solely on interdiction and putting millions of users in prison (which may look like working the demand side, but actually only serves the purpose of the suppliers by conveniently gathering all the customers in one place) - again, just working the supply side.
Yeah OK, we try to get "our partners" in places like Afghanistan and Colombia to help us, but c'mon, they don't actually do anything helpful that I can see. And why is that? Because there's a huge demand for their #1 export, and they're not stupid enough to shut down the drug trade on their end because that's what keeps them all in power. Plus, you've been preaching Supply Side at 'em for 30 years - do ya really think the message they've gotten is that they should cut back on THE SUPPLY!?!. So what does it get us? Prisons that are so crowded they've become little feudal states that generally operate outside the control of anything "government" can do, for one thing. And don't get me started on the total FUBAR of the Privatized Prison Industry, and the connections to DoD and Defense Contractors and DEA and BATF and Capitol Hill and Wall Street and and and.
Well what about Abortion then?
"Conservatives" seem to think we don't need to do anything but shut down all the clinics and harass women at every turn in an attempt to shut 'em up - which means they're all over the supply side again, while fervently struggling against everything that's been proven effective in preventing the need (ie: demand) for abortion. Family planning and birth control. Equal pay for women. Early and honest Sex Ed. Free condoms. Public education. Lots of public information. Public women's healthcare centers. etc.
And wait just a damned minute there - in a system of unfettered free market capitalism, isn't it supposed to be a good thing to have lots and lots of clinics doing all manner of abortions on demand? As long as they turn a profit, isn't that what y'all keep telling us is what god intended?
So guess what, kids - there are actually two sides to these things, and if you just stop for a minute, you might see that working the Demand side is a lot more effective in practically every instance. At the very least, ya gotta work the Demand side as well as the Supply side.
Every time you turn around, it's like "conservatives" are boosting the fuck outa the Supply Side approach (which doesn't work, tho' they keep insisting it must), while slashing and bashing away at Demand Side solutions (which they insist can't work, when it's actually and obviously what does work).
Why do ya suppose they do all that?
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
It Isn't Ending Well
I'll have to listen to this a few more times to get it all, but I have some serious doubts that my mood will improve.
We have a capitol building chock-full of people who're really good at getting elected, fucking with each other, and practically nothing else.
We have a capitol building chock-full of people who're really good at getting elected, fucking with each other, and practically nothing else.
With the economy in free fall, Obey met with his Republican counterpart Jerry Lewis of California to start writing a bill.
“And Jerry just grinned and said ‘Dave, I’m sorry, but we’ve got orders from headquarters, we can’t play, we can’t play,’” Obey recalls. “He said it twice.”
Whatever Republicans thought privately – some of them told Obey they agreed that Congress needed to pass a stimulus bill – they weren’t going to publicly help the new president help the economy.
But that wasn’t the scariest thing, Obey says. He realized many fellow House members – Democrats and Republicans – simply lacked a sophisticated understanding of the economy and government spending policy.
“One of the problems that you have today, is that a lot of members of Congress just don’t know a hell of a lot anymore,” Obey says.We are so fucked.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Replay
In the late 70s, when Carter and our beloved Critters in Congress decided to bail out Chrysler by guaranteeing over a billion dollars in loans, I was pretty sure we'd seen the last of that money and once again, we tax-payers; we producers; we the people would just have to eat it and move on. I was wrong about that one.
When Obama said we needed to make the same kinda move with Detroit (specifically with GM) in 2009, prompting every "conservative" to fall on the floor writhing in apoplexy, my memories of being wrong about Chrysler helped me confirm for myself the simple fact that the GOP has lost its shit completely and that I was absolutely right to have left those blockheads in the dust.
Some people.
And speaking of 'some people', did ya catch the bit about lifting the restrictions on GM Execs' pay? Guess what happens next.
Sometimes, it's impossible to figure out who I'm s'posed to be mad at. And I'm beginning to understand that that's kinda the whole fucking point.
When Obama said we needed to make the same kinda move with Detroit (specifically with GM) in 2009, prompting every "conservative" to fall on the floor writhing in apoplexy, my memories of being wrong about Chrysler helped me confirm for myself the simple fact that the GOP has lost its shit completely and that I was absolutely right to have left those blockheads in the dust.
The U.S. Treasury today announced that it has sold all of the remaining shares of General Motors (GM +1.82%) common stock, ending four-and-a-half years of government ownership.
