Interesting to think what would be happening right now if the old USSR still existed. Suddenly, for a period of several days – maybe longer – jet airplanes are useless over Europe. The overwhelming western advantage in airpower is suddenly neutralized. They could be in the south of France in a week. Would they go for it?
As it is I wonder what that crafty Putin might be planning.
A RealClearPolitics analysis that seems pretty cogent to me. I am biased, of course, by agreeing with its conclusion (and its apocalyptic scenario – although I think it will be even worse for the Democrats.)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/14/how_bad_could_2010_really_get_for_democrats_105152.html
I think the debate over AGW has grown confused for many reasons, but one of the important ones is that there actually two related but separate propositions being argued. For political reasons, proponents of the AGW theory have deliberately fused the two propositions, but for clarity of perception I think it important that we separate them and see them in their actual relatioship.
The first proposition is that due to the activities of mankind – eating, breathing, farming, building cities and factories, driving – the planet is getting somewhat warmer – not drastically, but measurably.
The second proposition is that these changes, combined with our species’ other environmental depredations, is going to lead to some type of Climate Armageddon, with the species’ future in doubt and our poverty all but assured. (I regularly see AGW-friendly commentators expounding this doom and gloom as a simple stated fact, something assumed as obvious, as a consequence of AGW.)
Science has largely decided that the first element – it’s getting warmer, mostly – is true. Wrangles over the CRU’s exact level of culpability aside, they don’t need to fudge the data to show some warming; the exact instances of malfeasance at CRU look at this early date to be in areas like trying to eradicate inconvenient truths like historical climate optima when things were a bit warmer than they are now. That effort, to dampen debate by trying to create a pretend consensus that something inconvenient to a simple, easily-sold narrative simply never happened – an “unevent” – is reprehensible and vile, but not central to the core of AGW proposition number one. Other data sources also show a warming trend, and while I am very willing to believe that there are corrupt scientists in the world, I do not believe that they are everywhere. Someone is always willing to be the hero by proving the truth in the face of such conspiracies of lies, and climate science is hardly Mafia-like enough to enforce complete silence.
It’s the second element where the real debate should be occurring, and mostly, it isn’t.
Could AGW lead to catastrophic scenarios? Sure. I’d wager it won’t, for complex reasons having to do with human adaptability and the survival instinct, but I’ll readily admit I could be wrong in my guess. But the burden of proof for such catastrophic possibilities is on the people proposing them; the rest of us don’t have to justify our use of energy to selfishly heat our homes and feed our families by first disproving that this is going to cause Gotterdammerung.
Society must tread warily. Advocates of the strong AGW position are fond of arguing the precautionary principle, but seem much less heedful of its guidance when it comes to social engineering. Our EPA has just declared that every human being (and other breathing life form) on the planet to be polluters, by virtue of our respiratory metabolism and its production of carbon dioxide. Global elites are meeting now in Copenhagen to throw bones to the developing world and monkey wrenches into their own economies.
I do not believe that the science justifies such strong measures. A social precautionary principle, that we should not throw away centuries of economic progress and betterment of human welfare on a whim, must guide us as we determine how best to match the needs of our species with the constraints of our planet.
Reading this wiki article on Amtrak, it strikes me that we are likely to see the same type of deterioration in the health sector as we saw in the rail transportation sector over the course of the twentieth century. Rail transport was once the most vital and important American industry – its sad decline is a story of government error and mismanagement of economic decisions. If the Democrats succeed in passing their inchoate health care plans, we can look forward to a creaking, half-functional system that prevents private market actors from doing the job, while doing a poor job itself.
This is fascinating – it almost sounds like the backstory to a 1920s SF saga.
…and the skies are grey. I missed it when it came out, but Reason put out a survey of California’s budgetary figures for the last twenty years or so and the results are not encouraging for the “if only we’d tax more” crowd.
High points:
Since 1990, California’s spending has grown at a staggering 5.91 percent a year – a 180.9% increase. They’re almost tripling the government every twenty years. Population growth and inflation combined come to only 4.38 percent per year – meaning that spending growth has outpaced the population and cost increases. Even subtracting the population and inflation figures, there’s been an absolute growth of 35% – meaning that the government is a third bigger than it was less than a generation ago. Sometimes government has to grow (WWII) – but even liberal statists must recognize that a government that doubles in absolute size every lifespan isn’t sustainable.
