Originally Posted by summer in the fall

I may have to disagree with you Uncle Jim. They lost faith in themselves. The Obama movement has always been about people projecting their hopes and dreams onto him. As they lost faith in their own ability to maintain hope, Obama himself seemed to change. I've been there myself until I've literally had to shake myself out of it and say "Wait a minute, Obama isn't the problem."

Cheers

He may not be the problem. Unfortunately he does not seem to be the solution.

He is apparently going to call for a big infrastructure jobs program, which is a big step in the right direction--I hope it isn't two years two late.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

He may not be the problem. Unfortunately he does not seem to be the solution.

He is apparently going to call for a big infrastructure jobs program, which is a big step in the right direction--I hope it isn't two years two late.

We may for the first time be in agreement. He isn't the solution--we are. The right attitude always comes before the right solution. That's the point of the previous post.

Best...

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

He is apparently going to call for a big infrastructure jobs program, which is a big step in the right direction--I hope it isn't two years two late.

I also hope he doesn't forget about the people who aren't particularly qualified to take these infrastructure jobs. We don't need to give the elites another reason to divide one sector of the middle class workforce against another.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

I also hope he doesn't forget about the people who aren't particularly qualified to take these infrastructure jobs. We don't need to give the elites another reason to divide one sector of the middle class workforce against another.

Hahaha. This is what I mean. He hasn't even announced it yet, and people are already ripping it to shreds...

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

Hahaha. This is what I mean. He hasn't even announced it yet, and people are already ripping it to shreds...

What exactly did I rip to shreds? I simply expressed hope that this "jobs plan" is one that will produce broad employment gains across the board and not just be concentrated in one group of people. That's hardly "ripping to shreds." Methinks thou doth complain too much.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Poverty is itself a lack of freedom. It is the inability to participate fully in such prosperity as exists. It means making stark choices that others need not make -- like whether one gets dental care of a toothache or pays the rent. It means that in practice the poor must sell out everything -- including individuality and honor -- for what is desirable or even necessary.

I have known many poor people over the years and the ones who escape realize that they always have options. As Chas '88 pointed out on another thread, there are no guarantees in life.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

"Everyone for himself" is one of the lowest bases for ethical standards. Hunger is coercion. Poverty-enhanced ill health is coercion. Subordination to entrenched wealth in a system that recognizes no other virtue is coercion.

So no charities would arise and the churches would do nothing. It is true that they would not be able to eliminate poverty but then government has not been able to do that either.

You are also assuming that without the government subsidizing certain industries and companies that wealth would stay entrenched with anyone. Would AIG, Goldman Sachs or a number of very large banks be around without the last round of bailouts? I think not.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

Hahaha. This is what I mean. He hasn't even announced it yet, and people are already ripping it to shreds...

What exactly did I rip to shreds? I simply expressed hope that this "jobs plan" is one that will produce broad employment gains across the board and not just be concentrated in one group of people. That's hardly "ripping to shreds." Methinks thou doth complain too much.

You got me. I must have been distracted by the negativity of the subordinate clause:

[Obama] forget about the people...

as well as the negativity of the follow on sentence which anticipates a bad outcome:

"elites divide middle class"

So while technically your statement was not "ripping [Obama's plan] to shreds," embedded in it was an air of cynicism which overshadows its overall meaning. An unambiguous statement would have been something like:

"I hope he thinks about people from fields outside of infrastructure. That way the middle class workforce will feel more united."

The problem with a statement like that, of course, is that it doesn't seem quite as snarky-sexy-chic as:

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

I also hope he doesn't forget about the people who aren't particularly qualified to take these infrastructure jobs. We don't need to give the elites another reason to divide one sector of the middle class workforce against another.

We good now?

P.S. Hopefully, someone else here will explain how infrastructure jobs (which cannot be outsourced) are an automatic stimulus to the economy which in turn fuel growth in other sectors. So in that sense it will produce "broad employment gains." And yes, I'm sure Obama has considered this. Again, this echos the "Obama isn't stupid" meme one really needs to start chanting. But I'm sure you already knew all of that.