Taxpayers recouped about $39 billion of the $50.1 billion pumped into GM in late 2008 and 2009 as the Bush and Obama administrations tried to save the car maker from collapse after years of mismanagement brought to a head by a crippling credit crisis and economic recession. The sale will put an end to restrictions on executive pay, which will help GM attract top talent, and could pave the way for new dividends or share repurchases, both of which would please investors.
Historians, economists and politicians will continue to debate whether the bailout was a good idea, but there was no disagreement Monday that it was good for this episode to be over.
“The President’s leadership in responding to the financial crisis helped stabilize the auto industry, and prevent another Great Depression. With the final sale of GM stock, this important chapter in our nation’s history is now closed,” said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.So if we hear anything about it at all, we'll hear about the $11 Billion it cost us. We won't hear about the several hundred thousand jobs Americans didn't lose, and we won't hear about the (probably) hundreds of billions of dollars in saved &/or generated GDP, and we sure as fuck won't hear about "investment in American Industry". We'll only hear about Gubmint Motors and how Obama's Secret Socialist Puppets on Wall Street (?) squandered all that money - which will conveniently make it just a tiny bit harder to remember how the GOP's Gov't Shutdown cost us close to $25 Billion while generating precisely dick in economic returns.
Some people.
And speaking of 'some people', did ya catch the bit about lifting the restrictions on GM Execs' pay? Guess what happens next.
Sometimes, it's impossible to figure out who I'm s'posed to be mad at. And I'm beginning to understand that that's kinda the whole fucking point.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Little Jemmy Tried To Warn Us
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.We seem to have an extraordinary surplus of bean-counters who think knowing everything there is to know about slicing and dicing the numbers is all anybody needs to know about anything; and who understand how to make sense of (and how to make money off of) a jillion smaller and smaller segments of demographics inside the larger demographics etc etc etc. Unfortunately, while minting all these MBA-types, we haven't been teaching them much about the simple fact that those numbers are made up of real live human-type individual flesh-and-bone people.
-- James Madison, Federalist 10, November 22, 1788.
So it doesn't really matter that a mom and a dad somewhere in god's America have to live in fear that their insurance will "run out" before their 11-year-old can finish up the chemo treatments for leukemia.
It doesn't matter that a grandpa will have to put up with the debilitating pain of an arthritic knee for another 5 years before he qualifies for Medicare because there's just no way he can afford the insurance even if he could get it.
It doesn't matter that a 24-year-old who graduated 18 months ago with an Engineering degree has to wait tables and deliver pizza and sleep on the couch at his step-dad's trailer - praying his asthma doesn't kill him in the middle of the night because there's always a little month left over at the end of his inhaler.
The list of incredibly shitty examples of unnecessary anxiety and suffering stretches out beyond the horizon - but none of that matters because some politicians think their opposition to ObamaCare is "a winning argument".
They believe a sliver here and a sliver there - slivers that might add up to about 23% of the whole population - means they can then run around pretending that 23% is really "what the American people want". Because they "polled" their own districts, and wow, it turns out 65% of those rubes think what that other 23% think, and that must surely mean they have the one Congress Critter in the whole joint who really knows what he's talkin' about.
"We've been talking amongst this group for the last four weeks about fairness, about whether or not it's fair to give extensions to people who have political connections and make our families live under a different law," he continued. "That is a winning argument for us. But no one asked that question. ... Somebody asked whether it would be different next time, in January or February, whenever we take this up again. The natural inclination is to say 'No, it will be exactly the same.'"These people have no soul and no honor.
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Just A Tho't
(sparked by a bit in the Adam Curtis piece I posted yesterday)
"The Invisible Hand" has become the catch-all shield for anybody arguing for austerity and privatization, etc; or against Gubmint and social welfare or whatever evil rotten thing they find moldering in their fevered skulls.
The Invisible Hand (per Wikipedia):
Maybe "The Invisible Hand" is invisible because it isn't fucking there. Not as a prospectively guiding force anyway. My main problem with "market-based self-regulation" is that the regulatory function is always retroactive; it's remedial instead of preventative; and so any solutions or corrections always come after the fact, which means the whole mess is way more costly than it'd be if we'd had good regulations in place that were aimed at heading off problems before they become problems.
Looking at it thru the "Fuck Your Buddy" filter, the picture clears up a bit more.
