Tax cuts for the Rich

“Good for you, knee. You may be the only one.

But there is so much to talk about. I've got a wholoe bunch of figures on taxes and wasteful government spending.

Government now accounts for 40% of our economy . Government spending and employment is the fastest growing segment of our econmy.

What a legacy!”

“I reread some of the earlier post in this thread. It was fun to go back and see all of the European comparisons. arc - what % do the Europeans have?”

“I don't know, dayhiker, but it's probably larger. That's why Germany has endemic 10% unemployment. Because their government is taking care of them.



Yo, Naviguesser, please come back! We have so much to discuss:

Writing about the causes of the stock-market bubble of the late 90’s, Tony Deden at Sage Capital Management wrote:

“The cause is not the fault of capitalism as it has been suggested, but an excessive amount of money and credit created by central banks. Yet, this seems to escape the understanding of those who will, in one day, convene congressional hearings to determine what caused this destruction. The culprit is, as it always has been, the same organization, which professes interest in bringing about price stability and low inflation: The Federal Reserve Bank and its policies of money market intervention, credit creation and loose money.”

This is one man’s opinion, of course. But it contains some interesting ideas. It contains the idea that government may also be responsible for creating crashes.

But wait, economist Jorg G. Hulsmann, agrees with this idea:

“It is but a question of time until North-America and Europe also reach the dead end of an economy built on fiat money. At that point, however, there will be nobody to extend the life span of this shallow game through further credits and further inflation. Either the western economies will then be under total government control, as has already been the case in German National Socialism, or we are expecting a hyperinflation. It may take some more years or even decades until we reach this point in time. It can be further delayed through a currency union between Dollar and Euro (and Yen?). But it is and remains a dead end street, at the end of which there is either socialism or hyperinflation. Only radical free market reforms – in Rothbard’s words: return to a commodity money such as gold on a free currency market and a complete ban of government from monetary affairs – lead us out of this.”

Oh, and economist Frank Shostak of the Austrian school of economics agrees. And so does economist George Reisman. “He found the ultimate cause of extreme movements in the economy in general and in the stock-market bubble in particular to be government intervention in connection with the money supply and interest rates.”

And economist Hans Sennholz: “The economic maladjustments due to many years of monetary manipulations by the Federal Reserve System are the prime source and mover of the inevitable readjustment. Once the market structure no longer reflects the unhampered choices of all participants, the readjustment is unavoidable.”

And economist Ludwig von Mises, and economist William Anderson, …

Source:
Who Predicted the Bubble? Who Predicted the Crash?
Mark Thornton
The Independent Review a journal of political economy
Volume IX, Number 1, Summer 2004


Guess which president was responsible for giving the Federal Reserve System so much power?

But if you already knew that government could lessen the severity of the boom/bust cycle, Naviguesser, how could you not inform us that government policy might also be responsible for increasing the severity of this cycle?

Ya know what? All these opinions, from knowledgeable economists, doesn’t make me any surer about what I know. But I think I’m gaining a better insight.”

“Geeze arc, you write a book and expect me to respond like my capitalist boss doesn't think I should do some work.

I have some notes but now my wife thinks I should spend some time with her.

No body understands the pressure I'm under.
Now that IS a joke.

Anyway I'll get back as soon as I can.”

“arc, you bemoan the fact that as a person with a minority view point you are not represented by government. Yet you hold up Blockbuster as a shining example of the responsiveness of the "Free Market".
Have you seen any change in the way Blockbuster does business since I stopped doing business with them?
I'm only one customer and as I recall Libertarians received votes in the single di digits. I guess the only thing we differ on here is that I didn't expect Blockbusters to change for me. On the other hand I did get a letter of response from my representive in congress.

You decry that the monied interests have more of a say in government than "The People", but laugh at me when I say that the monied interests have too much power in society as a whole. Is there a bias here?

You're absolutely righ that Bill Gates doesn't buy 1000's of more cars then you do. But you gave no consideration to the way Microsoft has stifled competition. Isn't that more to the point of this conversation?

