The news in the last few days has continued the drumbeat of demoralizing events which started in the Bush administration, and with only a few hiccups has continued through the Obama administration. It is clear that Obama is, fundamentally, Bush’s 3rd term.
First we have the health care “reform” debacle, where it has been confirmed that the White House pushed Harry Reid to accept Lieberman’s ultimatum, not go to reconciliation. There will be no public option in the Senate bill. There will be no Medicare expansion. There will be no cap on yearly limits. What there will be is a mandate forcing people to buy insurance, some subsidies which can still leave people spending money they can’t afford, and guaranteed issue of lousy plans (Plans where only 70% of the premiums have to be spent on care, for example.) Unless progressive Senators are willing to filibuster, or House progressives are willing to vote against en masse, something very close to the Senate plan is what will pass, because as I noted some time ago, the White House’s bottom line is that something, anything must pass, and conservative Dems are willing to kill the bill to make sure it doesn’t actually threaten health industry profits in any way, shape, or form. (Thus why drug importation, which would cost Pharma money, will be made illegal.)
All of this was completely predictable,. Furthermore the weakness of progressive and liberal legislators, is largely to blame:
Obama and the Democratic leadership’s bottom line is they must pass some bill called “health care reform”. Unless you threaten to take away their bottom line, they will take away anything that isn’t progressives bottom line
This is negotiation 101, and progressive legislators either don’t understand it, or are spineless. As a result they, and Americans, have been rolled yet again. What is depressing about this is that it should be a surprise to no one, but apparently has surprised many.
It is also noteworthy that spending billions on turning brown people into a fine red mist (aka. the Afghan war) is acceptable, but health care (aka. saving actual American lives) is something which can’t cost money. What an interesting, and clearly evil, set of priorities that reveals. I guarantee that real healthcare reform would save more American lives than the entire war on terror—assuming said “war” hasn’t cost more American lives than it’s saved, which is almost certainly the case.
Next we have what Glenn Greenwald is calling the creation of Gitmo North, in which people whom the government judges there is not enough evidence to convict, will be held indefinitely without trial. This is the very definition of tyranny. Any nation which does this is a nation of men, not laws. America has forsaken its fundamental premise and proved its degradation. Yes, this started under Bush, but as Obama embraces this it became a bipartisan project and the new elite consensus. This is now something which has been confirmed as US policy which is extremely unlikely to change no matter who is in power.
Next we have bankers are giving themselves bonuses larger than the entire economy’s GDP growth this year. As Peter Morici notes:
How much is $140 billion?
The U.S. economy grew at a $89 billion annualized rate in the third quarter. That was the first growth since the second quarter of 2008 and came to $22 billion in actual growth in the third quarter.
The bankers, after causing the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression, are rewarded with six times the growth accomplished so far in the much heralded “economic recovery.”
Meanwhile, seven million families face foreclosure and 25 million Americans can’t find full time work.
To add this sad state, we have the sad spectacle of Obama lecturing the bankers. Meanwhile in Britain, instead of lecturing, the government has imposed a 50% tax on bonuses, and France looks like to follow suite. The British government’s response to threats to move employees out of the country “that’s nice, you do that.”
The fact of the matter, as I’ve long said, is that bankers at the big banks are a net drain on the economy. Their venality and recklessness has wiped out the entire economic gains of the last decade and plunged the economy into its worst crisis since the Great Depression.
Now I’m not surprised they have the gall to pay themselves these bonuses. The entire profits of most large banks in the last expansion were based on open fraud. Of course criminals who have not been punished, but have been rewarded for their crimes are going to continue to steal. What is shocking is that the government is essentially doing nothing. Obama’s pay czar is a sick joke, especially compared to just taxing all bonuses at 50%. Heck, even taxing bonuses at 50% is sad—they should be taxed a good confiscatory 90%. A class of people who caused an economic calamity of this magnitude do not deserve to be paid more than janitors.