BTW: "Conservatives" adhering to the (increasingly debunked) theories of Milton Friedman and John Nash and Friedrich von Hayek seem to be insisting that all the bad shit that seems always to happen with unregulated capitalism hasn't actually happened. And that's all part of the revisionist bullshit theme that runs very strong in "Conservative" politics - start with your desired outcome, and then do whatever is necessary to fix the facts around that outcome. (see Downing Street Memo for an excellent example)
Friedman's shock therapy gets applied in Chile and Argentina and Iraq and Greece and and and - and it's mostly pretty much all fucked up.
Nash's Game Theory gets played out with the secretaries at Rand Corp, and what happens? The subjects insisted on cooperating with each other instead of fucking each other over all the time, so the experiment was a complete flop. And of course, it wasn't because there were serious problems with the theory - it had to be because those stupid secretaries weren't behaving in the "appropriately rational manner". So the theory didn't fail, those idiot biddies failed the theory. Sound familiar?
Here's a little experiment we can try: whenever you hear somebody use the phrase "The Invisible Hand", substitute "the will of god", or "god's mysterious plan". Now tell me if anything else that person says makes any real sense from the standpoint of what a "fully rational, pragmatic adult" might say - about economics or politics or actual human-type people.
If it's bullshit, then you're not being rude when you call it bullshit.
"The Invisible Hand" has become the catch-all shield for anybody arguing for austerity and privatization, etc; or against Gubmint and social welfare or whatever evil rotten thing they find moldering in their fevered skulls.
The Invisible Hand (per Wikipedia):
In economics, the invisible hand of the market is a metaphor conceived by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace.[1] The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith's writings, but has come to capture his important claim that individuals' efforts to maximize their own gains in a free market benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. Smith came up with the two meanings of the phrase from Richard Cantillon who developed both economic applications in his model of the isolated estate.[2]From just a quick look at our own relatively brief history, I'm sure we could all come up with some good examples of bad results whenever The Invisible Hand was allowed to rule - the Slave Trade in America comes to my mind. But maybe what we really need to consider is something a bit more ethereal, even tho' in a weird way it's right there in front of us.
Maybe "The Invisible Hand" is invisible because it isn't fucking there. Not as a prospectively guiding force anyway. My main problem with "market-based self-regulation" is that the regulatory function is always retroactive; it's remedial instead of preventative; and so any solutions or corrections always come after the fact, which means the whole mess is way more costly than it'd be if we'd had good regulations in place that were aimed at heading off problems before they become problems.
Looking at it thru the "Fuck Your Buddy" filter, the picture clears up a bit more.
BTW: "Conservatives" adhering to the (increasingly debunked) theories of Milton Friedman and John Nash and Friedrich von Hayek seem to be insisting that all the bad shit that seems always to happen with unregulated capitalism hasn't actually happened. And that's all part of the revisionist bullshit theme that runs very strong in "Conservative" politics - start with your desired outcome, and then do whatever is necessary to fix the facts around that outcome. (see Downing Street Memo for an excellent example)
Friedman's shock therapy gets applied in Chile and Argentina and Iraq and Greece and and and - and it's mostly pretty much all fucked up.
Nash's Game Theory gets played out with the secretaries at Rand Corp, and what happens? The subjects insisted on cooperating with each other instead of fucking each other over all the time, so the experiment was a complete flop. And of course, it wasn't because there were serious problems with the theory - it had to be because those stupid secretaries weren't behaving in the "appropriately rational manner". So the theory didn't fail, those idiot biddies failed the theory. Sound familiar?
Here's a little experiment we can try: whenever you hear somebody use the phrase "The Invisible Hand", substitute "the will of god", or "god's mysterious plan". Now tell me if anything else that person says makes any real sense from the standpoint of what a "fully rational, pragmatic adult" might say - about economics or politics or actual human-type people.
If it's bullshit, then you're not being rude when you call it bullshit.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
High Calorie Content Warning
...because this is just too damned sweet.
Meanwhile, back in the boardrooms of Big US Oil - those guys are (probably) using every nickel in the Government Affairs budget to get Local, State and Federal agencies to keep the pressure on BP, and it shouldn't surprise anybody if it turns out (eg) Exxon's lending a bit of a hand directly to squeeze a few extra bucks out of BP "for the good of our hard-working local independent job-creatin' small business owners". Of course they do that kind of thing quietly and very carefully.
They're happy to get some Gubmint Assistance in order to fuck over a competitor and improve their market position, but they have to be careful not to disturb the rubes - above all else, they must never upset the delicate framing of "government is always bad except when it serves the interests of Business".
("and in cases like this, we're gonna let you pretend you're one of us").