My sources on the California Energy Crisis? The L.A. Times and my own electricity bills. But lets just take a quick overview here: There isn't an energy crisis now. What's changed? There have not been any new power plants built, people haven't been conservering to any great degree, the governments policy was only tweeked a little tiny bit. What's changed? Oh yeah, no Enron.
Do you think any of this is connected or is it just a fluke?

"We don't want to return to Charles Dickens's time, when young childern labored long hours under harsh conditions in coal mines and mills." But because of our Child Labor Laws poor Tommy McCoy can't be a bat boy. Oh the horror!
And to fix this unjustice we not only need to get rid of the Child Labor Laws but the whole Dept. of Labor.
Talk about "Give Me a Break"!
Just how long do you think it will take our "Free Market" to get back to Charles Dickens's time if we did get rid of the Child Labor Laws?
Can't happen you say?
L.A. Times 2/13/05
Washington D. C.
"Wal-Mart to Pay Penalty in Child Labor Charges"
"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. the world's largest retailer, will pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it broke child labor laws, the Labor Department said.
The 24 violations, which occurred at stores in Arkansas, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, had to do with teenage workers who used hazardous equipment such as a chain saw, paper balers and forklifts.
Wal-Mart denied the allegations but agreed to pay the penalty. Child Labor laws prohibit anyone under 18 from operating hazardous equipment."

Lets see, the Dot Com Bust was caused by The Fed allowing too much credit. Even if this had any merit, the solution is that only rich should be able to invest in the stock market? Oh yeah that'll work. Insider trading with insider.

As for my assertion that government makes the boom / bust cycle shorter:

BUSINESS CYCLE DURATION IN MONTHS
REFERENCE DATES
Peak Trough Contraction Expansion Cycle
Quarterly dates Peak Previous trough Trough from Peak from
are in parentheses to to Previous Previous
Trough this peak Trough Peak
December 1854 (IV) -- -- -- --
June 1857(II) December 1858 (IV) 18 30 48 --
October 1860(III) June 1861 (III) 8 22 30 40
April 1865(I) December 1867 (I) 32 46 78 54
June 1869(II) December 1870 (IV) 18 18 36 50
October 1873(III) March 1879 (I) 65 34 99 52

March 1882(I) May 1885 (II) 38 36 74 101
March 1887(II) April 1888 (I) 13 22 35 60
July 1890(III) May 1891 (II) 10 27 37 40
January 1893(I) June 1894 (II) 17 20 37 30
December 1895(IV) June 1897 (II) 18 18 36 35

June 1899(III) December 1900 (IV) 18 24 42 42
September 1902(IV) August 1904 (III) 23 21 44 39
May 1907(II) June 1908 (II) 13 33 46 56
January 1910(I) January 1912 (IV) 24 19 43 32
January 1913(I) December 1914 (IV) 23 12 35 36

August 1918(III) March 1919 (I) 7 44 51 67
January 1920(I) July 1921 (III) 18 10 28 17
May 1923(II) July 1924 (III) 14 22 36 40
October 1926(III) November 1927 (IV) 13 27 40 41
August 1929(III) March 1933 (I) 43 21 64 34
433 20 21.65

May 1937(II) June 1938 (II) 13 50 63 93
February 1945(I) October 1945 (IV) 8 80 88 93
November 1948(IV) October 1949 (IV) 11 37 48 45
July 1953(II) May 1954 (II) 10 45 55 56
August 1957(III) April 1958 (II) 8 39 47 49

April 1960(II) February 1961 (I) 10 24 34 32
December 1969(IV) November 1970 (IV) 11 106 117 116
November 1973(IV) March 1975 (I) 16 36 52 47
January 1980(I) July 1980 (III) 6 58 64 74
July 1981(III) November 1982 (IV) 16 12 28 18

July 1990(III) March 1991(I) 8 92 100 108
March 2001(I) November 2001 (IV) 8 120 128 128
125 12 10.41666667


National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02138
USA
617-868-3900

(OK so my cut & paste didn't work)
What this shows is that the downard slide of the Boom / Bust Cycle averaged 21.65 months before FDR but only 10.42 months after FDR. Is cutting it in half enough to say that government shortend the cycle?


