The Once and Future Dad
The interesting thing about this video (which was produced incidentally, by L3′s dad) is that it references things and ideas which were once presumed common to all, but which are now in the process of abolition.
Take the family home that the anonymous unemployed young man returns to. Who has a family like that any more? Come to think of it, who wants a family like that at all?
Why not get rid of them along with all the other impedimenta we don’t need any more — God, Country and all the rest.
The ideal modern young person is personified by Julia, the cartoon star of Barack Obama’s campaign animation The Life of Julia. She has none of the problems which concern the people in the video.
Julia has no discernible father or mother. She never gets married. She gets government schooling, government student loans, goes to college via the Race to the Top government program, gets Pell Grants, obtains government health care.
Upon graduation Julia pulls down a princely salary thanks to the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — and she even gets to cap her student loan payments. Whether she ever pays them or not is not revealed.
Unlike the men portrayed in the video above, she never worries about manufacturing jobs migrating to China. That’s because she’ll be employed as a web designer. It’s gravy all the way. And when somehow she gets pregnant even after she gets all the contraception she wants, she sends her daughter to government school — and the cycle begins anew.
And it’s all for free.
Or is it? For there’s the rub because the money has to come from somewhere. The Life of Julia is fundamentally at odds with any world in which a “fair tax” or any sort of low tax regime, could exist. Somebody’s got to pay for the Government Cheese and that has to be someone other than the person who eats the cheese. Otherwise you get nothing “extra” you wouldn’t have had to start with. When you come right down to it that has to mean there are taxpayers and cows somewhere down the line.
And maybe families too. Well as long as they stay out of sight.
Is it possible that the World of Julia essentially assumes for its continuance and existence the very things that it finds so distasteful? Imagine a world where your father left you when you were just a baby. Where you lived in one household after the other, among one set of strangers after the other. Think of a world in which your mentors, your pastor, you mother’s friends all taught that “you didn’t build that”. Imagine that you never held down anything other than a government job, with the brief exception of a time when you gave away some philanthrophist’s money until there was none left.
Could such a person support Julia’s world? No. But he could promise it. And then someone else would still have to pay for it.
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Dad is now a SNAP card and an unemployment check.
I don’t know of one single person between the ages of 18-29 who wants to be like Julia. I do however know some retired lefty boomers who think the Life of Julia sounds peachy keen.
Nice video supporting the adoption of a consumption tax to replace income tax. It’s either a consumption tax or an income tax – can’t have both like we do now. If income taxes and sales taxes coexist then taxpayers will see increasing tax burdens.
A consumption tax encourages saving and the increased savings rate will necessarily reduce total tax revenues. If the number of people paying taxes stays the same and the consumption tax rate equals the average rate of income tax plus payroll tax then the total tax revenues will go down because savings will not be taxed. That means reductions in government spending would have to happen for a consumption tax to work. Nothing wrong with that but State governments would probably try to chisel more tax out of their citizens to offset reduced Federal handouts.
I think unreported grey consumption would still go on at a similar rate to now, even with a consumption tax. The grey economy is neutral about the flavour of tax that it evades. The gain would be tax revenue from the 45% of American adults who don’t pay any income tax.
Personally I’d vote for a consumption tax to replace income tax in a heartbeat if the rate of the consumption tax was known before the vote and guaranteed not to rise. I see that fairtax.org is recommending a rate of 23%.
How can this be put up for a decision? National referendum? A baseball tax series? A Kentucky Tax Derby? American Tax Idol? I can’t see the incumbent political class supporting a consumption tax. I think you’d have to lock them in some Mexican resort while the people made the choice.
got a silver bullet, does he?
complete claptrap, goofy choice of imagery, overwrought music, not an argument presented, and worst of all it doesn’t matter in the least, if all the jobs are in China you can rework the tax system up down and sideways, you’re still taxing zero.
you could reduce all US taxes to zero tomorrow and promise to keep them there for twenty years, and it wouldn’t bring back 10% of the jobs that have gone to China.
have a nice day.
The income tax will never, ever go away. Name one tax that has been abolished in the last 75 years in the US. The so-called FairTax cause is completely hopeless.
A VAT and/or national sales tax are stupid ideas. Next subject.
I agree that the US tax system is ridiculous. Anybody who does their own taxes will tell you that. So I would love to see a flat tax. But that is far different from a VAT or national sales tax.
The US government is simply spending too much. We are paying too much for defense that we don’t need anymore. Our government has too many employees. The Federal government is simply too big and needs to shrink.
Products are made in China because it is cheaper. Hopefully somebody, somewhere took economics and understands why the destruction of outmoded businesses is a good thing. Some of you forget that we used to say the same thing about Japan.
‘TWAS ONLY A DREAM
Curiously enough, I met Julia in Walmart the other day, and she seemed sad. I asked what the problem was, and she said she had a dream that she was the last of her kind, and the very thought was enough to drive her to Walmart. She said
I dreamed I was the last to lead
A life I didn’t earn
A life of thoughtless effort and ennui
Where government met every need
A grant at every turn
An elegant French boyfriend named Henri
And in that dream a darkened cloud
Came down in floating mist
And covered all the earth in darkened storm
I was so scared I screamed out loud
As in the dream a fist
Smashed everything I owned in my old dorm
And there I was without degrees
Just cast out in the cold
Alone with not a Federal grant in sight
A world full of Simon Legrees
And I was getting old
I tell you it was just a horrid night
I walked for miles until I came
Upon a fearful wraith
Who looked at me with dark forbidding eyes
He smiled and said we’re both the same
For I too lacked the faith
To trust my brains and skills to win the prize
And now the world that we have built
Of government and sloth
Has crumbled into ruin and despair
You see me now just filled with guilt
Arrayed in foul sack cloth
Alone, dead to the world and none to care
And now the tumbrel comes for thee
For thou hast eaten well
Of fruits belonging to the humble few
Who worked and slaved only to see
Elected imps of hell
Give all they sweated for to you and me
Come join me in my ill fit grave
We are, you see, the last
We squandered both our lives and now it’s done
We took whatever the State gave
We had a fine repast
But now it’s over, we’ve seen our last sun
She shook her head and gave a smile
Said it was but a dream
I’ve got a handsome Pell Grant in the works
Thanks to the State I’ve made my pile
I’ve licked up all the cream
And all the rest of you are just plain jerks
We have what amounts to a %5 state sales tax in Hawaii. Counties have their own additions to this. The state tax is on every transaction so that the final cost of all transactions pyramids.
It all goes into the state general fund which is the plaything of well-connected-democrats.
Whatever you call it. It is a bad idea for citizens and a way for the government to steal and grow.
+1 for the Silent Cal film clip. Sad that they had caption it, because most Americans have no idea who he is.
I like the FairTax idea, but one minor quibble about the video. It claims that tax cheaters couldn’t avoid FairTax, but I highly doubt that. Perhaps they couldn’t cheat to the same extent, but people are always finding ways around sales taxes.
And as always Wretchard, a masterful job of framing the issue (especially the last two paragraphs). I can’t come to any conclusion other than the entity which was formerly known as the United States has bifurcated into two de facto countries residing within a common (for now) political border (see VDH, Subotai’s essays on The Rottie).
The Left lives off of the oxygen generated by the conflict between the pro and anti defense conservatives. The Socialists may see themselves as feudal princes ruling over the peasantry but that does not mean that big government is an inherent part of their vision. If we ever do attain their dream of a deindustrialized Green Utopia with Philosopher Kings and compliant servants then government in the modern sense may indeed seem to wither away. The Left want a big government now for two reasons.
1. Jobs for the Boys.
2. To starve the Military.
Their medium term goal has always been to weaken the Capitalist Powers. That mans to weaken, deindustrialize deenergize and demilitarize, the United States. Solyndra shoved some millions into crony’s pockets but mostly it was part of a program to bloat the budget and empower calls to cut the now supposedly unaffordable DoD.
We should reverse their strategy. We should double the Defense budget and then double it again. If both levels of government, state and federal, spent the same percentages of GDP on each function, defense justice energy health education transportation etc. that they did 50 years ago the economy would prosper and the world would be a safer place.
The United States is still the world’s largest manufacturer. The US produces their products with ever fewer employees. Efficiency is important to industry but it just doesn’t allow for make-work anymore.
dla @ 5: Products are made in China because it is cheaper.
Exactly. Taxes are one factor of about twenty.
Hopefully somebody, somewhere took economics and understands why the destruction of outmoded businesses is a good thing.
Comparative advantage and creative destruction, right. That’s what needs to happen to nineteenth and twentieth century economics, they’re gone and over. Need a comprehensive and more systematic view. For the rest, I’ll let Billy Preston tell it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ5-BTdcqjk
mso @ 10: The United States is still the world’s largest manufacturer. The US produces their products with ever fewer employees. Efficiency is important to industry but it just doesn’t allow for make-work anymore.
Well, two things. First, by some statistics, China is already larger. Second, even if the US is largest, that doesn’t mean we haven’t given away too much. Third, I sincerely doubt many US figures, I fear they include many components made in China and then double-counted as US content. Fourth, a ton of US productivity is in military goods, which I’m happy about but are something of a dead end macroeconomically. Fifth, if none of that were true except for the fact that efficiency eliminates jobs, we’d still have a serious conundrum of how to organize society and distribute wealth. OK that’s more than two, I’m just printing more stuff all day long, ain’t that how it’s done now?