Cheers.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

P.S. Hopefully, someone else here will explain how infrastructure jobs (which cannot be outsourced) are an automatic stimulus to the economy which in turn fuel growth in other sectors. So in that sense it will produce "broad employment gains." And yes, I'm sure Obama has considered this. Again, this echos the "Obama isn't stupid" meme one really needs to start chanting. But I'm sure you already knew all of that.

Cheers.

Lots of suppliers and manufacturers would have more work. Lots of building materials. A friend works in manufacturing. She'd love it for her company.

Originally Posted by Galen

I have known many poor people over the years and the ones who escape realize that they always have options. As Chas '88 pointed out on another thread, there are no guarantees in life.

Let's make sure that those opportunities aren't restricted to a few, like "pick the right numbers on the Super Megabuck Lottery", "throw a 100-mph fastball", "gain an average of 7.7 yards while running a football", or "have a voice like Maria Callas or Luciano Pavarotti". The only guarantee in America is that you can lose -- BIG!

You can do everything right in America in according with its strictures and seem to get ahead, and have a family -- and either a fatal or crippling industrial accident. Or you can work the night shift in a convenience store and be killed in an armed robbery for the $45 in the till because you can't get the proceeds from the safe fast enough for the satisfaction of some heroin addict. You can join the Army, get posted in Afghanistan or Iraq, and wander over an improvised explosive and be blasted into a pink mist.

This is a depression. The opportunities are far fewer than those in most other times, and such opportunities as there are are often the sorts that either protect the capital of lenders or prey upon those who still have a little. Don't fool yourself -- failure is far more common than success these days, and the Right seems to act as if it wants the consequences for failure are harsher than ever. The best rewards still go heavily to those born into the Right Families. In view of a tax system and regulatory policies that favor big entrenched wealth over everything else, even small-scale prosperity, and a political system becoming increasingly corrupt, the "self-made man" is becoming more of a myth. The plutocrats and their executive retainers own the House of Representatives, the news media, many State legislatures, and parts of academia. They are trying to take over the Senate, the Presidency, and City Hall. Those people do not want competition, and they are crushing such competition as already exists and tempt people to compete so that they can be fleeced of their assets before they are ruined.

Do you really think that the little man can compete with that?

So no charities would arise and the churches would do nothing. It is true that they would not be able to eliminate poverty but then government has not been able to do that either.

Few of the charities that exist work to alleviate poverty. I'm not going to deny that medical research does good, but it does nothing to improve the lives of the poor. Churches are more efficient at separating money from the near-poor than at delivering relief to the poor.

Sure, there will be the improvident, the lazy, and the incompetent... not to mention people who waste their lives on drink, drugs, whores, and crime. But government can establish minimum wages and promote collective bargaining. It can provide schooling, including vocational schooling, that can give people good chances at success at some modest level.

You are also assuming that without the government subsidizing certain industries and companies that wealth would stay entrenched with anyone. Would AIG, Goldman Sachs or a number of very large banks be around without the last round of bailouts? I think not.

I am full of spite at those corrupt organizations that gambled with Other People's Money and lost more than they bet. But that said, I'd rather have Bank of America bailed out than see its depositors ruined. Think of all the payrolls that would disappear -- and the consequent job losses. Think of the economic anarchy that would ensue as one check and electronic transfer after another, millions of times, suddenly is dishonored. We should have never let any business entity get Too Big to Fail... but we all know how the most corrupt entities are able to buy politicians.

That corruption had its peak when Dubya was President.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

You got me. I must have been distracted by the negativity of the subordinate clause:

[Obama] forget about the people...

as well as the negativity of the follow on sentence which anticipates a bad outcome:

"elites divide middle class"

So while technically your statement was not "ripping [Obama's plan] to shreds," embedded in it was an air of cynicism which overshadows its overall meaning. An unambiguous statement would have been something like:

"I hope he thinks about people from fields outside of infrastructure. That way the middle class workforce will feel more united."

The problem with a statement like that, of course, is that it doesn't seem quite as snarky-sexy-chic as:



We good now?