What I hear you saying is that the government has no business being in the road building business. That the Free Market is more than capable of building all the roads we need. So lets say you're a manufacturer there in Florida and I'm your customer here in California.
How much is it going to cost you to ship your product to me?
These are all private roads, all toll roads.
Or does the Free Market build a road just in case somebody might want to use it?
There's not much population between El Paso and Phoenix, between Dallas and L.A. for that matter. So not much of a chance of profit. Will there be roads there? Paved? Dirt? (Hint - before WWII there were only dirt roads between L.A. and Phoenix)
How many freight companies are going to be needed? Will there be Interstate Carriers? Or will they all be local haulers handing the shipment one to the other?
How long before I can expect my shipment to arrive? How much more invertory do I need to stock to make up for this time?
All this is retorical you say? We both live close to the ocean so you'll put my order on a ship.
Florida to L.A. via the Panama Canal, no wait the government built the Canal. Florida to L.A. around the Horn. How long will that take? (Hint - when I order stuff from Japan for my company it takes 90 to 120 days).
I got my order! WOOHOO!!
Time to pay for it. How long will it take my check to get to you? Will you take a check? Or because we're so far apart is it cash only?

Tell me how this one industry will affect the rest of the economy. Tell me how other industries will be affect by only haveing toll roads. Will General Motors be a very big company? How many auot parts companies can you name? Do you think there will be something called "The Family Vacation" where we pile in the car and drive to see this great country? How big will Chevron be?

Arc, please answer these questions. I really want to know how the Free Market works.
last edited: 2/13/05 10:32:26 PM”

“(Bump)
How do you feel about our current Heath Care System?
I'm asking more about Employer Paid Insurance than Medicare etc.”

“My employer pays for my health insurance, don't see how I have much to complain about...”

“The question is in the context of Free Market vs Government.”

“Free market please...”

“OK, in a free market it's the consumers demand vs the suppliers supply.
Is that correct?”

“That is correct. The real problem with health care is the unreasonable expectations that people have. I am sick and tired of people complaining about the profits that drug companies make. For some strange reason people in our society have developed an expectation that they have a right to be kept healthy and alive far beyond what the point that they would in a natural environment. Hello... Jackasses, those drug companies, hospitals etc... are keeping you alive and healthy ARTIFICIALLY. If someone develops a drug or piece of equipment or procedure that keeps you healthy and alive don't #&%!$ about what profit they're making, you don't have any right to. The developer however has every right to charge whatever the hell he wants for what he/she invented to keep you going, if he/she hadn't a come up with it you'd be dead.”

“1st - Where do you fit in on the Consumer Demand vs Supplier Supply?


2nd - If someone develops a drug or piece of equipment or procedure that keeps you healthy and alive don't #&%!$ about what profit they're making, you don't have any right to. The developer however has every right to charge whatever the hell he wants for what he/she invented to keep you going, if he/she hadn't a come up with it you'd be dead.”
Bison

Who paid for the development?”

“Uh...........the customer.


Uh...........U.S. government research grant.”

“I saw a statistic on the news the other day that claimed our health care expenses (public and private) amounts to 15% of our GDP.

That is amazing. The stats I've seen have always place Europe at about 8% and we were at about 12% before.

Essentially, our current system puts a 5 to 7 percent tax on any business and individual in America.”

“Uh...........the customer.


Uh...........U.S. government research grant.”
MarkO

Wrong. You're not the customer.
Right. Sort of, not just a grant, a whole government lab.
last edited: 2/15/05 2:59:39 PM”

“Well, the "customer's" money/tax pays for the lab.


Maybe in Europe health care is delivered at cost instead of for profit like in the U.
S.”

“prescription prices need to be looked at. Why is it cheaper to buy a drug from Canada that was made in the US and shipped to Canada than it is to buy it here??”