Government in the United States was intended to guarantee the Inalienable Rights of Man (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or maybe self realization) to be honored. It has done that in fits and starts, but for a large part of the 20th Century, it became more interested in re-disributing income to create the ever nebulous quantity called “equality”.
The American notion of “Equal before the Law” was supposed to mean there would be no Dukes and Duchesses, no enumerated nobility to be rewarded with special privledges and tread upon the unwashed majority. This has sort of worked also, with and expanding number of people considered equal before the law.
Equal before the law was then mutated into “Equality” in all things. Which got us through the collectivist programs of the New Deal, the Square Deal, the New Frontier, The Great Society, and on and on.
We have now reached a point where people have actually become suspicious of the pronouncements of new equalities to be imposed, as the latest iteration of the Miracle of 20th Century Equality is now Hope and Change, which is really more about cannibalizing what remains to continue to try and buy votes to perpetuate the present people in power, for the purpose of being in power.
The personality of “Julia”, although a political construct, has some connections to reality. There really are people that resemble her. And they vote. Because this is the new virtue that has been implanted in the heads of many people, and while they won’t think for themselves and realize there is no virtue in being a thief, it is still the new socially proscribed virtue.
If Julia represents today’s female fool, then Fair Tax reveals some male issues. Fellows don’t care for engines anymore – instead they like videos of engine mechanics set to thunderous music. It’s absurd drama, just ridiculous. Everything is a movie or a video game now.
That’s not really the point however. Julia’s life is planned like a pet. In time, she will become a truly different species from the government that keeps her. Wrench guy wants his freedom, but China took that away! His own tools mock him while Fu Manchu laughs treacherously.
What do Julia and Wrench Guy have in common? The fact that they are allowed. All third ways get absorbed into “left and right” politics, or are dismantled. There is nothing we can do.
Holey moley I just got turned into Korean cuisine by the pjmedia spam monster while editing a comment. I’ve been canned.
Not too surprised to see several “it can’t work” criers here. Hi, Josh. Professional scoffers watch BC closely and attempt to hijack certain dangerous (in their eyes) threads. Others of us repudiate their defeatism or lack of insight and intellect.
First, China. Apparently no one reading English is supposed to understand today’s China is not next Monday’s China. Change over there is afoot! Don’t count on anything there you can’t hold in your hand. What they excel in today might be their Achilles Heel next month. China is imploding, which brings uncertainty to them and opportunity for others.
Second. Full US employment. Existing US businesses have been holding back hiring for a l-o-n-g-g-g time because of excessive wage and benefit costs, and other associated uncertainties. Even so, hiring has begun to creep up. You just can’t hold the US down. If a regime change occurs and congress has a third of a brain hiring could turn around during 2Q-13 and we could be off to the employment races by next summer. If the regime changes.
Third, taxes. Fairtax might possibly not be the best answer. But we know an income tax is not the answer so why can’t we at least talk about it? Something has to change. The best opportunity to make a change comes when political upheaval is taking place. Duh! Isn’t that now? Or is more bad stuff coming down the pike and the losers out there want us to emulate them, hunker down and quietly fade away?
Here’s a good reason for the Paulson Soros gold buying binge. The central bankers
are buying gold.
…………
According to the World Gold Council, the amount of gold bought by the central banks of the world absolutely soared during the second quarter of 2012. The 157.5 metric tons of gold bought by the central banks of the world last quarter was an increase of 62.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012 and a 137.9 percent increase from the second quarter of 2011.
Prior to 2009, the central banks of the world had been net sellers of gold for about two decades. But now that has totally changed, and last quarter central banks stocked up on gold in quantities that we have not seen before….
At 157.5 metric tons, gold buying among central banks came in at its highest quarterly level since the sector became a net buyer of the precious metal in the second quarter of 2009, data in the organization’s quarterly Gold Demand Trends report show.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/startling-evidence-that-central-banks-and-wall-street-insiders-are-rapidly-preparing-for-something-big
Some weeks ago a project I was working on had to do a lookup on a US government database. The agency provided the data free via a website and initially, we simply hit the form programmatically but eventually intended to use their API as we made more calls and the usage ramped up. They provided the API for free, so what could go wrong?
But applying for the free API was a nightmare. We learned about 3 weeks into the application that since weren’t going to print any of the lookup information that we were supposed to use another “track”. Ok then. What track?
A menu of several possible tracks was provided. But everyone we spoke to declined to tell us which to choose. They were not authorized to provide advice, though once we made a choice they could tell us if we chose poorly. It was like opening unmarked doors behind which there could be a man with a Thompson or a buxom blond. Open the door and find out. A bureaucrat sat behind each door and then said “you have chosen the wrong door. This is not for you. Try another.” No one would take responsibility for advising us what door to try.
It wasn’t as if we were doing something odd or strange. All we wanted to do is use the API provided and would you tell us which form to fill? But no one would say.
Nobody wants to say anything any more. Recently I’ve come across boilerplate in correspondence that mentions Circular 230 disclosures, normally accompanied by the ominous words, “owing to circular 230 I am no longer able to offer you any advice and answer any questions because the level of care mandated goes beyond anything I can reasonably say”.
The worst thing about dealing with government is that it’s like being in Kafka’s The Castle. They’ll tell you that you have a problem but won’t tell you what it is.
I earn a small amount in royalties from my books. But it turns out that a table ofjust how much the IRS should withhold was nowhere available. I couldn’t ask the publisher. They wouldn’t tell me. I couldn’t call the IRS. They wouldn’t tell me either. They all referred me to a tax professional, who I would have gladly engaged if I were Steven King. But if you’re dealing with a few bucks, who hires an international tax lawyer to answer the simple question how much should I ask the publisher to withhold?
I solved the problem eventually or at least I think I did. But you never know. If you have to ask then you probably got it wrong. Recently my mother planned a trip to the US. She had to fill out a visa waiver form online. But the travel agent was not allowed to help her. Fortunately she is sound of mind and understands English perfectly. But what if she were Chinese or Korean or were somewhat slow in the head from age? Without help those people couldn’t fill out that form for all the rice in China.
At some point by pure dumb luck we got the API credentials from from the US government agency, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how. The approval came when we accidentally pushed the right button. Then we were asked to complete a customer satisfaction survey on a webform, which promptly gave a 404. I was tempted to call their help line to complete the survey but I was afraid they would say “we can’t tell you.”
That’s not to mention the Australian tax system, where I file a partial return quarterly and a big one yearly. There’s taxes on income and taxes on consumption, there are rebates and allowances. There’s this and there’s that. Holy Toledo. I figure that everybody is probably breaking the law somewhere along the line simply because nobody understands what they should do.
One thing about the Australian tax system is it discourages low skilled workers from taking a job. Once you start earning money then they start cutting back on your welfare payments. You lose welfare when you work. So for some the hassle of earning $30 bucks extra week after tax and filling out the paper work just isn’t worth it. So they just stay home watching Modern Families.
If there’s any advantage to abolishing the income tax and supplanting it with one based on consumption, much of it will probably consist of being rid of this forest of rules. It’s a like a deadweight process that just eats up cycles to no apparent purpose. Some government is necessary. Some level of taxation is necessary. But there must be a better way to run a railroad.
New Math Will Drive a U.S. Manufacturing Comeback
by Sirkin and Zinser | 10:10 AM March 6, 2012
Harvard Business Review
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/new_math_will_drive_a_us_manuf.html
HBR originally believed the return of manufacturing from China would start in 2015. Now they think it will start much sooner because of the shifting math.
“I figure that everybody is probably breaking the law somewhere along the line simply because nobody understands what they should do.”
It has been argued that is the purpose of the complexity.
There are no silver bullets. Going to a VAT or POS tax would only work if there was a “Balanced Budget Amendment”. Combined, the two would reduce the size of government and place limits on corruption. Corruption is the main driving force behind the growth of government. All those 2%’ers get more money as the spending grows. Only with defence, it is a ‘ell of a lot more then 2%.
United Technologies Has been busted for selling/helping China build Attack Choppers;
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/17/senators-press-pentagon-to-freeze-out-defense-contractor-over-china-chopper/
We need to cancel the Blackhawk contract and buy French. Charge the entire Board of United with treason, then hang them when found guilty. Then run vertical on the deal and put everybody involved in jail for a 5 to 10. United didn’t take it seriously because the clown posse doesn’t take it seriously. They see the military as a jobs program.
Charlie don’t surf.
Wretchard (#17) I am confused, Are you Big Government or Small Government? With this statement from you, you sound like a advocate for Big Government; “But what if she were Chinese or Korean or were somewhat slow in the head from age? Without help those people couldn’t fill out that form for all the rice in China.” The way it was done before and the video clip also portrays it is “Family, Church and Neighbors” this is what American use to do, Family took c are of Family, if more was needed your Church Family was there and again then the Neighbors, the only time the “Government” was called was when it was a problem for the whole Town/City. People seemed to live and get what was needed fine without “Multi-Language” Forms or “Government” provided Translators, it was when ”The Government” started providing these things that our society started to develop major cultural differences and drift apart.