P.S. Hopefully, someone else here will explain how infrastructure jobs (which cannot be outsourced) are an automatic stimulus to the economy which in turn fuel growth in other sectors. So in that sense it will produce "broad employment gains." And yes, I'm sure Obama has considered this. Again, this echos the "Obama isn't stupid" meme one really needs to start chanting. But I'm sure you already knew all of that.

Cheers.

Good lord, you are sounding like one of those positive thinking quacks. *rolls eyes*

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

He may not be the problem. Unfortunately he does not seem to be the solution.

He is apparently going to call for a big infrastructure jobs program, which is a big step in the right direction--I hope it isn't two years two late.

If this is true, then it needs to be all inclusive; not just Union jobs. This could have happened 2 years ago.

Originally Posted by Odin

Good lord, you are sounding like one of those positive thinking quacks. *rolls eyes*

Whatever. Misery loves company. *rolls eyes*

Originally Posted by Galen

It is one of the possible alternatives for the future and one of its primary virtues is that it tends to minimize coercion which tends to be a good thing in almost all circumstances. All of the other possibilities are much worse since they are either authoritarian in nature, will fail to grow the economy or worse both and I don't see any good coming from that. So far as I am able to discern it is unreasonable to expect the current ongoing attempt at a mixed economy will survive the fourth turning.

So we should just go backwards 200-300 years to what has already been rejected as unworkable, as opposed to going back 30 years to an approach that was working just fine, but interrupted by an ideologue actor-president for no reason?

Libertarianism does not minimize coercion, it allows it-- big time. Good government is needed to minimize coercion; that's why we had it until 1980. What is "ongoing" is this 30-year retreat from progress toward a laissez faire economy, the result of which is horrific debt, extreme inequality, lowered social/economic mobility, climate change and pollution, superstitious religion in politics.....

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

This is a depression. The opportunities are far fewer than those in most other times, and such opportunities as there are are often the sorts that either protect the capital of lenders or prey upon those who still have a little. Don't fool yourself -- failure is far more common than success these days, and the Right seems to act as if it wants the consequences for failure are harsher than ever. The best rewards still go heavily to those born into the Right Families. In view of a tax system and regulatory policies that favor big entrenched wealth over everything else, even small-scale prosperity, and a political system becoming increasingly corrupt, the "self-made man" is becoming more of a myth. The plutocrats and their executive retainers own the House of Representatives, the news media, many State legislatures, and parts of academia. They are trying to take over the Senate, the Presidency, and City Hall. Those people do not want competition, and they are crushing such competition as already exists and tempt people to compete so that they can be fleeced of their assets before they are ruined.

Yes it is a depression. A depression being made worse by using similar policies that made the Great Depression worse than it had to be. You have described the results of regulatory capture very nicely. So how does increasing power to the very organization that you say these people own solve these problems? It doesn't and it can't. You would do well to look at why the trusts and mergers did so badly at creating monopolies at the end of the nineteenth century. Here are some lectures on the subject by Murray Rothbard to his students.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Do you really think that the little man can compete with that?

As long as government is permitted to choose the winners and losers then what do you expect?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Few of the charities that exist work to alleviate poverty. I'm not going to deny that medical research does good, but it does nothing to improve the lives of the poor. Churches are more efficient at separating money from the near-poor than at delivering relief to the poor.

There have been fewer such charities since the sixties since the government moved in. The government has been doing the job very incompetently, only the federal government could spend what it takes to put a student through Harvard and still fail to teach them how to be a fry cook.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Sure, there will be the improvident, the lazy, and the incompetent... not to mention people who waste their lives on drink, drugs, whores, and crime. But government can establish minimum wages and promote collective bargaining. It can provide schooling, including vocational schooling, that can give people good chances at success at some modest level.

As I pointed out it the previous paragraph these programs have been less than successful in general because they end up subsidizing failure. As one who uses evolutionary systems to solve problems I understand the math behind them and why these programs can only fail to achieve their stated goals. In computer science terms, these program alter the fitness function in ways that encourage dysfunction.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I am full of spite at those corrupt organizations that gambled with Other People's Money and lost more than they bet. But that said, I'd rather have Bank of America bailed out than see its depositors ruined. Think of all the payrolls that would disappear -- and the consequent job losses. Think of the economic anarchy that would ensue as one check and electronic transfer after another, millions of times, suddenly is dishonored. We should have never let any business entity get Too Big to Fail... but we all know how the most corrupt entities are able to buy politicians.