Why? Because, as a British study noted, Janitors actually create value. So do homemakers. So do assembly-line workers. Modern bankers, on the other hand, destroy value. They make the economy weaker. That isn’t the way it should be, but when you bail out the banks for trillions and they decrease their lending to businesses and increase their credit card interest rates to as much as 29% it’s clear that all they are is parasites, sucking blood from their hosts.
In a healthy, non-degraded society, none of the behavior listed above would be allowed. Not only would there be confiscatory taxes leveled, there would be massive ongoing criminal investigations into what happened.
In a healthy, non-degraded society, saving American lives by making sure they have health care would be a priority. Especially since the US pays twice as much per person as many countries which get far better results. This would be considered much more important than a war in a far away country, because it would be understood that even if you believe that turning brown people into a fine red mist saves American lives, health care would save more lives. And, done right (aka. single payer) it would even save money. But that was never on the table, and even the limp-wristed compromise of a weak public option was too much for the rich and powerful to tolerate. Americans exist to be looted systematically by their elites, and if they die young and live sick, who cares. They are just sacks of money and the goal of government is to make dipping your hand into that sack as easy as possible for industries which can afford to buy government.
And, last but not least, in a healthy, non-degraded society, the government is not allowed to lock up people indefinitely without trial. If you don’t understand why this is, I can’t explain it to you, any more than it is apparently possible to explain to a plurality of Americans why torturing people is evil, and beyond the pale. The fact that it can’t be explained any more to many Americans, of course, is exactly why it is fair to call this degradation.
Moral and political degradation.
Ok, enough.
Enough, Enough, Enough.
After reading this compilation by Thomas Schaller of various leading “progressives” views on whether the Senate bill should be killed or not, I am beyond disgusted at many of the putrid, spineless, stupid quislings who call themselves progressives.
Just… enough.
Exhibit A:
On MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” Joan Walsh derides Joe Lieberman but compares progressives who want to kill the entire Senate bill to people who voted for Nader over Al Gore in 2000.
Thank you Joan “lesser evil” Walsh. That election has been trotted out ever since to justify voting for Democrats no matter what they do. It’s good to know that your support is completely unconditional. Of course, perhaps it might have helped if Al Gore and Joe Lieberman had actually fought. Buses full of union members and other demonstrators were willing to go, and Al Gore, the “good man” didn’t want to risk that flaring into violence. So he told them not to roll, and the Supreme Court, seeing that no one gave a damn, gave the election to Bush 5-4. The result was, literally, hundreds of thousands of dead people. Why? Because a good man wasn’t willing to fight. Just like you, a “good woman”, I’m sure. Just like Democratic progressive in Congress. If you won’t fight, and the other side will, the other side will always get what they want. But people like you, who belong to the party of wimps, never understand that, do you?
Exhibit B, Ezra Klein:
And as I spent yesterday arguing, it has a tendency to overshadow the lives in the balance. You can choose your estimate. The Institute of Medicine’s methodology says 22,000 people died in 2006 because they didn’t have health-care coverage. A recent Harvard study found the number nearer to 45,000. Since we talk about the costs of health-care reform over a 10-year period, may as well talk about the lives saved that way, too. And we’re looking, easily, at more than a hundred thousand lives, to say nothing of the people who will be spared bankruptcy, chronic pain, unnecessary impairment, unnecessary caretaking, bereavement, loss of wages, painful surgeries, and so on.
Why people think Ezra is capable of understanding policy has always been beyond me. He can’t, and he never has been able to. The bill will not save all of those lives. What the bill does is force people to buy insurance who don’t have it right now. Force them. The standard shitty insurance (the silver plan) is 70% of actuarial value, which means the company has to spend 70% of premiums on health care. And it’s not capped. So if you get seriously ill, you blow through the cap, and can’t afford the care which would save you life. I don’t know how many people the bill will save, but it’s not 220,000 or 450,000 over ten years. Anyone who thinks it is is incompetent.