It’s not really true that the federal income tax is the greatest threat to us.
That tax and the freedoms with which the federal government uses that tax for its own purposes is SYMPTOM of the threat.
The threat is the disrespect of the citizens for their own freedoms to venture their lives. To take the chance to win or lose. That chance on which America is built. Does any thinking person think the Founding Fathers didn’t know that life isn’t fair?
They did know unfairness in social context was decided not fateful. Decided by people who were “better” than others and controlled them economically as well as socially. Called themselves elite, noble, aristocrat and yes royal RULERS. Sound familiar?
The insights of the Founding Fathers, all different in experience and personal histories, talents and desires, was that individuals if given freedoms protected from control of these “betters” had the best chance using their own intelligence, talents, drive and effort to fulfill their individual dreams. They provided the system of society that would advance THEIR DREAM which created a NEW MAN from the double helix, the DNA of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the USA who became the model for the world..
The real threat to us as Americans is THE SICKNESS of the virus infecting the American DNA, propagated by the feel your pain compassionate liberals in the lie that government is benevolent and caring. Their DREAM of control to counter the Founding Fathers’ KNOWLEDGE that government is an ever more hungry beast if not harnessed. Thus, their LIMITS on government in the Constitution, i.e. make-up of their new world for their new man.
Americans of the past half century have fed the beast and let it out of its cage. And now must feed it more and more and more until there’s nothing left. The beast licks its chops and when the feed is gone goes for the feeders, Americans themselves. And THAT if the real threat to us now and if we are to remain American into the future.
We have to put the government beast back into the cage and guard that it stays there. Unless we don’t care for ourselves as American free of government control but prefer mewling at the teat of government. UNTIL the milk dries up.
FairTax.org The FairTax is the way to go! There are two books out on this and they answer most the questions. It will be a very complicated process, won’t happen in a single session of congress.
Then we were asked to complete a customer satisfaction survey on a webform, which promptly gave a 404.
Modern life in a nutshell.
But that’s OK, the survey was a simple pull-down with the choices “very satisfied”, “satisfied”, and “I want to be audited”.
c @ 18: but since that article was written and published the Bernanke-negotiated trend in valuation of the yuan has reversed, and I’m not sure anything else in that article is any more than bushwah. there is a huge psychological factor in outsourcing, the management class gets the idea that it’s fashionable and a good idea, above and beyond its analytic merits in particular cases. so it siphons off, they do it because they can. there is a certain satisfaction in it, to the effete elite management class, like getting your sewage carted off miles away and kept invisible from your doorstep. and as long as there’s a communist in the white house you might as well go to China and deal with them there where they were never really that *serious* about communism per se except as an excuse for graft, while the one we have in the white house – get this – actually seems to *believe* it!
Develop the Green River Oil Fields which are on government land. Since the government owns the mineral rights let the government sell the oil on the market and use that revenue to fund themselves. Not direct taxes on the citizens. Abolish the IRS.
The tax system is ridiculously complex, to be sure; it badly needs a reboot. But the 800 lb gorilla is the vast bureaucracy, the concrete overshoes on our economy and Liberty. A rebuild of the Design Margin by whatever instrumentality will just move Leviathan to anonther feast. If we could begin to trim the Hyra’s heads, we could pull some slack back into the Margin.
Well come to think of it, the IRS wouldn’t be a bad place to aim our Vorpal Blade for the first stroke.
Josh@11 – Fifth, if none of that were true except for the fact that efficiency eliminates jobs, we’d still have a serious conundrum of how to organize society and distribute wealth.
Manufacturing is no longer the generator of low skill jobs that it once was. If it were, even more jobs would (and should) be outsourced if mfg were to survive. Organizing society for the purposes of distributing wealth is a losing game; it cannot be done.
Society must be organized to increase its wealth; food, clothing, tools, housing, etc. Distribution of wealth is a function of religion, not government. It is not possible for the government to properly distribute wealth; they will support drug addicts, thieves, the lazy and the undeserving, where locals would know who was who and distribute wealth accordingly.
This may not be as generous as we would like, but we’ve already spent all of our money and are about to consume what’s left of our seed.
Re: #3. Josh
“…it wouldn’t bring back 10% of the jobs that have gone to China.”
Sure it will not, and any busy body activities aimed at this is a diversion. These jobs here are dead jobs. They went the way of manually driving nails in building houses. What do you think killed slavery? Lofty rhetoric or extremely low productivity of slave labor? The way to “return” jobs is to create them. And to create them you have to overhaul K-10 educational system. And to overhaul k-10 you have to loosen the grip of the unions and radically change curriculum. And… good lick with that.
PS. if any of these jobs will “return”, they will go to such things as 3D printing, not to relatively low educated people. And even highly educated people will find it hard to get employment due to tremendously increased machine productivity. Had you ever heard that in some processes people involved are the weakest link?
Talk about the abolition of those once common ideals- go see Dinesh D’Souza’s “Obama: 2016″, based on his book, coming to theatres hopefully near you:
http://2016themovie.com/media/
Josh, Grrr, et al,
Before we bring back those jobs from China( it has been estimated that the US lost 50k jobs a month to China since China was brought into the WTO), we might just try to keep those jobs here we have now for our Lightworkin’ Dear Leader Buraq has more “Hope and Change” in store for us. Rick Moran at PJM warns of the coming regulatory cliff, :ttp://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/08/18/the-regulatory-cliff-just-as-dangerous-as-the-fiscal-cliff/
The American Association of Independent has estimated more than 4000 new regulations have been squirreled away to be sprung on us next year.
Am I big government or small government? I can’t see how this matters where you are faced with what amounts to trick questions. I think that if government decides to impose a regulation they have the obligation to make it comprehensible. A small government would have fewer regulations and a bigger one more regulations. But in either case it owes you the decency to label things so you know what they do.
If a person pays 3,000 dollars for a ticket to the USA she ought to be entitled to help in filling out a form. Also, if the agency with the API was going to hire help desk people (and they were very courteous) if they can’t answer questions then what are they paid to do?
This brings up the matter of jobs. Someone, I forget who, argued that a man employed doing meaningless and unproductive work was doing damage to himself and the economic system. Many of the jobs which left for overseas were in industries or companies which had or have become uncompetitive. But that is exactly the kind of “work” that regulation, subsidy and monopoly creates. Solyndra, Chevy Volt and the vast legal industry are paying people in many cases to do nothing or work at a loss. This is a waste of human capital.
Could there be an automobile business in the US today? Maybe. After all there can be one in Germany. If companies can reconfigure themselves to be competitive a lot of positie things can happen.
The jobs that went to China are not coming back regardless of the tax system used. But wealth is not a finite pie with a fixed number of slices. Wealth can be created. The solution to the China jobs problem is to create new wealth. Americans have as much right to create wealth as do the Chinese.
Better tax systems, whether based on consumption or income will help Americans to create wealth. Anyhow, I thought that the early U.S. raised most of its revenues from consumption taxes. In the Federalist Papers didn’t Hamilton argue strongly in favour of consumption taxes instead of income tax? Consumption tax in place of income tax is not a new idea.
All-
You guys are all dealing with facets of the problem and some facets of the answer. It has taken ninety years to get to this point and it may take as long to get out of it. (This is why the “elect Ron Paul and everything will be fixed in two weeks” nostrum falls flat for thinking people.) All of these issues – China (who really took away jobs that workers priced themselves out of with union thuggery and labor laws, in most cases), creative destruction (buggy whip analogy applies), changes resulting from automation (the poster Blert has done an excellent job writing on this issue), and tax policy – need to be addressed for sure.
But at the core of the problem that is facing the West and the U.S. in particular is the defining up of the concept of “middle class” to ridiculous levels. The middle class hasn’t shrunk so much as people’s definition of it has changed – upwards. To hear it told nowadays, public school teachers, government workers, basic engineers who perform jobs for which there is a surplus of qualified people, office workers, semiskilled manufacturing job workers, low or middle managers, etc., all require 3000 square feet, the ability to fund their 2.3 college educations for the young’uns, two or three cars, two or three flat screens, and two travelling vacations a year plus a fully funded pension or they are somehow “oppressed” or that the middle class is shrinking. This is very real and by far the most corrosive factor. Basically most people today are unhappy unless they have a level of affluence and material joy that their parents and grandparents would have called “rich” without regard to the job or work they perform or its worth in a free market.
It is this ever rising revolution of expectations combined with an inability to put one’s own situation into any sort of historical perspective that creates a population highly susceptible to the whole middle class entitlement regime. Reasons for this are numerous – technological, cultural, religious (more lack than anything else), failure of education due largely to educators being second-rate, a population not yet evolved to deal with visually compelling media, perhaps even a little of the distilled one’s rants about changing gender roles.
Yes, the entitlement mentality of the welfare recipient crowd and their government enablers who profit by keeping them on welfare is awful, and needs to be addressed. Yes, the fraud and corruption of the banksters and skimmers and rent-seekers like OSHA consultants who depend on regulatory pressure for their skim and who need to be whacked in the head and put on a very short leash needs to be addressed.