In order to avoid the short term pain you would consign people to suffer under these corrupt organizations forever. This process has been underway since at least the beginning of the twentieth century it is illogical to expect correction to be painless. This is not a process that I look forward but rather something necessary to avoid a greater evil. You can look at other examples of crony capitalism to see where this process must inevitably lead. Socialism is of course not the answer as the Warsaw Pact nations managed to prove and the mixed economy isn't working much better, partly due to the problem of regulatory capture.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

That corruption had its peak when Dubya was President.

I wouldn't say that since Obama has pretty much continued on the same path as his predecessor. This would seem to be the crux of the problem since both major parties are pretty much moving in the same direction. This has been true for a little over a century.

Originally Posted by James50

The Senate refused to follow the budget process. In the absence of that process, the budget gets made in the middle of the night under threat of government shutdown by lobbyists in one giant vomiting forth of a bill. The House passed a budget I am sure you find hateful, but the Senate passed nothing. There was no place for compromise because the other side never put anything on the table. Those interested in a lower deficit had only one tool to bring the other side to the table and that was the debt ceiling. This is not irrelevant if you are going to continue to say that the debt ceiling fight was a sign of Republican intransigence and ideology.

I just don't get your point on that at all. The Senate had nothing to do with it. It just seems like a talking point you are making. The House controls the purse strings, and they threatened government shutdown if they didn't get their way. Only the Republicans ever do that. Then they did it again with the debt ceiling blackmail, threatening economic ruin if they didn't get the cuts they wanted and no taxes. Obama, Reid, and the Gang of Six put things on the table; they were bad enough, and represented not intransigence but over-compromise; but even they were ignored. Whatever the Senate does, does not change the current power of the House to block things that violate their ideology.

I wish people like yourself would advocate for a Democratic budget from the house you control (ie the Senate). Put it out there. No filibuster can stop you as the budget process cannot be filibustered. That the democrats cannot bring themselves to compromise within their own party in the Senate shows just how intransigent they are. They love to get in front of the cameras and accuse the other side of being uncompromising. When I hear that, I want to say "Shut up, get in the committee rooms, and work out something. Show us what you got." Are they too scared? Trying to score political points? Don't know what they want? One of the main functions of the legislative process is to create a budget and the democrats are AWOL.

James50

The Democrats who generally decide things in the Senate are Democrats In Name Only. But again, I don't know what you are talking about; whatever the Senate decided upon would still have to be passed by the House. Under the Tea Party, the House will not accept taxes. They'd sooner shut down the whole economy than allow fair taxes to be imposed on their rich clients.

Originally Posted by James50

Translation: there is no compromise with these people (ie the other side). Compromise is another word for losing.


The left is just as ideological. Any deviation from ideology should be punished.


The left uses coercion to accomplish its ends as well.


Right wingers have always thought the left was deceitful.

You are becoming the mirror image of what you fear with the same levels of intolerance and temptation to authoritarianism.

The message from both sides is increasingly sounding like: "We cannot win unless we are tough enough and uncompromising enough to make the other side knuckle under. We must be pure to our ideology no matter the consequences"

The polarization continues, but we must hold to the rule of law.

James50

I agree with the last sentence, but it certainly appears to me and to all liberals that the so-called left in this country has compromised so much that all its honor is gone; far from being intransigent; they have given up the fight. The left is not ideological; it just wants to see things done that are good for the country and solve problems. The Left did not threaten government shutdowns and economic crashes to get their way. It uses the filibuster less often.

I wish the message from our side was as you say, but it's not, unfortunately. I hope our left politicians grow a backbone soon. Otherwise we will lose the fight that is inevitable, as long as the Republicans in their current form hold any power.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

It's not that I don't believe you have a heart -- I'm sure you do. I just think you are so blinded by fear it's choking you. And I know that deep down inside you want to believe in the common decency of your own people, you just don't know how. I wish I had better words of wisdom. But alas, I'm fresh out. Best...