Exhibit C, Jonathan Cohn, who writes for the New Republic (which should tell you everything you need to know anyway):
Is health care reform without a public option still worth passing? Unequivocally, unambiguously yes.
The case for is simple and straightforward: 30 million additional people, maybe more, will have health insurance. Many more who have insurance will see their coverage become more stable. The ability of insurers to exclude people based on pre-existing conditions will diminish significantly, if not disappear. And that’s on top of a host of delivery reforms which should, in combination, help make medical care less expensive over time. The bill could be much better, for sure, but to argue that it’s worse than nothing you have to make the case that nothing will somehow lead to more progress in some reasonable frame of time.
30 million more people will be FORCED to buy insurance, which many of them can’t afford. If they could afford insurance, many of them would already have it. What part of FORCED don’t these idiots understand? Let me repeat: Forced, Forced, Forced.
Yes, Jonny, it is worse than nothing, because it will push many of these people over the edge financially in order to give them insurance which is capped, and which, therefore when they get really sick, will not save their life anyway. Not just a moron, but a moral imbecile.
Angela Glover Blackwell, of some group called Policylink is the only person who swings for not killing the bill and gets some bat on the ball:
Politics is the art of the possible. It rarely gives us everything we want — and often it doesn’t even give us what we need. The health-care debate has been a case study in compromise — alternating between hopeful and infuriating and back again.
Oh puke. If someone tells me once more about the art of the possible, instead of the art of the necessary I am going toss my cookies all over them next time I meet them at some conference.
But we are still left with a proposal that takes several important, relatively moderate steps toward a more insured, healthier nation. The protections against rescission and rejections for “pre-existing conditions” should help curb the most egregious abuses of the insurance industry. And subsidies for low-income people will help bring millions of struggling Americans into the health insurance system for the first time.
Ok, that’s at least an argument that makes some sense. I don’t think it’s worth it, because again, the insurance they’re being forced to buy is shitty 70% actuarial value with caps it won’t save their bloody lives, and may well drive them into bankruptcy, because the subsidies are inadequate, but at least she mentions recissions and pre-existing conditions: virtually the only major things the bill does right.
With Progressives Like These…
Who needs Republicans or Conservadems? Honestly, mode one is always, “well, if someone is going to give me one cent, that’s better than no deal no matter what I give up in return!” Plop these fools down in a 3rd world bazaar with $1,000 dollars and they’d be begging for food by the end of their first week.
As Stephanie Taylor says:
When Democratic leaders refuse to fight, they can’t then ask progressives to cave with them. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is continuing to fight for the best health care bill possible, and we’re intent on holding Democrats’ feet to the fire. But we need to think very seriously about whether there will be a moment when it is clear that the bill does more harm than good–we need to be prepared to kill the bill.
Part of being a great negotiator is being able to walk away. (emphasis mine).
No more Mr. Nice Blogger. The idiots calling for surrender, meekly begging for table scraps, are not due any pretend respect or collegial refusal to call them out for their stupidity and cowardice.
So, Citigroup is being allowed to pay back its TARP money minus billions of taxes they should pay, but also:
Bank regulators including the FDIC and Federal Reserve want to permit a phase-in of capital requirements that rise starting next month under a change approved by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. The rule, passed in May, eliminates some off- balance-sheet trusts, forcing banks to put billions of dollars of assets and liabilities on their books.
If they don’t have enough money to recognize their liabilities, why are they being allowed to pay back their TARP money? (Bear in mind, that it is certain that they have many more liabilities than just these. They are only being forced to recongize some of their liabilities.)
Well:
- TARP needs to be seen to make a profit
- TARP is going to be used by the President for further stimulus. With 40% of Democrats saying they’re going to stay home in 2010, Obama needs a money Congress can’t deny him. The banks give the money back to TARP, and Obama can use it as a slush fund.
- With TARP repaid Citi can pay better bonuses, avoid reorganization and are out from under the government’s thumb.
Citigroup is almost certainly bankrupt, if it were actually forced to bring everything back on balance sheet and value assets at market prices. But hey, job #1 in America is making sure Bankers never face any responsibility for destroying millions of lives while paying themselves billions.