But it is the notion of the great vast middle that they are entitled to have a lifestyle of great comfort and “stuff” to be “middle class” that is croaking us.
I don’t remember the British MP who said it, but I’ll paraphrase here. He said that most of our problems stem from people seriously overvaluing the worth of their labor in terms of the material goods that it is worth. Unzip that, and much of the problems go away. Then we can tackle the other issues Josh, Unsk, and Grr, and others, have brought up.
I can get used to becoming rich, even at the cost of calling myself “middle class” the problem is paying for it. To pay for it you need real actual increases in productivity. If you’re going to consume more goods and services you have to produce more goods and services. What goods and services do artificial jobs produce?
One reason for the decline in the legal market is probably that the market is pricing it down. There is a legitimate demands for 10,000 attorneys. What about a million? Ten million? There is a demand for some gender studies professionals, but there is probably not a demand for 2,500,000 of them. Going back to school and getting a doctorate in gender studies because you can’t find a job with a master’s degree in it doesn’t solve the problem. The incremental value of the 2,500,001st gender studies graduate is very low.
Ultimately one has to produce to consume. What happens sometimes in bubbles is that parasites attach themselves and too often take over the proceedings. The dog has to keep howling long after its time. The dog knows it is time to go or change, but the ticks don’t. This may be happening to China. It is being brought down by the ticks that multiplied during the phenomenal growth years.
There’s an article in Prospect Magazine titled You’ll Never Be Chinese, written by a Brit who lived, married and raised a family in China — and is now leaving it.
“Made in China” is not a state of nature. One day it won’t be true. History, like a very long distance bicycle race, is one in which the lead changes hands at whiles. Although it is to be regretted, the recession is burning out the stuff that can’t be sustained. But there will come a time when it will turn around and the advantage will belong to the person ready to grab the Yellow Jersey. It will never go to the person who has decided his day is permanently over.
on taxes:
2. stevesmith: It’s either a consumption tax or an income tax – can’t have both like we do now
I completely agree and would like to take it further – that we eliminate all taxes except for one. I’m not even all that concerned with what sort of tax it is, income, sales, excise, property, whatever. All have their negatives. Unfortunatley, right now we “enjoy” the negatives of all of them because we have all of them. An income tax discourages productivity and imposes huge compliance costs. Sales taxes conscript every retail clerk into the tax collector’s profession and also have huge compliance costs. Property taxes make us all rentors with the gubbmint as our landlords. etc. Our sad lot is that when confronted by the need to choose the lessor of several evils, we’ve choosen all of them.
The other problem of course is that by having multiple forms of taxation, politicians are able to play a Kansas City Shuffle scam, misdirecting people while stuffing their pockets.
4. Rick: The income tax will never, ever go away. Name one tax that has been abolished in the last 75 years in the US. The so-called FairTax cause is completely hopeless.
Interesting choice of time-frame, 75 years. That’s about 5 years short of a Strauss and Howe saeculum. We’re just now entering the window for making radical changes. I’m not sure if the income tax will be abolished, but I’m pretty sure over the next fifteen years it is a possibility.
on manufacturing jobs to China:
5. dla: Products are made in China because it is cheaper… Some of you forget that we used to say the same thing about Japan.
No, products are made in China because the freakin’ commies who run the land that invented the concept of bureaucratic mandarins are more business-friendly than the lawyers, politicians and regulators currently in power in the United States. Wage and tax savings from manufacturing in China do not offset the costs of transportation, warehousing, supply-chain management, shoddy quality and general untrustworthiness that come with outsourcing prouction to China. But those aren’t the only costs. The Regulatory burden on US firms is massive.
Between the EPA, EEOC, NLRB, FTC, FDA, the Worker’s Comp scams, and general litigiousness, it’s not only expensive but also unpredictable to make something in the US. It takes years to break even on a new manufacturing facility. During that time, your factory is a sitting duck for parasites to come extort money from you. Making something in the US just exposes you to the opportunistic leeches empowered by our oversized government and broken legal system.
In contrast, retail facilities are cheap to build out and quick to recoup costs on. A well-run store turns over inventoroy 6x a year, so at most you have 2 months worth of exposure if the local Lord of the Manor decides to shake you down.
26. MSO: Manufacturing is no longer the generator of low skill jobs that it once was.
Manufacturing is still and has always been a generator of new ideas. It was a pair of bicyle mechanics who flew at Kitty Hawk. It was machinists who’d gained their skills building conventional stuff who allowed the theories of physicists to be turned into atomic power. Silicon Valley exists because a series of electronics manufacturers grew, pospered, and spawned new companies.
The self-discipline and feedback that comes from needing to make something that works, the insights that a person develops while developing the skill to fabricate components, those are critical to creating new things. Ceasing to manufacture means more than just losing jobs, it means losing the ability to innovate. Being human isn’t just about using tools, it’s about making them, If we cease making tools, we cease being human.
@ 21. Your comment made me think of “The Little Shop of Horrors”. Feed me, feed me.
ta
FWIW. A couple hours ago I picked up an extra pair of [overpriced] eyeglasses I’d ordered whose frames I chose based on what was presented by the salesman -per my request- as tough and fitted with stainless steel hardware for saltwater resistance. They certainly looked and felt tough. I didn’t pay much mind when I chose them beyond noting they were from the shops’ US Army line and looked rather better than I expected for general issue spec glasses, but upon looking them over at home I noticed that they were of the “US ARMY (TM)” brand, and were labeled as their “Schartzkopf CE” model (nope, there was no ‘w’ but they apparently made up for it by throwing in an errant ‘t’ in their marketing nod to ol’ Stormin’ Norman) …And screen printed right next to the tiny US Army star logo were the words; “Frame China”…The opposite side simply said; “Design USA”.
Just shiny!
America, frell yeah!
Occasionally I mention the change in the meaning of the word “responsibility.” It used to mean that you are given a job to do and some freedom of action — decision making power — with which to do it. You had the “ability to respond” and the obligation. You were judged on the totality of the job you did. Some mistakes were expected. It was once consider a key strength in American society that we gave responsibility to those close to the action.
And that is why it was attacked. Yahoo’s making choices! Can’t have that. These days when you say “who is responsible” you mean who is to blame. So every job gets fenced in by regulations and every mistake puts you at risk — unless you are protected by some powerful organization.
For years I’ve said that payroll taxes and most business taxes simply show up in the price of the products we buy. These taxes are paid on products and services produced in the US but not by products and services that are imported — a disadvantage for US workers. These taxes should be abolished and replaced with a sale tax that is charged on imports as well as products produced in the US. This would also make US products more competitive in world markets. This suggestion is called regressive whenever I make it (even here). Regressive is a magic word. Use the word regressive and you win the argument. Unemployment is not regressive.
A government that consumes 25 percent of the GNP is consistent with long term, robust growth. At 30 percent growth slows but is still good. At 40 percent (we are a bit over that in the US) the economy stagnates. Over 50 percent (where we are headed) it stops and likely contracts. I suggest we lower total government spending at all levels to 30 percent of GNP. This is, of course, unfair (another magic word).
I predict a regulatory tsunami in November regardless of who wins the election. If Romney tries to roll them back he will be unfairly hurting the children in a regressive manner.
The jobs sent to China probably will come back, but most will be in the form of highly automated manufacturing, “3D printing” and nanotech. A few will come back for other reasons. A friend of mine shut down the factory he had set up overseas and reopened a closed Rubbermaid factory in NC. The reason was that shipping costs for his low-tech product increased so much that it more than eliminated the cost advantage of the lower cost labor.
So the guy who drops out of high school or even graduates with a diploma but is functionally illiterate will still be, at best, sweeping the floor in the factory – until a machine replaces him. I even recall hearing on NPR over a decade ago an exasperated factory owner describing how a local politcian was urging her to provide a whole bunch of low-skill jobs. “I told her we don’t have any low skill jobs!”
And low skill jobs are a must because the politicians have allied with the Teacher’s Unions to screw up education so badly that simple repetitive and easily automated tasks are are about all most of the workforce can do – when you can get them to show up for work at all.
But no fear! There will be plenty of government mandates that will require employment for all those lawyers, gender studies majors, and black studies graduates. Or that’s the plan, anyway.
Heard our local House Rep on the radio this week, describing how insane the regulations were getting. He said that the EPA was about to impose new particulate matter regulations on concrete plants that will shut them all down. Where did the new standards come from? Well, they have been implemented in France, which is the EPA’s inspiration. And in France as a result they shut down all the concrete plants and moved the production to Morrocco, where the French version of the EPA has no control. As a result, not only have jobs been lost in France but the price of concrete there has increased by 400%.
The first leader to say “Eff you, Feral Government!” will start a tidal wave.
Investment in human capital is about teaching people to do real jobs; it is about creating a system to promote lifelong learning. Because you have to keep learning. An IT manager once told me, “I notice that you fixed the problem, but it took you only ten minutes to type in the code. What did you do the rest of the hour?” I answered, “figuring out what code to type in in those ten minutes.”
