So a bunch of people have told me I need to write my rants down and post them. So in a bit of unemployed insomnia here i go.
How can people look at the same facts, learn/study the same issues, live in the same world, and have literally opposite conclusions? Now i'm not claiming we cant both be wrong, but there is no way in hell we can both be right.
My issue is not with average Americans who simply know a little about politics/policy and feel connected to one party or the other and rely on the leaders of that party to be professional problem solvers. Americans have jobs (most of them) and stuff to do, to have faith that your political leaders aren't outright lying to you or too stupid to understand the complex issues that face our nation is not unreasonable. So I'd say its possible to get to about 60% of Americans and actually shape their opinions. Now the other 40%? (numbers directly out of where CATO get's their figures) yea there lost causes, they've picked a side and will die defending it, but why?
Below i've posted an essay that i think explains fairly concisely why our professional opinion makers can never learn and why bold policies (even when backed by overwhelming evidence) cant actually be enacted in this media/information SPY VS spy dialogue we have in the 21st century.
To actually fix the house sometimes you do need to just let it burn down :(
During the Panic of 2008 the democrats in congress were convinced by a republican treasury department to put partisan ship aside and work together to save the American (and the world) financial system from total and utter destruction. Now I am not claiming that ALL Democrats are selfless statesman and Nancy Palosi should be elected for sainthood. (although such a statement may be less crazy then some of the things i've been hearing coming from Conservative "economist" these past few years) It was simply much easier for Hank Paulson to come to the democratic caucus and say;
"you know how me and my kind have been saying the government can ONLY cause damage and how the best kind is a retarded drooling one?... well thats political BS and we're in a heap of trouble right now so WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING... you in?"
Then for him to go to the Republican caucus in a moment of crisis basically telling them that they're entire governing philosophy is a simple childish view of the universe that works great for political slogans but 'we're on the brink here and you need to grow up NOW."
I mean seriously how would you react?
If some conservative came running into your minority leaders office in 1980 with all this hard evidence (in this hypothetical situation completely accurately) that desegregation has reached a breaking point and if we don't reinstitute segregation NOW then the citizenry will start taking to the streets, killing each other Rwanda style. After basing your entire career on civil rights and equality of humanity (yada yada yada ) could you just turn your back on 30 years of work to save 500,000 lives? how about a million? a Billion? But hey, lets make it more interesting. Lets say you know the majority party has been against the civil rights act from the beginning claiming a litany of reasons why its a bad idea (civil unrest being one of the biggies). You know they're going to do SOMETHING, they're in the majority. You begrudgingly support "evidence backed policy" and bring a few colleagues along with you all the while claiming you're selflessly putting the nations well being in the hands of the majority.
Now its 2 years later, there were no mass killings (cuz they were averted) and you go right on back, fighting for civil rights and integration claiming a crisis had been used to trick you into supporting counterintuitive policies. What about the civil unrest and the millions of potential deaths? Well they didn't happen. how could those evil conservatives truly KNOW if it was going to happen at all? The evidence that convinced you 2 years ago in retrospect no longer seems as immanent (time can do that).
This may be a ridiculous and over the top analogy but what happened in 2008 is to a supply-sider the exact same as if my little drama of horrors happened to a civil rights leader. After 30 years of tax cuts, deregulations, record corporate profits, globalization, union disintegration, etc. basically every economic metric trending the supply-siders way and it ended in great depression 2? Once and for all proving the economic liberal intelligentsia right?! That just cant be true, i refuse to live in a world where everything I've fought for has actually been destroying that of which i love (can anyone say Lennie?).
But why are we all surprised they refuse to believe the evidence that is staring them in the face? I mean we're talking about the same group of pundits, politicians, "thinktankers" that were POSITIVE there were WMDs in Iraq, that claimed we'd be greeted as liberators, that the war would pay for itself (same way tax cuts do, i guess) that you can kill your way out of people hating you. etc. ( I hate to stick with the war stuff but the litany of wrongness against all evidence is just so exemplified by the terror strategy) But hey why go off into other policy issues if we go far enough i might have to point out times I was wrong, and why would I want to do that?
Back to Economics, one might think that Keynes won the argument 50 years ago. (and they did think that 50 years ago) After the unprecedented public works project called WW2 (and the modest help of the new deal). We're talking about 5 years of government spending that approached and then breached 100% of GDP (all payed off in 10 years while we were simultaneously financing the rebuilding of europe and Japan btw ) This was not simply doubling GDP in TAX CUTS, it was direct spending of the government to buy so much stuff that they actually had to ration supplies! Talk about a socialist takeover!!!! the government had almost 1/2 the countries work force being paid directly or indirectly by the government and those not still had to operate under Big Brothers yoke of the Office of Price Administration (look it up). Hell, they even forcibly conscripted citizens onto government payrolls. And what did this Socialist Nightmare leave in its wake? Only the largest expansion of GDP, Exports, the middle class, yada yada... get what I'm saying? By literally every economic measure wealth exploded splashing every which way. There is a reason why the 90s were said to have been the "largest economic expansion in the post war period" cuz the post war period was FRACKIN RIDICULOUS!