Since 1990, general fund expenditures have gone from under $1500 per capita to more than $2500 per capita.
Oh, and by the way? If California had kept spending at 1990 levels plus proportional increments for inflation and population growth, they would have a $15 billion surplus this year.
And education spending has shared the upward trend. Since 1990, general fund K-12 spending has increased 191.5% – a 6.11% annual increase, outpacing both inflation + population growth AND the general fund expenditure growth rate. (Higher ed spending trailed those figures, “only” doubling and growing at 4.18 percent a year.)
California’s problem is that they decided to grow the government more than anybody was willing to pay for – not that greedy taxpayers aren’t willing to come across. The greedy taxpayers are coming across in huge numbers and with great big fat checks and with a strong upward growth trend (outside the current recession).
It’s just that the wishlist has grown even faster than their revenues.
Bond market iffy for next US treasuries auction.
Gee, it’s such a mystery. Rip off bondholders in the Chrysler bankruptcy, then ask the market “hey, anybody want to buy some bonds?”
Yeah, sign me up for that deal, please. Also, I need some ground glass for my eyeballs, and how about a rough proctological exam while we’re making wishlists.
Are they trying to crash the economy so that they can get the public to demand solutions, any solutions – even crazy socialist ones?
A businessman finally dissents. Amen, Mr. Asness.
Obama thinks this is going to cow the business population so that they will go along with his socialist agenda. He’s probably right; business leaders have been pretty spineless through all this.
Yet, the business population and the investor population aren’t identical. Investors aren’t cowed, they’re scared shitless – presumably Obama isn’t going to gut everybody’s shareholder value, but where will the messiah’s finger next point? I’d say you’d have to be nuts to have money in health care, real estate, or transportation stocks these days. In any sector Obama thinks could do with some updating, shareholders are going to be running for the hills.
Advocates of a federal solution to the economic crisis based on spending a great deal of money point out that we spent our way out of trouble during WWII. They are right. We did. It worked.
The problem is, we were able to do it because our federal government was so small. It did less, and much of what it did was done well. In comparison to its European competitors, however, it was rather small and unimportant – dingy, even. Our government was poor but honest.
Expanding a competent organization and increasing its power can, indeed, have a positive economic effect, especially when the competent government is faced with a powerful and effective outside enemy – there’s no luxury of wasting resources when the Nazis are at the door.
We currently have powerful enemies – terrorist regimes and groups worldwide – but they aren’t nearly so effective as the Nazis. We’re not in danger of being taken over by Osama Bin Laden, so our government has the luxury of taking things a little less seriously and being a little bit more wasteful.
And while elements of our government are quite competent at what they do, there isn’t a huge unused reserve of “competence” out there in the economy like there was in 1939. Our economic machine is running, broadly, at capacity now in productive terms, and long may it continue to do so – but some huge federal expansion now would be mostly cancerous and parasitic – three tumors for every healthy cell built up.
We no longer have a poor but honest government that can be assumed to use additional power or resources for the benefit of all. It would be nice if we did, but we don’t.
Our current situation, in fact, can fairly be described as the dark warning that should have been delivered to Washington in the 1930s: “Sure, you can grow out of your current problems. This is what you’ll look like when that’s done.”
First off, Happy New Year.
Second off, WTF? This ad is on the top of the Drudge Report as of this writing. God knows where else it’s been placed.
In no particular order:
1) You’re not welcome. Give me my tax money back, you corporate whores.
2) You didn’t have any money, so you begged for the taxpayers to bail you out, and they did (against the popular will), and the first thing you do is spend a bunch of money on an ad THANKING THEM? You know, my folks gave us some money to help us buy our house (thanks!) – I’m pretty sure that if we’d taken a couple grand of that money to put up a billboard in our town saying “Thank You!”, that they would have been pissed off. Because they gave us the money for a house, not for PR stunts. Chrysler’s money, ditto.
3) With public relations and economics skills like these, no wonder your company is in the toilet. It deserves to be in the toilet. Fail now, and get out of the way.
(Sorry, Joanne. But you know I still love ya.)