Eighty percent of your time can be used figuring out what to do. Once you know what to do, the actual execution is relatively easy. Someone once told me that if you divided the acquisition cost of software by the total number of lines of code it represented you would discover that over the long haul the shop produced about five lines of production code per programmer per day.
There are many professions in which it is impossible to teach you the final answer. About the best an education and experience can do give you the habits of mind to figure it out.
What automation does is redefine a job from spending a 100% of the time doing something to an activity that is 80% figuring things out and 20% doing the something. A job is what you can’t automate — yet. At the limit only the geniuses will have jobs and then the final genius will find a way to replace himself.
That is not necessarily bad. If we lived in a world of wish machines, we really wouldn’t have to work. Do I want a yacht. Bada-bing. Do I want to visit the Andean highlands? A robotic limo pods comes right to my door to take mt to the airport.
In a world where there’s real and burgeoning aggregate productivity, we can give everyone a paycheck by transfer payments. That’s the Blue Model. The problem with the Blue Model was that eventually the transfer payments got bigger than the real income. It spent faster than it earned. For a while fancy accounting hid the problem, but over time it became evident that society was eating the golden eggs quicker than the goose could lay them. The only way that’s going to change is by bringing back productivity.
The practical case for reducing big government isn’t from some abstract hatred of the notion but from the circumstance that it’s gummed up the works so badly that it imperils everything, including its own tax base.
15. 49erDweet:
Hooray to all you’ve stated!
See this about China:http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/mark-kitto-youll-never-be-chinese-leaving-china/
It is easy to avoid an income tax – just don’t declare “earned” income.
The only way to avoid a comprehesive sales tax (stocks,goods,services,property,used,new) is to not buy anything. This catches all including illegals, cash folks, barter folks at some point. Fair and simple and no mess. At the end of the year you are even with the feds. Texas has a nice state starting model – state sales tax (needs to be expanded to include services), 2 year budget, cannot exceed income and if a business fails to pay its sales tax take they shut you down pronto. Every visible business has to have that state tax certificate displayed. No mercy at this level. The feds can take years to get aroused at income tax non payment. The sales tax eliminates the corporate tax and all its negative growth implications and the subsidy corruption. You buy it – you pay a tax.
The worst effect of the income tax is the IRS, which violates any right to privacy. The complexity and intrusiveness of the tax code mainly results from determining taxable income. Simplifying the rates does not affect this.
Eliminating withholding would be a good start, though.
” It has taken ninety years to get to this point and it may take as long to get out of it. (This is why the “elect Ron Paul and everything will be fixed in two weeks” nostrum falls flat for thinking people.)”
If that were true it would have taken the Colonists some hundred odd years to complete the revolution. Me thinks you think too much.
Revolutionary change starts very small yet the effects are seen as a switched on light. We want less govt intrusion in our lives both private and public. We won’t reach that goal by listening to thinking people who don’t want to invest in the long hard slog. The truth being that it is a dry tinder stick and very stiff going at the beginning but once you overcome that initial tension the break comes quickly.
wretchard: The incremental value of the 1,000,001th lawyer is of course zero. The problem is that this is the same as the value of the 1st.
Lawyers, tax accountants, bankers, tax collectors and the sort of regulators who shut down offices because the slope of the disabled ramp is 0.1 degrees too steep all have a value of zero. The real challenge is to reduce the number of all of these people as far as possible. By violent means, if nothing else will serve.
Questions about the Fair Tax are not all “Professional Scoffers”. There are legitimate questions and problems that have to be dealt with in any of the proposed alternatives.
I think we can agree that the current system is non-functional and counter productive. I won’t say it is the worst possible, because I am sure that our regime minders will pass that on and the regime will take that as a challenge.
My primary worry is that Fair Tax will morph into a VAT. Has there ever been a consumption based tax system that has not? And I note that it is not as perfect as claimed. There is a black market economy out there and it will not disappear. Yeah, eventually money will be spent legally somewhere, but that happens now with the income tax. Every black market transaction avoids tax. Which will probably lead to the country being over-run with “Revn-ooers” and spying on every transaction a’ la the IRS. And being a Federal system, you can expect state and local Fair Tax/VATs too.
A Flat Tax leaves the IRS in place. And returns would still have to be filed if there were any deductions, exemptions, or credits. I can kinda see it though, with one proviso. Make every receiver of income have to write a check every single month to the IRS for the amount owed. Just so that they could see how much government cost.
In any case, assuming we still have a hope of a constitutional republic after January; we need to talk the pro’s and con’s out.
Oh, # 17 Wretchard; we have a similar situation for benefits [welfare or disability] disappearing if you earn anything. I have a disabled daughter. Literally anything she earns comes off her disability check instantly, and is assumed to be permanent income. Which discourages her going to look for any jobs, in case it does not last or the company lays people off. It would mean starting the 6 month to a year process of getting back on disability from scratch with no income in the meantime.
If you are a single mother on welfare, the first benefits to go if you get any income are medical and child care. Thus, they make the rational decision not to work, because it will cost more to work than they can earn, and endanger the health of their child. If I had a magic wand for the welfare system, and could not just make 75% of the bureaucrats running it disappear, I would give anyone trying to come off of welfare and/or disability to a job a year before their benefits were touched, so that they could get established and join the workforce; and the last thing I would take away would be child care and medical; unless on your new employer’s insurance plan, or making enough to pay for child care.
Subotai Bahadur
“If there’s any advantage to abolishing the income tax and supplanting it with one based on consumption, much of it will probably consist of being rid of this forest of rules.”
I recall that in 1993 a small group of US Senators – inclduing Warren Rudman – did a study that showed that the cost to the private sector of complying with IRS regulations was an additional 40 cents for every actual $1 in taxes collected by the Federal Government. What with Sarbanes Oxley and other regs enacted since then, I would guess that the 40 cents is a much larger number now.
JMH #34:
“Manufacturing is still and has always been a generator of new ideas.”
A recently read a truly fascinating book, “The Most Powerful Idea in the World” about how steam power was developed. The author described the conditions for innovation to be encouraged and that in turn led to Great Britain’s economic power in the 1700′s and later. I wish someone would write another book on how all those vital conditions are under attack today. And the worst attack is the idea that “You did not build that yourself.”
“If we cease making tools, we cease being human.”
This is a really great point.
The Wright Brothers did their own science, too. I recommend this book about them: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486402975/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
I review it here on my website:
http://sarahrolph.com/bookshelf.html#WAO
nmu @ 32: this ever rising revolution of expectations
Is a good point, but OTOH somewhat justified cuz we have an oversupply of labor just because we already have an oversupply of material goods, so insofar as rising expectations means lots of good junk our wish has already come true.
jfs @ 43: ” It has taken ninety years to get to this point and it may take as long to get out of it. (This is why the “elect Ron Paul and everything will be fixed in two weeks” nostrum falls flat for thinking people.)”
If that were true it would have taken the Colonists some hundred odd years to complete the revolution.
I’m not sure how that follows, but it just so happens it *did* take the colonists that long or longer, you can choose any starting point from about 1765 on out (or even a hundred years earlier), on out to the end of the Civil War and then some, as those 90 years. Or maybe it’s continuous and never been stable yet.
–
(I dropped a long post earlier today that no doubt would have settled all other outstanding questions, so it goes, but included a long rant about the voodoo economics of imagining some new technology is going to bring jobs back to the US, one will note this is one of Obambus’ most dearly held ideas and the motivation behind everything from Solyndra to the Chevy Volt)
You can’t move the point of taxation later in the earn-save-spend cycle without taxing something twice. In the case of the fair tax, it instantly confiscates 20% of your savings – money on which you’ve already paid income tax and now will pay a “replacement” consumption tax as well when you spend it.
This is not a good deal for people with savings.
The flat tax has all the virtues and none of the vices, except the democrats will always raise the rates on the high end, putting us back where we are now quickly enough.
That could be combatted by an economic education, which might work if it could be put in the form of soap opera for the women whose tastes edit the news.
Jobs go to China for two reasons, one bad and one good.
The bad one is overregulation in the US.
The good one is that more output comes if China does that work, for which look up “comparative (not competitive) advantage,” a very interesting and unintuitive economic fact.
Comparative advantage says there’s work for everybody. The economics department chairman sends the secretary to deliver papers to the dean even though the chairman walks faster than the secretary. The secetary has a comparative advantage in walking, owing to its freeing the chairman to do chairman work, so the total is greater with that allocation of work.
Regulate enough, though, and there’s neither a chairman nor a secretary.
One comment in one of the threads said something like “what you right wing nuts are afraid of is the triumph of compassionate socialism”. Would that it were true. In reality socialism never flattened the income distribution. It simply transformed it into a bimodal one. One set of incomes for the great unwashed and another set of incomes from the nomenklatura. Show me a a hard core socialist country and I’ll show you an aristocracy.
Victor Davis Hanson argues that California has now been transformed into two states.
The interesting question is: what is driving this bifurcation? My guess is that cost signals are being suppressed in favor of politically correct metrics. People do stuff under the goad of ideology, the actual effects be damned. And that in a nutshell is the difference between a command economy and a market economy. A command economy is directed by the Guardians. A market economy by the Invisible Hand.