And Job #1 is being taken care of.
When an industry matures you can move it out to the hinterland. That’s what is happening in the US – that’s outsourcing. All these industries are mature – they don’t need to be located in the US anymore – you can stick’em elsewhere. Being in Silicon valley isn’t necessary in semis and tech anymore, the information you gain, the speed and access to the brightest minds in concentration, as well as the small custom suppliers – they aren’t necessary.
When an industry consists of a myriad of small firms they are dependent on each other and geographical proximity is greatly to their advantage. When it narrows down to just a few firms, with a few other firms supplying their services, or with supply chains vertically integrated within the few remaining big firms, they can move to cheaper domains.
Economic cycles in geographic locales that are economically fertile (basically metropolitan regions) operate on a cycle. For a lot of them that cycle involves import replacement. They import goods, then they learn how to make them, then they use the money they saved to buy other things, then they replace them and so on. This is going on very strongly in China right now – and it’s creating a boom; even an overheated economy.
The areas at the leading edge of the economy create new work – new products and services and ideas; they create new things to export that no one else has exported before.
That was a large chunk of the US for a long time.
If you lose that, well, the reason you were so well paid was in part because of it. The economies that fed off of the US had lower GDP per capita.
That’s what’s going on in the US. To move to the next boom, to keep your place in the sun – you have to lead the next revolution; the next time when being close to suppliers and the bright minds and where the action is – to failing to get to market in time being more disastrous than getting to market with a more expensive product.
It’s not hard. The next revolution is the energy revolution. Solar cells, wind, hydrogen fuel cells, passive solar. The technology isn’t mature and that’s good, but it is at the point where with the right incentives, it becomes feasible.
Crisis = danger and opportunity. The rising energy prices, the coming Hubbert’s peak, are not just a crisis – they’re an opportunity.
Take it and you’ve got the next fifteen to twenty years of the US’s economic prosperity.
Let someone else take it and you’ll move off the bleeding edge, move into replacing other people’s exports – or, because your economy can’t really do that because it’s geared to the high expenses of being the leader, find that you can’t even do that and watch an economic slide of startling proportions.
It shouldn’t be a hard choice.
(Originally published at BOPNews back in 2004. Other nations have now moved even farther ahead on energy than the US.)
Are the rich just like us? In one sense they are – they eat, sleep and defecate just like everyone else. They love, cry and die – just like everyone else. But when you’re dealing with policy – no, they aren’t just like everyone else. It’s fashionable (one of those evergreen fashions) to argue that the policies that benefit the rich, benefit everyone. There are certainly policies that benefit everyone, but there are few policies which primarily benefit the rich which are to everyone’s interest. Let’s run through this in a bit more detail.
Rich
Most rich people get most of their money from investments – also know as unearned income. So when investment income is taxed at a lower rate than earned income (what you get on your paycheck), which it is – then those who rely primarily on earned income are being taxed at a higher effective rate. This is a deliberate policy choice.
When jobs are outsourced, the profits still flow back into the hands of US investors. While many people own stock and bonds (especially through pension funds) this disproportionately benefits the rich because the rich (as noted above) disproportionately receive their money from unearned income.
When the domestic economy does badly, but corporate and general investment profits are up – the rich do fine because the cost of things they want (like servants) goes down as supply goes up. Those few people they do deign to employ cost less.
When tax changes are made that are less progressive (moving to fees or flat taxes, for example, and away from income tax) it benefits the rich – because they earn more money and regressive taxes benefit those with more.
When estate taxes are gotten rid of – it benefits the rich (or rather their children).
When public schools are defunded it benefits the rich. Their kids aren’t going to them anyway, and now they don’t have to pay for your kids to go there.
When capital flow laws are relaxed it benfits the rich. Do you need to move a million dollars out of China in a few minutes to get an extra .1% overnight return? No?