I wouldn't judge them as individuals; I'm sure Republican folks have some good qualities as human beings in local affairs and personal lives. They are caught up in a bad and false set of ideologies, and in a culture I don't relate to and vice versa. We seem to be a divided people. Most people in the developed world are far more enlightened about what society needs than the Republicans of today. It is not fear to recognize the political reality of our times, 4T times indeed. I predicted possible civil war in this era decades ago. I wish I had better words too. I just don't want the leader who was elected by our side to give in and give up. We need him to get progress moving again, not pull the plug on it. Trashing the environment, as he did this week, is not acceptable under any circumstances. This action is worthy of Perry or Bachmann, not the Obama we elected to protect us from the ravenous wolves that rule this country.

Geographic allusions edited out

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Our democracy was the child of a rationalist age. Rationalism has been declining throughout my adult life in this country. (Both Left and Right are to blame for that, by the way.) The question we face now is whether we have enough rationalism left to get us through the crisis.

I dunno; the smile of reason didn't get us through the Revolution. Will rationalism put a backbone in weak-kneed politicians?

What is always needed is as good a balance among all our faculties and aptitudes as we can accomplish. It's hard, when only one or another of them is put on a pedestal.

Originally Posted by James50

If I said that, I did not mean to. The importance of Scott Brown's election is that it came at the cusp of the legislative process. His stated election platform was to stop the ACA. He was elected and, instead of reconsidering, the House bulled ahead through parliamentary maneuvers and passed the bill. At the time, pundits said the process would not matter, but the law has never recovered in public esteem. The recent waivers are another sign of its fundamental political weakness. This was a strategic mistake on the part of house democrats and was a contributing factor to their dramatic repudiation in 2010.

James50

If the House had not bullied ahead, there would have been no health care bill. The process that was done was the only alternative to giving up again for who knows how long.

Perhaps the answer for those who want decent health care will be to move to Vermont, or perhaps other states in the future.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

What exactly did I rip to shreds? I simply expressed hope that this "jobs plan" is one that will produce broad employment gains across the board and not just be concentrated in one group of people. That's hardly "ripping to shreds." Methinks thou doth complain too much.

I'm sure we can only expect infrastructure building jobs to go to those who can do the building. What can be hoped, is that these workers and companies with new jobs will make it possible because of their increasing spending for others to also be hired in other fields, and for what is built to support the growth of new industries and prosperity of older ones.

There's no doubt this would not be possible until 2013. What is important is that Obama lay out the case and bid for support in the next election. Nothing is possible of any constructive nature with the current congress. Our only hope as a nation is that we realize this before it is too late, and change it at the ballot box.

Originally Posted by Galen

I have known many poor people over the years and the ones who escape realize that they always have options. As Chas '88 pointed out on another thread, there are no guarantees in life.

That is no justification for deliberate institution of injustice.

So no charities would arise and the churches would do nothing. It is true that they would not be able to eliminate poverty but then government has not been able to do that either.

Government did a lot up until 1980 to reduce poverty greatly, despite the waste of funds on the Vietnam War. Government can do it, if allowed to do it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That is no justification for deliberate institution of injustice.

My point is that the Hamiltonian economic system we have now does just that and the progressives have also been helping this process along, whether they realize it or not.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Government did a lot up until 1980 to reduce poverty greatly, despite the waste of funds on the Vietnam War. Government can do it, if allowed to do it.

The government can't do it because they end up subsidizing failure in the same way that corporate bail-outs do. I have seen a lot of it in my time which is true of most of Generation X.

Originally Posted by Galen

My point is that the Hamiltonian economic system we have now does just that and the progressives have also been helping this process along, whether they realize it or not.

We don't have a Hamiltonian system now. In what sense is it so? It seems to me we now have a Reaganomic system.

The government can't do it because they end up subsidizing failure in the same way that corporate bail-outs do. I have seen a lot of it in my time which is true of most of Generation X.