My reply to Stoch and Subotai about the Right not getting duped by Globalists who want to overthrow Russia’s government and her Church is here:
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/08/13/middle-east-chaos-makes-israeli-iran-strike-more-likely/#comment-66321
Nuff said about that.
When redistribution of incomes is trumpeted by an adjacent lefty the conversation goes something like this.
Lefty: a caring society redistributes income
Righty: so you believe that people in rich countries should have some of their income transferred to people in poorer countries so that everyone in the whole world has exactly the same income?
L: that’s not what I said
R: your’e telling me that transferring your wealth to people who are poorer than you is not redistributing incomes?
L: redistributing incomes means taking wealth from rich people and giving to those of us who are poorer than them.
R: so it’s bad to redistribute your income to poor people but good to redistribute rich people’s income to you?
L: you are twisting my words
______________________________________________________________
In plain English, redistributing income is lefty code for hypocrisy and personal greed.
To me, a kind society would redistribute income to those who just are not capable of making it on their own, either temporarily or in the long term. But I suspect that kindness is not a word to be found in the lefty lexicon.
In other words, redistributing income is lefty code for hypocrisy and personal greed.
My only quibble Mr Smith is that almost everything is lefty code for hypocrisy and personal greed. Or envy. Social responsibility, income redistribution, sustainability, fairness, progressivism, affirmative action…
It all pretty much amounts to “give me your money and do what I say.”
wretchard 39,
“in a world of wish machines, we really wouldn’t have to work”
That would not be Paradise but Hell. Those who receive the manna from machines will be Eloi. Desires untempered by the knowledge of costs and labor will become progressively (Let’s play there’s that word again) debased. It will not be the Utopia Marx predicted, where Man will be “a philosopher in the morning, a gardener in the afternoon, and perhaps a poet in the evenings.” The Devil will stuff you with your basest desires, leaving room for nothing else, until even those pleasures become dull and hateful.
To paraphrase the old Spanish proverb, an ounce of family is worth a ton of government.
Victor Davis Hanson argues that California has now been transformed into two states.
What struck me about VDH’s description of my native state (other than the sad undeniable truth of it) is the similarity with China’s recurring problem. When the Chinese economy is allowed to prosper, the coastal trading cities get rich, but not much of that ever makes it into the interior. Eventually the inbalance gets too big and the peasants of the interior revolt, requiring either that the wealth of the coasts be redistributed (causing economic growth to crash), or the peasants have to be brutally repressed. Both choices often cause the government to fall.
China never developed a middle class aggricultural model, where people could rise above peasantry farming. California had a model producing upper class farmers for a time, so bountiful was the land. No more, the farmers are ruined, replaced by transient illegals with no real investment in the cultural heritage of the golden State.
People, WorldNetDaily is reporting that the Muslim Brotherhood are crucifying opponents, and especially Christians.
Here we go. . . the battle against principalities and powers and forces of darkness rages anew.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/arab-spring-run-amok-brotherhood-starts-crucifixions/
Bev (or anyone): Please suggest a candidate who will stop the crucifixion of Christians by the very Muslim “Brotherhood”.
BaoBao, remember there are ‘conservatives’ railing against ‘Putinism’ and with LGBT trendies who’ll assure you Moscow is exactly like East Berlin in 1989 — regardless of whether the people are better looking, the streets are cleaner, and the women less conceited than in D.C. and the population is now growing and soon to surpass that of New York.
There is no Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and if there are the Salafist Al-Zarqawi flag they fly was photoshopped into photos of them by Kremlin propagandists. There are only freedom loving Muslims fighting against Putinist Russian-backed Assadist oppression. No Christians are being murdered anywhere, and if some Serbs got murdered they had it coming for being dumb enough to think fellow Christians would come to their aid. Any notion that the Devil is cackling with delight at how easy it is to manipulate even ‘conservatives’ into a crusade against a Church that suffered more under Communism than any other is just your bitter clinger imagination.
There are humorless drones of the two legged variety who see no contradiction between decrying the Obamanoids war on the Catholic church and endorsing a propaganda if not (yet a) hot war on the Orthodox Church. Oceania’s eternal war with Eurasia covers over a multitude of hypocrisies
It’s Baobo. My name is Baobo.
I know you’re not going to endorse any candidates as it’s the last shred of ethical decency protecting this racket.
That’s all.
The state sponsored Minders came out in force on the Belmont Club four years ago for Vlad Putin’s Georgian War. The current blooming may be taken as an indication or a leading indicator that the game is afoot again.
Wretchard labored and produced a suite of user features called “Tocque” that included user Reputation voting and an Ignore option. It was lost when PJM rewrote their code, including the comment threading by Reply feature that Belmont Club users roundly rejected. If Tocque could be revived I would be thankful.
#43 JF Sanders:
Me thinks you think too much.
Or perhaps you, not enough?
For those who believe the Revolution just happened and happened quickly, google “King Phillip’s War”, and get back to me.
I would also add that the time from the original tea party to the Constitution took nearly twenty years. Not the first month of the first term of an elected official.
FC #44:
Lawyers, tax accountants, bankers, tax collectors and the sort of regulators who shut down offices because the slope of the disabled ramp is 0.1 degrees too steep all have a value of zero. The real challenge is to reduce the number of all of these people as far as possible.”
You left out another very important group, rent-seeking “private” businesses whose existence depends on regulatory pressure. These types are deadly to small business and always vote for more government intrusion into the economic realm.
Fletcher @ 44: “The incremental value of the 1,000,001th lawyer is of course zero.”
Would that it were so! If lawyers contributed nothing, they would simply be overhead. The problem is that the lawyers extract value for themselves by generating negative value for society as a whole. Indeed, there is probably a negative multiplier effect, where a classy attorney’s million dollar income costs the little guys several millions in lost jobs, lost income.
There is a view that the population of the United States has always been at war with itself. The War of Independence split the country; the Civil War split the country; World War I split the country, although that has largely been airbrushed out of history; Vietnam was an American civil war fought in someone else’s backyard. It seems rather that people like attorneys, politicians, media-scum are self-selecting as the Enemy Class in the next episode of this continuing US civil strife.
rhhardin #49:
First the “20% tax” is already there without the Fair Tax because the income and other taxes are BUILT INTO the current price structure. The Fair Tax proposes to eliminate all of that. At very worst, it’s a wash.
People who say that the Fair Tax will be an add on need to look at airline deregulation. They said that prices would go up. And they did, for a short while, before they came down drastically. Of course, many people in the airline industry blame deregulation for their less than perfect lives; the tax industry will do the same, and who gives a rat’s rump about them anyway?
Also, people with savings ARE unfairly taxed because they have to pay taxes on the “income” from those savings. People with income from the stock market have it the worst of all, since they are taxed on the capital gains and dividends they made in a given year but have no way to get un-taxed should those investments crash later. One year I made $85K in theoretical but taxable capital gains but in reality suffered a $250K loss.
56. The Sanity Inspector—
If you please, what is the proverb in Spanish?
A man says he has no need for a gun then he comes upon a armed robber and decries the lack of said gun. Same for lawyers. Necessary evils they are. And some are nice guys to boot.
And to those what say it is impossible to do, would you kindly sit down and quit bothering those of us who are in the process of doing it. You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem…
Wretchard @ 51
I don’t think the signals being suppressed is the total answer.
I think part of the answer is that there is a strong signal from the wealthy coastal areas of California that this is, indeed, the utopia that they desire.
They want the irrigation water in their towns, and screw the farmers. They want the river delta preserved for aesthetics, so screw the farmers. What is happening is indeed what is wanted. As you described, a bi-modal income and wealth distribution. True peasants (white Anglos who are dumb enough to stay, and the Mexicans migrants invited in) and the wealthy coastal Nomenklatura, who work in Silicon Valley, or other high tech, high wealth businesses.
This struction cannot stand for more than a generation, because the underclass that was created to serve the Nomenklatura Elites in their coastal enclaves will eventually revolt, as they do the work and they are more numerous and vigorous. The Middle Class in California is in the exit mode, and unless the economics and politics of the situation are changed, the exit will become a stampede.
Californians think they are the annointed people and that their fate is always golden. When the last prop-stick that supports the facade is kicked out, they will be the most surprised of all.
RE: the Entitlement Mentality
USA GDP consists of four components: personal consumption, which is the largest at 50-70%, depending on accounting; business investment; government spending; and exports. Personal consumption powered USA economic growth post-WWII, well over half a century.
Three events disrupted the trend line of growth, all of which derived from rapidly escalating developments relating to globalization: (1) export of jobs and the manufacturing base, (2) terrorist attack of 9-11, and (3) 2008 market collapse. Far from being second tier concerns to be addressed “down the road,” the three events define, in totality, the critical inflection point now faced by USA, not simply as a sovereign state, but as the dominant military and economic power in the modern world, and as the ideological beacon for freedom and the possibility of leading a civilized existence as individuals and as societies united by common interests.
The jobs and manufacturing export happened in an environment where Industrial Policy was banned as too closely related to Central Planning.
The terrorist attack of 9-11 was intended to destroy the financial center of western imperialist states in the escalating war with Islam. What is becoming more unclear with time is whether the players behind the Muslim saber-rattling are religious fanatics or transnational globalists, or some unholy combination of both. Viewing events in the ME outside the prism of globalist intent constricts the analytic template to something old, stale, and relatively useless.