When the spread between inflation rates and the interest rate is high it benefits the rich, because most of them are creditors. It hurts the middle class and the poor – because they are debtors.
When bankruptcy laws are tightened it hurts the poor and the middle class and helps the rich.
The Middle Class
When jobs are plentiful, it benefits the middle class. But if you’re already middle class and you keep your job, but others are losing theirs, you can win relatively – especially if prices are dropping relative to your salary.
When jobs pay well and are keeping up with inflation, it benefits the middle class.
When house prices go up it benefits the middle class – because they have the majority of their money in their houses – that’s their savings account. It hurts the poor, because they can’t get housing and it hurts the subset of the middle class that doesn’t yet have a house, because they can’t get one.
When medical care prices increase it hurts the middle classes because their employers stop paying for it, pay for less or leave the country to a domicile where either the government provides it (Canada) or they don’t have to provide it.
The Poor
When rent, food or fuel costs go up it hurts the poor because they spend most of their income on those three things. It hurts them disporoptionately compared to the pain to the rich.
When the economy doesn’t produce new jobs it hurts the poor because they then can’t get jobs, especially the long term poor who are only hired when those with more recent experience are used up.
When medical care becomes more expensive it hurts the poor, because they can’t afford it. So they live in pain, or with chronic diseases and get treated only when it’s close to mortal and they can’t be turned away.
When mandatory sentencing for blue collar crime goes in it hurts the poor because more of them commit crime and it takes away their husbands and their sons.
When some drugs are made illegal while others with psychoactive effects are legal but prescribed only to those who can afford both price controlled drugs and doctors scripts it hurts the poor.
Yes Virginia, the rich are different…
not because they are better or worse than us, not because they are bad people, but because they have different interests and different incentives and they live in a world that is different from the one the middle class or the poor live in. Policies that enrich them could enrich everyone. There are policies and economies that help everyone. From 1945 to around 1970 the rising economy made everyone better off equally – the rich, the middle class, the poor. Everyone prospered together.
It can be that way, but it doesn’t have to be. You can make the pie bigger – or you can make your slice larger. Over the last thirty years Americans have fought over the pie. Warren Buffett once noted that if there was a class war then his class was winning. There is a class war and the rich are indeed winning – and it is one of the things that is slowly destroying the United States.
As Stirling has said in the past – everyone can be prosperous. But everyone can’t be rich. Choose what sort of society you want – or have others choose for you.
(Another repost from BOP. 2004. This is basic class and policy analysis stuff. I would make some changes to the definition of rich these days, to make sure the the managerial capture class was unambiguously included.)
Peter Morici puts banker bonuses in perspective:
How much is $140 billion?
The U.S. economy grew at a $89 billion annualized rate in the third quarter. That was the first growth since the second quarter of 2008 and came to $22 billion in actual growth in the third quarter.
The bankers, after causing the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression, are rewarded with six times the growth accomplished so far in the much heralded “economic recovery.”
Meanwhile, seven million families face foreclosure and 25 million Americans can’t find full time work.
I believe I will laugh, so I don’t cry. America is so very, very broken, that this could ever happen.
Hahahahahahahaha.
Just for amusement I’m going to throw out some of my rules of thumb: these are the rules of judgement and research that I use to cut through the BS.
Don’t trust liars Now someone isn’t a liar because they once got something wrong, or made an honest mistake. But people who regularly bend facts to make their point shouldn’t be trusted. Seems obvious, eh? Well then, why were so many people giving the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt in the run up to the Iraq war? Not only were they known liars who had lied repeatedly on taxation and economic issues during the 2000 campaign, they were caught out on lie after lie during the actual selling of the Iraq war. If they had a case, they would have made it honestly – they didn’t and it was obvious. People who bought it bought it because they wanted to believe.
Accept the Obvious The number of people who can’t accept the obvious always astounds me. Obviously people are not rational – why have we built an entire branch of economics around this BS? Obviously the Nasdaq was overvalued in 1999. Obviously Dow 36,000 was a pack of bullshit. Obviously options are an expense and if anyone tries to tell you they aren’t, tell them that since they cost nothing you’d love to have a few million of them. Obviously people who are willing to die for their beliefs cannot be usefully classified as cowards.