“RIP




OFF”

“It's the Insurance Co. that plays the role of the customer here. They are the ones that deal with the Medical Suppliers on price.
Your Company (if you're lucky enough to get insurance as a bennie) buys a product that has very little to do with Medical Suppliers.
Now you, the "Consumer", do you have a say in which insurance company your employer deals with?
When you go to the doctor it costs you $10 for your co-pay. Do you have any say want the insurance pays the doc?
The doc says you need a test. What do you care? It's just $10 to you.
You are driving the "Demand" but have no control of the price of the "Supplier".”

“Ewker, because Bush's Perscription Drug Plan prohibits the Federal and State Governments from negotiating with the Drug Co. They have to pay what the Drug Co.s charge. Period.”

“It's all well and nice that in some cases research grants pay for some of the expense of developing a new drug, new equipment, new procedure. The researcher can and in many cases does find funding elsewhere, it's the researcher who develops what is keeping you alive, not the grant or the equipment in the lab.”

“yeah but if it wasn't for the grant or funding the researcher/equipment wouldn't be there.”

“"if you're lucky enough to get insurance as a bennie"

See... that's your problem right there. I'm not lucky I get good benifits. I worked damned hard all my life for them. I fed myself on $0.50 packs of hot dogs and ramen noodles to get my college degree. I excell at what i do for a living and i get paid VERY handsomly for it. I don't expect to get my health care for free... and I don't expect the government to give me a handout or to take care of me.”

“Sure they would Ewker, they'd just be getting their funding from private sources and charging a hell of a lot more than they already do for the results.

Or, the market wouldn't bare the cost of development and nobody'd have those results. In which case who loses more? Certainly not the researcher.
last edited: 2/15/05 3:36:34 PM”

“DDX - Ahhhh, ramen, those were the days.”

““DDX - Ahhhh, ramen, those were the days.”

Were? Hell I picked up a bunch for 10 cents a pack the other day down to da WalMart.”

“make sure you get the Ramen that comes with oil.”

“The taste of Ramen makes me sick to this day.”

“LMAO - I'm eating Ramen right now...”

“I tried it a few weeks back on a trip. One bag was good the other sucked. My wife bought some shrimp flavored stuff. Thank goodness the other tt'ers fed me that day at lunch. It was nasty. It'd probably been 10 years since I'd eaten it.”

“I bought some Ramen from a Asian store. I had to get the guy to translate so I would know what I was buying. Didn't want to get any dog or cat flavored Ramen”

“Why so defensive Deore?
Did I say you don't deserve what you got?
Did I say medical services should be free?
I don't think so.
The whole point here is that it is not the Free Market / Supply & Demand some people think it is.

Let's just take you as an example: You've graduated from college, you're a sought after commodity. When you interviewed with the various companies you interviewed with, how important was the insurance? Yes, it's important, but on the scale, which came 1st? Salary? Car? Expenses? Private office? Bonus Plan? Options? Stability of the Co.? How exciting the job was going to be? Location? Insurance?
Did you ask to see the insurance policy, to see what was covered and what wasn't?
2 Companies interviewing you, both are pretty close, was it really the insurance that pushed you to one over the other?”

“Oh that shrimp stuff is horrid! I don't eat the stuff if I need actaul fuel in the tank but a nice pot of raman done soup style when ya get into camp sure makes me feel better.”

“I sure hope DeoreDX didn't attend a public University.”

“Bison, I know they would get there funding from someplace private or public. But w/out funding there is still nothing there.

Companies who develop drugs for the consumers should make as much as they can while they can within reason. But they shouldn't rake the consumer over the coals either. There is a difference between a fair profit and gouging.

I realize they also have to pay (or the funding does) for all that went into developing the drug but when the generic drug comes out 7 yrs? later and the price is half or less then the consumers are getting the better deal.”

“bump for acrlite.”

“Walmart needs to open some health clinics in its stores. "Dudes. How come all the Doctors here are Chinese?"

But, seriously. I like the new health savings accounts. I hope that kind of thinking expands into more traditional health plans. Everyone starts the year with a thousand dollars in the account. If you don't use the plan much, you get most of the thousand dollars in a 401K or 403B at the end of the year.

Incentivize.”