The well-planned and superbly executed events leading to 2008 market collapse have been dissected in detail. The sense of entitlement that drove Wall St to transform itself from an elite band of well-compensated investment heavy-weights into a loose conglomeration of rogue traders generating unheard of returns from the largely unregulated OTC derivatives markets can only be condemned as an obscenity of self-interest that effectively nullified all else – country, neighbor, a higher power. Somebody went Galt but it wasn’t the Entitlement-Seeking Middle Class teat-suckers.
Comparing the intent and planning leading to each of these three events to the assistance programs provided by our government for the poor and the elderly is ludicrous and insulting.
RE: Income Redistribution
There’s slop and inefficiency in the system. It can be argued that welfare hurt the Black family. The problem with the set of federal assistance programs is the much larger venue of health care delivery systems in this country, of which Medicare is a part (and Medicaid but to a lesser extent.)
To elevate and equate the severity of the execution problems associated with (some of the) federal assistance programs with the criminal fraud perpetrated by Wall St, and the truly contemptuous behavior emanating from lesser known players within the global elite who are making fortuitous use of the ever-agitated army of ME religious fanatics, is obsessive and delusional.
Re. # 39. wretchard
“… A robotic limo pods comes right to my door to take mt to the airport.”
Given a very successful GOOG activities related to a driverless cars I fully expect such thing becoming a reality within 10 (may be 15) years.
Re. #45. Subotai Bahadur
“…and the last thing I would take away would be child care…”
Child care is one thing, but if you are talking about welfare payments per child, I wouldn’t be so sure: present system encourages serial breeders. I personally know quite few families with decent incomes receiving welfare and/or food stamps because they have 7-12 children.
David @ 68″ They want the irrigation water in their towns, and screw the farmers. They want the river delta preserved for aesthetics, so screw the farmers.”
I think those ideas may be a correct assessment of the inner circle of the Left. But the Average Joe Lefty just isn’t that smart. They can’t see the consequences of their actions, and it’s all about Me, Me, Me anyway.
Average Joe and Jill Lefty lives in a fantasy world into which they have been fully and completely brainwashed. In that world, there is always an unlimited source of funds for any Lefty whim, only stymied from its rightful use because it is stashed away someplace by evil, uncaring conservatives. So one should never need to wonder where the money is coming from. Average Joe and Jill Lefty has the emotional maturity and personal responsibility values of a horribly spoiled and deluded Valley Girl twit. And like such twits everywhere, there is never any concern where the money is coming from.
They want what they want and they want it now.
When talking to a Lefty it has almost become revoltingly rude in their circles to bring up the question of where is the money going to come from.
Auld @ 69 – You make some good points, but it’s crucial to add a couple. A complex system cannot be managed well if critical variables are overlooked.
The 2008 detonation required an explosive substrate. The federally distorted housing market was overheated by the policies implemented to provide greater opportunity for home ownership beginning with Andrew Cuomo during Clinton’s administration.
Subsequently, the market manipulators sewed their seeds of greed in the fertile soil of government interference. Repeal of Glass-Steagal in the waning days of Clinton was a nice touch to illustrate the incompetence of market regulation.
Point is, it’s the same old story. A well intentioned effort to help the poor and downtrodden ends in ruination (ruin of the nation). There will be no “growing our way to prosperity” by efforts emanating from the weak minds of the social warriors in government.
True, we have tremendous industrial might remaining, but lack that fundamental requirement for competition in a global market place – produce your product at a competitive cost. As productivity increases, less labor is required. Much of the workforce gets idled. Surprise – new jobs do not come looking for the hapless folks on government assistance. Greater numbers fall into the safety net of the benevolent government.
Productivity, measured instead by total output divided by total population, begins to fall precipitously. Prosperity is lost. Revenues fall. Taxes increase, killing more jobs.
The path out of the valley is long and painful. No government will ever succeed by pretending that scarce resources can be freely provided to whoever has unfulfilled needs, shelter, clothing, sustenance, medicine, whatever.
Those that have fallen into the safety net must be compelled “get off the rope” that is pulling the national economy into the crevasse. Unfortunately, that must be unpleasant.
robotic limo pods comes right to my door to take me to the airport.
Where a robotic plane takes you across the ocean.
My Honda Accord lease is up in a couple of months, and it seems the full suite of electronic geegaws is coming to the mainstream of autos now, parking assist, rear cameras, lane change warnings, front collision warnings or brakes. Been on the Mercs for a couple of years, not sure who else, but are being packaged into the Accords now (it seems, official release tomorrow) below the $30k level.
Still, full auto autos are probably more like 20 years away at least for the masses, might appear first in $100k++ models a few years sooner, give the laws time to adjust to their existence.
Apparently there’s some new feature where speed limit signs broadcast their existence, can be picked up by your car and displayed on the dash? Matter of time until they give you electroshock in the fundament if you’re speeding, much less simply slow down your car automagically.
This all, I think, after some serious getting used to, will be good news.
In April 2001, when the International Space Station was being assembled during Flight 6A, three redundant Command and Control computers (inexplicably called Multiplexers/Demultiplexers or MDMs) failed within 24 hours, crippling communications and control of station systems. No comms to ground control (except by Endeavour and Russian assets). In the aftermath, one highly agitated old-school chief engineer snarled “we almost lost the damn station”.
And we’re going to travel at high speeds in close proximity in autonomously controlled vehicles that can override human inputs? Thunderstorms, tampering, malicious code, etc. We’re going to willingly do this?
Epignosis, most likely that performance will be within design specifications 99.99 percent of the time, apart from stochastic deviations.
Another words, if all we had to worry about is the predictable factors of “wear and tear” – bolts worrying themselves out of their nuts from resonance with spinning engine shafts, vibrational and thermal propagation of microscopic fractures in microscopic photo-etched ICs, transient naked helium nuclei hurtling through the delicately encoded ROM chips, errant daughter particles of cosmic ray collisions with our upper atmosphere – we would probably be fine.
The mouse in the skillagallee is those un-knowable screw-ups the engineers never thought of, God bless they pointy lil’ heads.
My dad was in the crew of the Hornet (CV-8) that launched the Doolittle raid early in its service of one year and 8 days. That mission embarked in early spring, and although they were in the Pacific about the latitude of the Hawaiian Islands, the weather was not warm. My dad told us that on a number of nights the deck crew found the cables securing the planes to the deck were almost red-hot.
Turned out that the steel rope cables were absorbing a lot of the microwave energy pumped out by the new-fangled RADAR the ship carried.
Who’da thunk it.
Why would that government department help you? All it does is create more work for them, more bother. Their existence does not depend on you accessing their data, it depends on what exactly?
The best thing that ever happened to Canada were the events that forced the Canadian governments to stop spending money. I don’t care about the type or manner of taxation; not true, I do, but it is secondary.
1. Any increase in government has to be paid for, and the electorate will not tolerate tax increases.
2. Government revenues rise when the economy is doing well. Government policies that get in the way of economic growth are opposed not by right wing nuts but by other departments who see their sources of funding drying up. Very powerful government interests have been diminished by this dynamic.
3. Politicians can’t buy votes any more, they have to earn them. We don’t get better politicians, just cheaper ones. They weren’t worth much to start with.
4. It takes one term and a half for a government to justify their existence. Economic activity either thrives or shrinks. Governments and parties with no ideas except enriching themselves, or building sinecures disappear and cease to exist.
The US is going to find out how good their government can be. I hope.
#70 grrr
I must be failing as a writer, if I left any hint that I want to do other than pay for someone to care for the kids while mom [or dad if he has sole custody] is working in a real job. No, I did not mean benefits per child for having the child. The goal is to get them off the welfare system. The goal of the welfare system is to keep them dependent at all costs.
I would even entertain the idea of allowing the child care benefits [babysitting!] to be paid to family members, especially if it was a grandparent or similar. If they were retired on Social Security, it would supplement their income, AND at the end of the year they are more likely to keep watching the kid(s) either for free or for what they work out with the parent …. and keep the parent working.
#62 Blast From the Past
Yes, it seems that both the foreign and domestic versions of the First Chief Directorate, Directorate “T” and Service “A” have been more active here of late.
Subotai Bahadur
a commonsense economic model to develop prosperity.
Fundamentals
Human society requires prosperity.
The creation of prosperity requires human action.
The first action required is work. In working a person creates something of value, an asset.
The second action required is trade, especially free trade. The essence of trade is the exchange of assets between two parties, such that the value of each party’s assets is increased by the trade. Note that the value of one’s assets is entirely subjective.
The most important assets favor the survival of the person; hence the production of food is one of the most important kinds of work.
Consumption
Consumption reduces assets. It includes the necessities for survival, the costs of regulation, fees and licenses in addition to the costs of self entertainment.
Productivity
Productivity times the time worked equals the value of the asset created. The magnitude of productivity is determined primarily be culture. For some kinds of work innate ability such as intelligence or physical prowess may be more important.
Culture includes training, language, and environment.
The Value of Work
There are two values for one’s work, internal and external. Both are subjective, a matter of opinion.