Read the shortest book on a subject Want to learn about a subject? Find the shortest book on the subject. Do not find the longest. The shortest will have to distill the topic down to a framework which you can appropriate and use to hang new facts and theories off of. You may well discard that theory in time but in order to remember things you have to be able to connect them to something – the framework will let you do that. Also, shorter generally forces the writer to think more sharply. That’s good. After you’ve read a few short books on myth you can read The Golden Bough. Not before.
Being Smart Means Never Having to Admit You’re Wrong Don’t fall into this trap. If you’re smart, you can work any set of inconvenient facts to support your beliefs. You can be /clever/. Don’t be clever. Don’t trust people who are. If someone has to bend logic into a pretzel to support a thesis they’re almost certainly wrong.
Human Nature Doesn’t Change Never has. Never will. Don’t believe any argument which supposes implicitly that it has.
Real discontinuities are rare Everything doesn’t change all that often. In fact, entire lifetimes go by in which almost nothing changes in entire areas of human experience. Computers did not repeal basic laws of economic gravity, they just reduced certain transaction costs and made certain types of automation easier or possible. The 90’s telecommunications “revolution” didn’t “revolutionize” it the way the telegraph did – it just continued an ongoing trend. Whenever someone tells you “things are different now” ask, “how exactly?” You’ll usually find everything is different in degree – not kind.
TANSTAAFL Nothing’s free. If someone tells you something is, they’re scamming you. If you don’t know who’s paying – it’s probably you.
There is no crisis Well sometimes there is. But usually there isn’t. And every bill that is a “reform”, isn’t. When people use words of like “reform” and “crisis” be very wary – 90% of the time they’re trying to get something changed because they have a “solution” which benefits someone . There is no Social Security “Crisis”, to use the most contemporary example. There is budget “crisis”, but it isn’t getting a lot of play.
Follow the Incentives Always ask what behaviour is rewarded or punished in any system, proposed system or legislation. Because that’s the behaviour you’re going to get.
You can’t make a man understand something if his job depends on him not understanding it.
Enough said.
Easy is not a synonym for simple. Hard is not a synonym for complicated Despite what people would have you believe, there are very few complicated problems in public life. There are, however, many hard problems in public life. Think of it this way – it’s simple to lose weight, just eat less and exercise more. It is, however, hard to lose weight. It is not complicated to balance the budget – just spend about the same as you bring in. It can be hard however, since you have either cut spending or raise taxes and doing either hurts someone.
Efficient and effective are not synonyms and efficient is not always good. That’s right – reduced transaction costs aren’t always a good thing. In fact, almost nothing is good in all circumstances. Anyone who tells you freer trade is “always” better is an ideologue. Same thing with someone who tells you that there can never be any restrictions on speech. Same thing with people who tell you there should never be any restrictions on what you can spend your money on. Well, they’re either an ideologue or they’re trying to sell you something.
You can’t look it up Knowledge you have not internalized cannot be used to think with. You cannot form connections between it and other things you know. You also can’t look something up you don’t know exists. There is no substitute for actually knowing something yourself – the internet only makes it easier to look things up, not to know you need to look it up.
If you can’t explain it, you don’t know it. ‘Nuff said.
If you don’t know it from the basic building blocks, you’re a monkey. A related rule is “do it right, then do it fast”, because if you do it fast first you’ll never do it right. If you only know the later parts of a discipline, but not the reasoning behind them, you won’t know when the rule doesn’t apply. An example is in my Ricardo’s Caveat – where generations after Ricardo forgot that comparative advantage didn’t apply to nations with free capital flows – they skip past the necessary conditions to the conclusions and take it as a universal law rather than a conditional one.