And let's also not ignore the fairly obvious Tort Reform angle to all of this as well.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
BP wants Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene over the escalating cost of compensating US companies for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010.
BBC business editor Robert Peston has learned that BP feels its financial recovery is in jeopardy because the compensation system is being abused.
The financial burden of paying fictitious and inflated claims may even make BP a takeover target, it fears.
BP hopes Mr Cameron will raise the issue with the US government.BP shits on EPA every chance they get, and then they stiff-arm every government agency trying to help with Deepwater Horizon, but now that they're being held to account for their fuckup, they go cryin' to Parliament to save their asses.
Meanwhile, back in the boardrooms of Big US Oil - those guys are (probably) using every nickel in the Government Affairs budget to get Local, State and Federal agencies to keep the pressure on BP, and it shouldn't surprise anybody if it turns out (eg) Exxon's lending a bit of a hand directly to squeeze a few extra bucks out of BP "for the good of our hard-working local independent job-creatin' small business owners". Of course they do that kind of thing quietly and very carefully.
They're happy to get some Gubmint Assistance in order to fuck over a competitor and improve their market position, but they have to be careful not to disturb the rubes - above all else, they must never upset the delicate framing of "government is always bad except when it serves the interests of Business".
("and in cases like this, we're gonna let you pretend you're one of us").
And let's also not ignore the fairly obvious Tort Reform angle to all of this as well.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
The KrugMan Speaks
Outlook: a bit less than bleak.
Paul Krugman on the new CBO report on our Debt-Crisis-That-Isn't-Really-Real:
Paul Krugman on the new CBO report on our Debt-Crisis-That-Isn't-Really-Real:
Why, it’s almost as if the real goal was to make sure that benefits get cut even if the fiscal outlook improves.
Meanwhile, our policy discourse has been dominated for years by what turns out to be a false alarm. To the millions of Americans who are out of work and may never get another job thanks to premature fiscal austerity, the VSPs would like to say, “oopsies!”So let's review. Here's a partial list of what the Serious Thinkers in the GOP have been telling us for what's getting to be a very long time:
- Tax revenues will go up if we cut taxes.
- Spending will go up if we cut back on spending.
- Getting a stimulus effect of $.60 per dollar in tax cuts is better than getting a stimulus effect of $1.10 per dollar of Federal spending.
- Cutting future Soc Sec benefits now is how we prevent cutting Soc Sec benefits in the future.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Yeesh
Say it with me, America!
We're number 30, we're number 30, we're number 30!!!
On the list of the best airports in the world, there are no American airports in the top 25. Zero. Zip. Zilch. We got bupkis.
The best we could do is Covington (just over the river from Cincinnati) - the 30th best airport in the world - where you get to climb up and down nice big flights of stairs and ride a bus to get from one concourse to another. Woohoo.
The airport in Lima Peru ranks 5 places ahead of our best airport. Lima. I didn't know airplanes could even fly that high. Lima-fucking-Peru!?!
There are, however a few "bright spots". When they break it down by traffic volume (passengers), we show a little better.
Still - just another example of how smart it is to invest in your infrastructure. Every business plan of every company worth half a shit includes a hard cold look at transportation issues. If your town can't offer a decent level of easy access - including modes of transport as well as travel routes - then your town isn't a good place for that company to be, and the same goes for the rest of your country too. It's almost that simple.
Fuck austerity - make the right investments now.
hat tip = Addicting Info
We're number 30, we're number 30, we're number 30!!!
On the list of the best airports in the world, there are no American airports in the top 25. Zero. Zip. Zilch. We got bupkis.
The best we could do is Covington (just over the river from Cincinnati) - the 30th best airport in the world - where you get to climb up and down nice big flights of stairs and ride a bus to get from one concourse to another. Woohoo.
The airport in Lima Peru ranks 5 places ahead of our best airport. Lima. I didn't know airplanes could even fly that high. Lima-fucking-Peru!?!
There are, however a few "bright spots". When they break it down by traffic volume (passengers), we show a little better.
Still - just another example of how smart it is to invest in your infrastructure. Every business plan of every company worth half a shit includes a hard cold look at transportation issues. If your town can't offer a decent level of easy access - including modes of transport as well as travel routes - then your town isn't a good place for that company to be, and the same goes for the rest of your country too. It's almost that simple.