The internal value is what is necessary for survival.
The external value is the price that someone else is willing to pay for it.
The difference is related to productivity and leads to increases in assets.
Free Trade
Two people may choose to exchange some of their assets, perhaps including money.
Such a trade is mutually beneficial and results in an increase of assets for each person.
This is true because each person places a higher value on the asset acquired than the intrinsic value of his work in the asset given up.
Money
Money is a symbol of value and may be exchanged for another’s asset.
Money can be anything, however some characteristics increase its usefulness:
difficult to counterfeit
available in many denominations
easy to carry
not perishable
Gold is a useful indicator of the value of money:
it takes a lot of work to produce
it is not very perishable
it cannot be counterfeited
its worldwide supply is nearly constant
Social justice
Attempts to impose social justice invariably reduce prosperity
If two people have different levels of productivity or different environments or different histories, is there a problem? If there is a problem, what is the remedy?
I say there is no problem.
In the extreme case a person might have zero productivity and zero assets. Such a person can survive only by the charity of others. Such people do exist and are usually either very old or very young.
Very often, productive people choose to support those who cannot support themselves. Usually, they are family members and act basically out of hope for the young and gratitude for the elderly.
Government
Governments are, for the most part, inimical to the creation of prosperity.
Governments are not productive nor do the people who work in government create valuable assets .
The only essential function they perform is to provide security for the environments where productive work takes place.
Useful functions include:
facilitating transportation
providing a stable currency
maintaining standards (weight, length, et al)
a justice system for enforcing contracts
These functions are merely useful, not essential. Just because you cannot imagine the world carrying on without them doesn’t mean anything. America developed into one of the world’s largest economies without any of them.
#78 winslow
EXCELLENT definitions. I would only explicitly add to the security function, the task of protecting trade from crime [robbery, theft, and extortion in various forms] with a police function domestically, and armed forces for same purpose in international affairs.
Subotai Bahadur
JFSanders @ 67:
Why yes they are. So is The Fallen One. See ‘The Devil’s Advocate’. He is a charmer, he is.
I always maintain very tongue-in-cheek that any Social Scientist, Political Scientist, Government or Law graduate produce a certificate of sterility before being awarded their diploma. We absolutely do NOT need more of the buggers breeding at this point.
We have need of technicians with 2 year STEM degrees very badly. They have to have the degree then get to take an entrance exam. It is not a hard exam, I took it and passed it easily. Guess the failure rate. >50% There are lots and lots of edumacated midiots out there.
The rot is so deep in the halls of power at all levels in the US that we may be not able to recover The Republic.
66. Gordon
56. The Sanity Inspector—
If you please, what is the proverb in Spanish?
______________________________________________
The Spanish proverb is “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”
Subotai, all I can tell you is I’m an American who’s actually lived and worked in the capital of Eurasia (or are we at war with Eastasia at the moment?). If you’d been there you’d feel a lot safer walking the streets at night than in D.C. or most parts of New York City.
And the BigSis domestic bots are firmly in the shoving a chicken into your panties is cool and embodies anti-Putin trendiness camp. That’s the diabolical genius of Sunsteining — twist the minds of one’s political enemies around to the point that they don’t know what’s up and what’s down, what’s anti-Christian and what’s mere collateral damage in attacing Pootie Poot’s church. Or Julian Assange is the new Al-Qaeda who justifies the British pulling an Ayotollah Khomeini on the Vienna Conventions while the old Al-Qaeda is taking over Syria with NATO’s blessing. And so on and so forth.
Watch Glenn Beck quoting ‘American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper’ again from Pravda (which is not the actual USSR Pravda, anymore than whomever owns the name Pan-Am now is not the old Pan-Am Airways). Then tell me the BigSis drones won’t soon be calling any libertarian or conservative who’s ever appeared on any foreign network a traitor even if what they say is true. Or that the bitter clingers are being armed by the Kremlin simply because a box of .223 comes from Tula instead of Missoula. You heard it here first. I can see the playbook of the fascists who wrap themselves in conservative rhetoric a mile away. If you want a preview check this out: @ReginaldQuill
I didn’t see any signs of Lubyanka bots here four years ago, just expats who actually lived in the FSU rather than the eternal cartoon Soviet Union some here still believe exists who told a noisy minority to cool the ‘drop a JDAM on the Roki Tunnel and start WW3 already’ war porn fantasies.
EOT
Wretchard 39. “If we lived in a world of wish machines,…”
BFtP 55. re Eloi…
I suggest reading Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels for a scenario where extreme high tech could enable a fulfilling life. Fascinating stuff. No one really has to work in the Culture, as everything is available on tap. But a lot of people choose to “work” anyway, some in dangerous occupations, just for the kicks.
This is about the only way any sort of socialism could work, in my opinion. Only if the means of production and ownership thereof is irrelevant (due to production of just about anything material being a trivial exercise) could anything like socialism work. But then it’s not really socialism then anyway, it would be something completely new.
subotai #78
I agree totally. Of course this is only a skeleton. The concept of the cultural value of work needs its own book.
JF Sanders #67:
Not impossible, just lengthy, timewise.
In fact, I believe that what you (and I) are trying to do is not just possible, but likely.
Just not next week.
Auld Hominem:
I agree with much of what you wrote but not this:
“Somebody went Galt but it wasn’t the Entitlement-Seeking Middle Class teat-suckers. Comparing the intent and planning leading to each of these three events to the assistance programs provided by our government for the poor and the elderly is ludicrous and insulting.”
It isn’t a question of going Galt.
It isn’t even a question of who was responsible proximally for the events immediately prior to collapse. Those players are obvious. My post wasn’t attempting to address that.
Yes, minimal safety nets for the poor and the elderly, BY THEMSELVES, did not cause any of the problems we are having today. Just as no individual government employee who worshipped guaranteed income stream security as a false god was proximally responsible. Just as no rent seeker, or none of the amoral, irresponsible skimmers in the banking industry that you rightly decry are individually responsible.
I concede all of that.
You are dealing with the immediate and the physical, which is crucially important, BUT…
…perhaps more important is a meta-analysis and a search for the root cause of how this all came about in the first place.
It is a question of who created the philosophical and cultural milieu (that has existed for DECADES now) that lowered both
-the tolerance of the public AND the leaders in these industries for that sort of behavior, making the approaching crashes inevitable, and
-the design margin that existed for size and scope and cost and regulatory pressure of government that has evaporated and indeed drifted into the destructive range.
The entitlement mentality of the Wall Street skimmers was not a topdown thing. Never. Ever. These folks were the product of a society that told itself everyone gets a pony. Millions of Americans who thugged up to protect do-nothing government jobs, or to use government or unions or both to force their neighbors to pay them a wage that was not even remotely in line with the value of their work, or made sure their family spent three or four generations on welfare, or used lobbying to carve out rent-seeking industries, were the fertile fields from which the harvest of the bankster elite were plucked. They were drawn from the ranks of said society, not the other way around. That they took the “everyone gets a pony” thing to an exponential level (again, I concede that this is the case) is not in any way indicative of a top down phenomenon, merely an existing attitude which suddely found itself with no governor on it and endless funding as the banksters rose higher up.
Not to mention, as other posters have, the negative multiplier effect that these millions of people have wrought upon our economy and society, a few dollars at a time but huge in aggregate.
Jail all the banksters and skimmers and corrupt bastards and their government cronies and enablers without fundamentally changing the whacked out material expectations of the postwar West and in ten years or less the head will grow back. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Unless and until the mindset is changed at a society wide level, WYSIWYG.
So, not at all ludicrous. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the intent of the social safety nets at this point (although that is an interesting discussion, for a later time, if you naively believe that it was all snow-white pure), but it should be glaringly obvious that the end result of ~100 years of a safety net America that evolved into an “everyone gets a pony” culture and apparatus of state is a society wide dependence on government to guarantee material comfort which is the root of our economic collapse.
no mo uro
” It has taken ninety years to get to this point and it may take as long to get out of it. (This is why the “elect Ron Paul and everything will be fixed in two weeks” nostrum falls flat for thinking people.)”
Your main point is spot-on, but you’re a bit simplistic about Ron Paul, but only a bit.
jfsanders
If that were true it would have taken the Colonists some hundred odd years to complete the revolution. Me thinks you think too much.
But it did take the colonists a hundred years.
John Adams pointed out the the “revolution” occurred before there was a war for independence. Before there could be a mindset ripe for rebellion and a desire to create an independent nation, the colonists had to discard their original mindsets: quasi-theocratic communitarianism in the north, and tranplanted landed gentry in the south. The sense of “Americanism” was solidified as a result of the French and Indian War.
no mo uro alludes to something crucial that is missing in many modern “Americans:” a sense of self-reliance, industry, and thrift. Those attributes existed in virtually all free men in the colonies, including those who were loyalists and fence-sitters. In addition the colonists assumed that they had the rights and privileges of Englishmen (even those of Dutch, German and Scotch-Irish ancestry), and decided that, if the English wouldn’t honor those rights, then they would be made into “American” rights. In today’s America there is enough of a base of “true Americans” to have spawned the modern Tea Party, but so many more Americans have lost those virtues.