Imagination is the mother of empathy If you can’t put yourself in another person’s shoes and see the world as they see it then you’ll always be a cripple when it comes to prediction, understanding or effective action. Empathy isn’t just for symps – it’s the foundation of strategy and tactics. If you can’t think like your enemy you’re at a severe disadvantage and if you judge before understanding you’re a moral cripple.
Know Yourself Not just because you need to know your own prejudces in order to adjust for them, but because knowing your own beliefs allows you to refine your thinking. Thinking comes from emotion primarily, not from logic, and that’s fine – as long as you know what principles are driving your emotions.
Ideas are tools. Want to examine the relation of classes to the means of production? Marxism works great. NeoClassical economics doesn’t. Want to understand how positive and negative associations build up in a person? Behaviouralism. Want to understand how people organize models of the world? Don’t use behaviouralism. Want to know how interest groups form? Conflict sociology. And so on – what works for one thing, may not work for another and the “intellectual” who is just a Marxist or just Freudian or just a Feminist – is just a fool.
Concluding Thoughts on IQ and Smarts I don’t want to get into the IQ debate, but let’s admit that some people have more processing power than other people. There are tons of people who are smarter than I am but most of them don’t know how to think – they use their brains to support their predetermined beliefs and they waste huge amounts of cycles on trivia or on cleverness that leads nowhere useful. The metaphor I like to use is this. Say you’ve got a really powerful motorbike (good brains) with a mediocre driver (bad thinker). Opposing them you’ve got a bike with a weak engine with great driver (good thinker). Now if there in a race – what’s going to happen? Well, if the race is on a straightaway the good bike is going to win. If the question is a technical one which can be stated in value neutral language and solved though pure application of logical rules – the smarter person will get there first and do a better job. But if the road is a twisty hilly one the better rider will win hands down (ask any good motorcycle rider) and indeed if the bad rider tries to keep up he’ll probably crash. And when it comes to tricky real world problems that’s what happens. The smart but rigid thinker goes where his ideology tells him to – right through hills if necessary. The smart guy who doesn’t understand the fundamentals doesn’t realize that the rules of his discipline change in certain circumstances. The guy who is paid to come up with certain results or gets fired – comes up with those results and convinces himself they’re right.
Thinking well, beyond a certain point, isn’t about how bright you are – its about judgement. It is a talent which can be refined as a skill. And it mostly isn’t taught in University or college or high school – it’s learned the hard way. An expert is just someone who knows a lot – not necessarily someone who thinks well and a professional is just someone who is paid to do something and may well be paid to do it and come up with expected results. Anyone can learn to think better if they work at it – and if they remember than while there are heuristics and rules of thumb, there are, in the end, no shortcuts.
(Reposted from BOP, 2005. Only thing I’d note is to emphasize that sometimes it is a crisis, and you have to know when…)
Dave Anderson nails it, I think:
The current Democratic bet is three fold. The first is that there will be an internal Republican civil war that will cost the GOP numerous winning opportunities. The prime example would be the NY-23 special election as the Teabagger+GOP vote was greater than the Democratic vote, but the Democrats won anyways. The second is that the GOP is still fundamentally discredited and most swingable voters would be pinching their noses with three ton vises to vote for the GOP.
Finally, the Democratsa are making a bet that they bad policy that they ares supporting is “good policy” for the swing money. And they expect to see the swing money continue to back the Democrats which will be enough to either depress GOP turnout or get enough apathetic Democrats to turnout to hold a decent size majority next year.
I agree : they are betting that they are lesser of two evils, the Republicans are borked beyond saving for at least another couple years and that the money they make through bad policy (aka: seeing to the interests of the rich rather than the majority of the population) is sufficient to make up for the negative electoral effects of those policies.
Bad policy = bad outcomes for ordinary people. Bad outcomes for ordinary people when you control the House, Senate and White House make them figure they should try the other party. (See, 2006, 2008).
Dem politicos need to get this tattooed on their butt, so when they pull their heads out for air, they can’t avoid seeing it.
Good policy = good politics. Wish there were some politicians who remembered that.