Fuck austerity - make the right investments now.
hat tip = Addicting Info
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Today's Vocab Term
Rent Seeking (per Wikipedia)
And as long as we accept the bullshit view that the world has to be all about purely Darwinian Economics, we perpetuate a climate in which these destructive predatory schemes are not just tolerated, but encouraged and admired.
There is something immoral about the kind of system Rent Seeking engenders - something we feel deep down in our bones. Which is why every society (eventually) revolts against it.
A simple definition of rent seeking is spending resources in order to gain by increasing one's share of existing wealth, instead of trying to create wealth. The net effect of rent-seeking is to reduce total social wealth, because resources are spent and no new wealth is created. In a theoretical context, it is important to distinguish rent-seeking from profit-seeking. Profit-seeking in this sense is the creation of wealth, while rent-seeking is the use of social institutions such as the power of government to redistribute wealth among different groups without creating new wealth.[1] In a practical context, income obtained through rent-seeking may of course contribute to profits in the standard, accounting sense of the word.Since Rent Seekers add nothing to the actual effort required to create wealth, it's not a matter of doing the work, and deriving the great satisfaction of having done something worthwhile - it's all about having the power to buy somebody else's effort and claim it as your own.
And as long as we accept the bullshit view that the world has to be all about purely Darwinian Economics, we perpetuate a climate in which these destructive predatory schemes are not just tolerated, but encouraged and admired.
There is something immoral about the kind of system Rent Seeking engenders - something we feel deep down in our bones. Which is why every society (eventually) revolts against it.
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Dowager Pundit
The brilliance of Charlie Pierce:
It's past time for her friends, her family, or the spirit of JP The Deuce to descend on Our Lady Of The Dolphins and stage an intervention. Apparently, she believes that the president has a cauldron bubbling in the East Room from which he has loosed upon the land magic Kenyan Muslim Alinskyist spells that have stolen the souls of the American people. Either that, or it once again was two-for-one Harvey Wallbangers during Happy Hour at the Dowager Pundit's Club.Further evidence of Charlie's brilliance is his link to No More Mister Nice Blog:
But that's not why I'm talking about Noonan. I'm talking about her because, in addition to believing that nonsense, she also believes that people aren't spending money in America at discount superstores because their animal spirits have been depleted by the evil Obama. I'm used to hearing right-wingers (and centrists) advance the (nonsensical) idea thatbusinesses aren't expanding because the confidence of CEOs has been undermined by "uncertainty" (there was Tom Freidman saying that again over the weekend, and here's David Brooks saying it again today) -- but now we're supposed to believe that poor and middle-class and lower-middle-class people aren't opening their wallets because of ... the national mood?
As opposed to not opening their wallets because, y'know, they're flat broke?
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The Krugman Speaks
..for a good long time, and says a lot of great stuff.
I guess a coupla main points for me are these:
I guess a coupla main points for me are these:
- We have to stop allowing ourselves to be made to believe that Democracy and Capitalism are interchangeable terms.
- We have to understand just how close we're coming to letting the Bain-type Vultures pull off a corporate takeover of our government. (Don't think so? Think about the assets owned by the USA, and then try not to think about that fat and juicy Pension Fund we've got, just layin' there ready for some smart buzzards to swoop in and pick it clean. What's happening now - what's been happening for 25 years - is classic Bain Capital / Henry Kravitz leveraged buyout bullshit.)
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Prof Parenti
Here's something that isn't new.
And here's why it isn't new:
(John Kenneth Galbraith's series from the 70s)
And here's why it isn't new:
(John Kenneth Galbraith's series from the 70s)
Sunday, November 18, 2012
The Krugman Speaks
I like Paul Krugman's stuff because it all seems to be totally reality-based. He's a "leftie" (whatever that means), but his ideology doesn't get in his way. And since he's engaged in a little thing called "science", it's generally a good thing to let the evidence lead you to a rational conclusion rather than trying to make the numbers fit a particular expectation of how you think the world is supposed to work.
Here's Krugman's whole post from yesterday's NYT:
We'll have to see, but it seems like Republican politics is not changing much. I see the Benghazi crap as their attempt to manufacture a 2nd-term scandal for Obama, and now, with all this bogus posturing about a Fiscal Cliff (more like a short ramp IMHO) and talk of some Grand Bargain, they're trying to hang a major rap on him for a double-dip recession and whatever shitty thing that happens as a result of the sudden drop in Demand that happens when you make big cuts in federal spending. And then, of course, as the 2010 mid-terms roll around, they make all the noise they can possibly make about how all the bad stuff happened on Obama's watch and we have to admit it's all about Obama's failed policy etc etc.