“RL, you had better recheck that cause I don't think you are right. It stays in a account that does draw some interest. It is suppose to be for medical expenses only. That isn't to say you can't use it for other things but you may have to answer to the gov't if you do.

I am on a HSA and so far it is costing me more money to be in it. In my case you pay the negotiated rate to the Dr and prescriptions. Now if is a wellness issue then the insurnace pays it all or suppose to.”

“Doesn't it turn into a retirement account at some point?

And, Ewker, I'll stand corrected on this if proven wrong.

But I do think that there is something very wrong with spending %15 of GDP on health care. There's got to be a way to reward people for not making frivolous doctor visits and spread the savings to people who aren't covered.”

“RL, we were told it will always be a medical account. Believe me we asked. If you can never use it over time it can build up but unfortuantely for me for drug cost per month exceeds what I am putting in.

Also it comes out of your check before taxes.

Remember I am can only say how mine works. Out of all the companies that use the same insurance company we were the only company to go with a HSA account. Lots of learning curves in the first yr of it.
last edited: 2/17/05 2:41:33 PM”

“Sorry, Naviguesser. My wife need attention as well. Please don't tell her that I'm really enjoying my time with you.


Naviguesser, I don’t mean to be crabby or anything, but I dislike emotional sophistry:

“arc, you bemoan the fact that as a person with a minority view point you are not represented by government…”
Naviguesser

I do not “bemoan” anything of the sort.


“You decry that the monied interests have more of a say in government than "The People", but laugh at me when I say that the monied interests have too much power in society as a whole….”
Naviguesser

I do not “decry” anything of the sort.


You know that I understand what are the meanings of those words. Your use of those terms is fallacious at best. I won’t use the “L” word here. You remind me of the journalist who misrepresents “loaded” terms to produce emotional responses in his readers; consciously, or unconsciously, trying to sway them to a particular emotionally biased viewpoint. That won’t wash here. Let’s keep the discussion on an informative basis.




You got a letter of response from your representative in congress? I hope that it was a personal reply and not just a form letter. Did he respond to your ideas? A few months back, I emailed one of my State representatives. He was trying to get a bill passed that would have forced the University of Florida and the University of Miami to play football every year. I let him know that I felt he should be paying attention to more important matters and not trying to force typical government intrusion into a part of our lives that government has no business. He wrote me back a response saying that, hell yes he was going to go ahead with the bill. It died a lonely death somewhere in our State congress, a total waste of our money. I have no idea whether I affected that outcome at all. And I don’t know where you get the idea that I expect government to change for me?

I complained to a supervisor, at Sam’s Club, that I had received lousy service at their service desk. She said that she would do her best to see that service was improved. Then she gave me a free year’s membership and a $36 dollar gift certificate. Now THAT’S a response and a change.



“…you gave no consideration to the way Microsoft has stifled competition. Isn't that more to the point of this conversation?…”
Naviguesser


I give plenty of though to the way Microsoft does business and I have mixed emotions. You use the word “stifled.” My guess (and I may be wrong) is that you have strong feelings against “Big Business.” You’ve used the term “robber baron” more than once. Do you know the history behind that term?

“Cornelius Vanderbilt and his fellow tycoon John D. Rockefeller were often called “robber barons.” Newspapers said they were evil, and ran cartoons showing Vanderbilt as a leech sucking the blood of the poor. Rockefeller was depicted as a snake. What the newspapers printed stuck – we still think of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller as “robber barons.” But it was a lie. They were neither robbers nor barons. They weren’t robbers, because they didn’t steal from anyone, and they weren’t barons – they were born poor…

…It’s telling that the “robber baron” name-calling didn’t come from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained, and persuaded the media to join in.”

John Stossel
Give Me a Break


Wow! That’s quite an indictment on your use of language, Naviguesser. What about your views on another “big business”, Microsoft? Here is the way economist William Anderson viewed the Microsoft “monopoly”:

“As things stand currently, the once-vaunted bull market is in flux. This is partly due to the government’s arrogance in believing it could attack Microsoft without harming other high-technology firms that have been the most visible in the current economic expansion. That the NASDAQ has lost much of its value since Janet Reno’s Department of Justice [DOJ] won the first round of its attempt to dismember Microsoft bears testament to the administration’s foolishness regarding economic matters.”