People say they've seen it, but personal anecdotes are irrelevant. The fact is that poverty was reduced. We had an equal society under progressive policies, and we have an unequal system now under regressive libertarian ones. There was never any reason for the switch. Scapegoating welfare recipients gets old real fast now. We can design effective programs that work and don't promote dependency, if we are willing to do so. We have not been so willing.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

It's not that I don't believe you have a heart -- I'm sure you do. I just think you are so blinded by fear it's choking you. And I know that deep down inside you want to believe in the common decency of your own people, you just don't know how. I wish I had better words of wisdom. But alas, I'm fresh out. Best...

I wouldn't judge them as individuals; I'm sure Republican folks have some good qualities as human beings in local affairs and personal lives. They are caught up in a bad and false set of ideologies, and in a culture I don't relate to and vice versa. We seem to be a divided people. Most people in the developed world are far more enlightened about what society needs than the Republicans of today. It is not fear to recognize the political reality of our times, 4T times indeed. I predicted possible civil war in this era decades ago. I wish I had better words too. I just don't want the leader who was elected by our side to give in and give up. We need him to get progress moving again, not pull the plug on it. Trashing the environment, as he did this week, is not acceptable under any circumstances. This action is worthy of Perry or Bachmann, not the Obama we elected to protect us from the ravenous wolves that rule this country.

Geographic allusions edited out

You got me. I said let's call it quits with this charade and that was code for more pointless rhetoric. ??? If you're not guided by fear, Eric, you must be sociopathic. Because this civil war fetish is sick.

night all...

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

We don't have a Hamiltonian system now. In what sense is it so? It seems to me we now have a Reaganomic system.

They have the same features so they are the same system.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

People say they've seen it, but personal anecdotes are irrelevant. The fact is that poverty was reduced. We had an equal society under progressive policies, and we have an unequal system now under regressive libertarian ones. There was never any reason for the switch. Scapegoating welfare recipients gets old real fast now. We can design effective programs that work and don't promote dependency, if we are willing to do so. We have not been so willing.

According to this graph created from census bureau data the Great Society programs really didn't help. The reduction trend in poverty rates reversed well before Reagan took office but after the programs had been in place for a few years. Oddly enough the trend started reducing again two years into the Reagan administration.

In the case of the economy we are attempting to maximize material well-being otherwise known as wealth. There is no way to write a set of equations that would model the economy accurately and even if you could there would be no way to collect the information to solve the set of equations. Even if it were possible to satisfy these two requirements the computational complexity would outstrip any possible computer system that could be built. When confronted with a problem like this computer science types such as myself turn to creating evolutionary systems and much literature has been written about the mathematics of such systems. Try to consider how large of a state space an economy with only a few hundred people would represent and you will get a feel the scale of the problem. We can search such a large state space with an evolutionary system much as nature does with biology.

Like it or not the economy is an evolutionary where the fitness function is the change in wealth for an individual entity and of course the total wealth of the system is maximized when all of the fitness functions are at their maximum values. This represents a condition where resource allocation is as good as possible. Any wealth transfers will tend to destroy this wealth creation process and so impoverish society as a whole and so create more suffering. Ludwig von Mises wrote a paper about the impossibility socialism that touched on these topics in 1920, decades before the mathematics to analyze such evolutionary systems, computational complexity and information theory would be created. He didn't have the terminology modern computer scientists such as myself use but I recognize his qualitative descriptions of such systems and they are accurate. There are limits to how much interference an evolutionary system can tolerate before it will fall apart and I fear that we may be approaching that point in the United States.

It is very hard for me to explain this without being able to use the math symbols I would normally use and I fear that there are few people on this board that have the math background for this. When I see socialism and its related economic systems as an impossibility it is because the math tells me this. I do not rejoice in the selection process that must exist in any evolutionary system but I accept its necessity because everything else is worse. You show the common boomer trait that is best summed up by Adam Savage, "I reject your reality and substitute my own" which is why I call you Eric the Obtuse.

You will reject science and math in order to pursue your Utopian quest even though you disparage Christians for doing the same thing. You are closer in outlook to your opponents than you will ever truly be able to understand.