Here's Krugman's whole post from yesterday's NYT:
Transatlantic Divergence
Deadline pressure, so not much blogging this weekend. But pursuing the theme that America is doing the least worst among major economies, here’s a chart I find illuminating:
In the early stages of the crisis, unemployment rose more rapidly in the US than in Europe. This mainly reflected differences in institutions: it’s much easier to fire people in America. From some point in 2010 onward, however, the US situation has gradually improved; initially some of the drop in unemployment was basically people leaving the labor force, but more recently there have been solid though modest gains in the ratio of employment to the relevant population (you have to adjust for aging).
Meanwhile, Europe has gotten much worse; now formally in recession, but the truth is that it has been going downhill all along.
Why the divergence? The obvious answer is that the austerity stuff broke out in 2010, and the austerians took over policy much more completely in Europe than in the United States.That last paragraph is the main point. And I think he's trying to tell us that if we give in to the siren song of Austerity, we just make it harder to get ourselves out of the hole we're in. Also, I've heard others warning us against the effects of Shock Doctrine style economic policy.
We'll have to see, but it seems like Republican politics is not changing much. I see the Benghazi crap as their attempt to manufacture a 2nd-term scandal for Obama, and now, with all this bogus posturing about a Fiscal Cliff (more like a short ramp IMHO) and talk of some Grand Bargain, they're trying to hang a major rap on him for a double-dip recession and whatever shitty thing that happens as a result of the sudden drop in Demand that happens when you make big cuts in federal spending. And then, of course, as the 2010 mid-terms roll around, they make all the noise they can possibly make about how all the bad stuff happened on Obama's watch and we have to admit it's all about Obama's failed policy etc etc.
Sunday, November 04, 2012
On Climate Change
If you ask me about AGW and Climate Change, my honest answer is that I really don't know. ie: I don't have the direct first-hand knowledge I need to to be "absolutely sure" of it.
But here's the deal - I'm gonna take the word of Climatologists who are educated and experienced way the fuck before I listen to some coin-operated politician on the subject.
The scientist has to exceed a Certainty Threshold (Confidence Interval) of 95% required by most Peer-Review Processes before his findings are accepted as the prevailing thesis.
The politician has to get 50% plus 1.
So, if your broker came to you saying he had 2 opportunities for you, would you go for the one with a 50.01% shot at working out, or do ya think ya might wanna go with the one at 95%?
C'mon, "conservatives" - you're supposed to be the ones who take a cold, clear-eyed look at this stuff. What the fuck're you doin'?
But here's the deal - I'm gonna take the word of Climatologists who are educated and experienced way the fuck before I listen to some coin-operated politician on the subject.
The scientist has to exceed a Certainty Threshold (Confidence Interval) of 95% required by most Peer-Review Processes before his findings are accepted as the prevailing thesis.
The politician has to get 50% plus 1.
So, if your broker came to you saying he had 2 opportunities for you, would you go for the one with a 50.01% shot at working out, or do ya think ya might wanna go with the one at 95%?
C'mon, "conservatives" - you're supposed to be the ones who take a cold, clear-eyed look at this stuff. What the fuck're you doin'?
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Today's Krugman
Via NYT:
I'm hoping they're talking more along the lines of just reducing the probability of some screwball politician changing something that unfairly upsets the applecart at inopportune times. Of course, that's what they're selling - that Obama will do something that makes it harder for a business to flourish. But what has Obama done that in any reasonable (or even discernible) way has depressed the economy, or made it more difficult for any business to operate in the black?
It's a crock. And John Fugelsang has a few words on the subject:
One of the central talking points of right-wing economists is that “uncertainty” caused by Obama is holding the economy back; they cite, again and again, a paper by Bloom et al purporting to find a relationship between uncertainty and jobs, with uncertainty measured via such things as article counts.The certainty meme has always irked me. Why is uncertainty such a big deal for these guys? Are we supposed to remove all risk from every business venture so the mighty capitalist heroes can be absolutely guarantied to turn a monster profit?
I'm hoping they're talking more along the lines of just reducing the probability of some screwball politician changing something that unfairly upsets the applecart at inopportune times. Of course, that's what they're selling - that Obama will do something that makes it harder for a business to flourish. But what has Obama done that in any reasonable (or even discernible) way has depressed the economy, or made it more difficult for any business to operate in the black?
It's a crock. And John Fugelsang has a few words on the subject:
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