Let’s compare business “stifled” to political “stifled.”

Here are your choices of operating systems (that have actually been used) and their competing developers:

AIX / AIXL IBM
BSD BSD
Caldera Linux SCO
Corel Linux Corel
Debian Linux GNU
DUNIX Digital
DYNIX/ptx IBM
HP-UX Hewlett Packard
IRIX SGI
Kondara Linux Kondara
Linux Linus Torvald
MAC OS 8 Apple
MAC OS 9
MAC OS 10
Mandrake Linux Mandrake
MINIX MINIX
MS-DOS 1.x Microsoft
MS-DOS 2.x
MS-DOS 3.x
MS-DOS 4.x
MS-DOS 5.x
MS-DOS 6.x
NEXTSTEP Apple
OSF/1 OSF
QNX QNX
Red Hat Linux Red Hat
SCO SCO
Slackware Linux Slackware
Sun Solaris Sun
SuSE Linux SuSE
System 1 Apple
System 2
System 3
System 4
System 6
System 7
System V System V
Tru64 UNIX Digital
Turbolinux Turbolinux
Ultrix Ultrix
Unisys Unisys
UNIX Bell labs
UnixWare UnixWare
VectorLinux VectorLinux
Windows 2000 Microsoft
Windows 2003
Windows 3.X
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows CE
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows XP
Xenix

I have used a number of these systems. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean the competition is stifled. A democracy is all about choices.

You want monopoly? Here are our choices of competing political party that hold power in our government:
Democrat
Republican

If you really want to get daring you can add Libertarian, Independent, Green, … and a few other small parties that haven’t yet had any impact on government. A democracy is all about choices.




I am slack-jawed here:

“My sources on the California Energy Crisis? The L.A. Times and my own electricity bills.”
Naviguesser

Your information about an extremely complex socio-economic issue comes from what you’ve read in your local newspaper and from looking at your utility bills? What do I say to that? How do I respond to that without laughing?

You call yourself a centrist. You claim: “What's changed? Oh yeah, no Enron.” Of all these myriad factors that have changed since that time, you simplify the problem down to “big business” again. You claim that one company, Enron, was responsible for the entire “California Energy Crisis”?

I am truly slack-jawed. You refuse to acknowledge any of the information that I presented about this issue. Instead, you offered conclusions that you seem to believe explain the issue better. Now, I must admit that an hour-long Frontline documentary on the causes and effects of the “California Energy Crisis” is not enough for me to be absolutely sure beyond all doubt that the Frontline investigators discovered all of the causes. But if you don’t understand how much more information there is in a Frontline documentary, verses what you read in your local paper and your utility bills, then I can’t explain it to you.

If you have any inkling that what I’m saying is true, do yourself a favor and research the issue a little better. Here is an interesting site:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/california/subsequentevents.html




“Talk about "Give Me a Break"!
Just how long do you think it will take our "Free Market" to get back to Charles Dickens's time if we did get rid of the Child Labor Laws?”
Naviguesser

Nav, you keep displaying a virulent reaction to the business world for someone who claims to be a centrist.

THAT is your example, a story about Wal-Mart putting innocent young children’s lives at stake? I say it is an excellent example of government intrusion into our lives. I say it is an excellent example of the ridiculous lengths some in this country will go to protect us from ourselves. Imagine teenage workers using a chain saw? Imagine how the government would have shut me down when I was 12 years old and running my own lawn service. What about the snow blower I used to run every winter? Give me a break!

I used a chain saw before I was 14. Most kids in rural areas learn how to use guns as early as 12. There aren’t any laws against teenagers shooting guns in the proper environment. Is the Labor Department saying it’s all right for kids under 18 to shoot guns but not operate paper balers and forklifts? Do you believe that these teenagers weren’t properly trained in the use of this incredibly hazardous equipment? Did anyone ask the kids if they felt that their lives were in imminent danger? Did Wal-Mart force them to operate this hazardous equipment? How do you suppose the teenager’s parents felt about this? The story doesn’t give us all of the relevant information. This is the type of information you were “researching” to understand the “California Energy Crisis?” This is a typical newspaper story. And it is a perfect example of the idiocy of one-size-fits-all government intrusion into our lives.