Now does a Keynesian look at these hard numbers and claim "government should run a war economy all the time" No, of course not such a simplistic one size fits all solution would simply be idiotic to claim when talking about something so massive and adaptive as the GLOBAL ECONOMY. But when there is a giant national problem that literally effects the lives of every citizen? maybe?.. lets discuss it?
COMMUNIST!!!!!!
Ok, never mind we wont discuss it ... back to the essay...
Why should we let it burn you ask? Cuz averting the worst crisis sense the great depression leaves doubts in peoples minds if such a crisis even existed. One might say that TARP, the FED and the Stimulus is just a logical fallacy. It's just Lisa Simpson with the rock claiming to Homer it keeps bears out of the house. Except the government action was not a rock (it was sound Keynesian policy) and there were bears all over the damn place. (bank runs, stock/bond sell offs, raising unemployment etc. ) Instead of me explaining here for about 200 words how every economic metric in 2008 shows a collapse in the financial sector would have had a worse effect then the failures in the late 20s. Why don't i just ask this. Do you think (in general) average Americans are more or less dependent on complex financial systems today (the 21st century) then they were in 1929? So an equally horrific collapse would still effect a larger % of the citizens because more people are active participants to the global economy.
How did FDR have overwhelming political support to try different strategies from different experts and schools of thought year after year? Even trying austerity, (see 1938 recession. cuz how could half of the economic community be so BLATANTLY WRONG? I wish i knew, i wish i knew) The VAST majority of americans didn't care what the government called its policies or who was implementing them or hell to a large extent what they were actually doing, just as long as they were trying something, ANYTHING! Remember, FDR came into office in 1933 there had been 4 years sense the market collapse and basically 5 years of "let the market handle it" budget balancing economics as the country sank further and further into economic Armageddon. You know how there are no atheists in foxholes? Well, there are no supply-siders in bread lines.
The sad truth is that Keynesians have been thwarted by there own sound policy coupled with liberals need to consensus build. We avert a bigger disaster then the great depression but you cant "prove it" cuz you cant prove a negative. So, we Half'd the estimated needed stimulus and turn a third of the remaining amount into ineffective tax cuts for those who were still turning profits (getting laid off is a 100% tax cut, do they think it was worth it?) all in a misguided effort to make the action look bipartisan (mission accomplished, huh, Barrak O'Bushie).
But now travel with me to the land of make believe where the Chinese wont be bossing our grandkids around. Lets just say when Hank Paulson came to Palosi in 2008 begging for help she looked at him and said "what about that invisible hand Hank?... are you asking us to SOCIALIZE the banking system?" and just stared him down saying "you jackwads got us into this mess, now you can get us out"... Hell, Palosi could have gone out to the press and said "this is a crisis of epic proportions, We are in the Majority so we will act responsibly, i can promise half of our caucus, but we need to jump this cliff together so we need half of the republicans to join us"
There is simply no way in hell Bush could have gotten 1/2 the republicans to vote for a financial bailout. So, lets just say McCain's little "suspend his campaign" stunt worked, they strike a deal with the Republicans and passed Eric Cantors insurance plan (Hank Paulson's book) that had nothing to do with the deficient capital requirements of the banks. Meanwhile the Kryptkeeper and the Weather girl win the election. The System collapses, 50% of retirement funds would have been washed away, Billionaires would have been overnight regulated to Millionaire status and we'd be looking at 30% unemployment (50-60% real), now about 80 million americans without health insurance and double on medicaid (if they didn't cut it) After a year of tax cuts and the deficit exploding (especially as a % of GDP) and right when we thought it couldn't get any worse The BP rig Explodes and sinks into the ocean spewing (as we find out months and months later) almost an Exxon Valdez every day for a year into the Gulf. Its the Perfect storm of economic, environmental, and foreign policy disasters. Cuz hell you think VP Barracuda aint gonna try and bomb some new target? The country would have to deal with 3 years of slowly but surely worsening conditions on all fronts, much worse then Hoover ever had to deal with (Global Whoming?).
With such dire economic conditions the people would be crying out for the government to do something, ANYTHING. (sound familiar?) In 2012 President Hillary Clinton VP Biden and secretary of state OBama could have really set us on track for another 80 years of middle class success and United states Economic dominance in the new energy economy. But hey, 100 years from now some Chinese Fiction writer is going to pull out stuff by Krugman, Gladwell, and Freedman, regurgitating parts of there plans making a boat load of Yuan selling that alternate history to the west (think Tom Clancy meets andrew ross Sorkin). But anyways, Long story short (too late) Long live Capitalism and her new Chinese overlords.
PS: Governor Wallace at least apologized and admitted he was wrong, do you think the tea baggers will ever do the same?
PB