I can’t check your statistics. I can’t tell what they show. They may very well show that government can play an important role in reducing the bust component of the cycle. But again you completely ignore my information in your zeal to defend government. I acknowledge that government may aid the recovery process in the short run. I have stated that much. What you fail to acknowledge is that government may actually stifle economic growth. In the long run, is it wise to accept less down-side, while accepting less up-side? This is a question that is worth pursuing. Maybe you would like to re-read the economic analysis provided by various economists in my previous post. I hope that you will read the economic article that I post at the end of my discussion. William Anderson believes that government may have contributed to the bubble:

We have, supposedly learned our lessons since the 1970s. Alan Greenspan knows more than previous Federal Reserve chairmen, Robert Rubin was a brilliant Secretary of the Treasury, the internet is providing new ways of doing business, and Bill Clinton has marvelously orchestrated the whole thing. The stock market is rising, and government (or at least the current regime, according to Al Gore in his stump speeches) knows how to continue the prosperity. This time, we really are experiencing the New Economy.

Pardon me if I dissent. If history tells us correctly, we are in our third “New Economy” in the last 80 years. The first episode of “prosperity forever” came in the late 1920s, as the bull market, low unemployment numbers, and general good times led newly elected President Herbert Hoover to declare, “In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure.” We know the rest of the story. (2000, 5)”




“What I hear you saying is that the government has no business being in the road building business.”
Naviguesser

I don’t know how you logically reached that conclusion, but let me now inform you that it is the wrong conclusion.

I believe that there are things only government can provide. Government can provide courts of law. Government can provide for the defense of the country. Interstate highways may be a very good use of government. But I don’t like to be closed-minded. I always like to think about possibilities.

Did you know that New York’s first subway was built by private companies? The city government “…took it over after it bankrupted the company by refusing to allow them to raise the “five-cent-fare.””

Jersey City NJ got a private contractor to complete work on their aging water system after city worker told the mayor the pipes couldn’t be fixed. “And the private company saved the taxpayers $35 million.”

Pinellas County, Florida privatized its ambulance service. “Not only were taxes lowered because the county was now paying less for ambulances, but the workers were happier and ambulance service was better.”

Meanwhile, “The Federal Aviation Administration still uses antiquated vacuum tubes in its radar system.”

“A company rented the empty space in the middle of the 91 Freeway in California, and used it as a toll road – a better one. It has no tollbooths; computers scan the cars as they drive by (you don’t even have to slow down) and bill people electronically. Since traffic jams lower profits, the private company did innovative things to keep traffic moving. It has cameras trained on the road, so if a car breaks down, they see it, and someone quickly comes to help. If you run out of gas, they give you a free gallon. Tolls change according to how many people are using the road (“congestion pricing”). A ride that costs $4.75 at rush hour might cost 50 cents at midnight.”

John Stossel
Give Me a Break


I believe that government can perform certain functions better than the private sector. How best can government and the market work together? Instead of monopolizing highway construction, maybe they could just have provided the incentive to get business started. I was upset when Reagan ended government funding for solar energy projects. Not enough people want to be the first to bite the bullet because solar systems cost so much and take too long to pay back system cost. If government provided a kick-start incentive, production of solar systems might increase. If production increases, it will become cheaper to build the systems. If prices would drop demand may very well increase. If demand increases, business will devote more resources to producing better and cheaper systems. So far the market hasn’t responded because the demand isn’t there. There are some things to which I wish the market would respond. But who am I to try to stifle the freedom and liberty that embodies the market?




Understanding the causes of something like the “California Energy Crisis” (did a crisis really exist or was it just media hype?) takes more research than reading a local paper, adding up utility bill payments, then pointing fingers at a single company.

I’ve shown how the free market provides more choices than government when comparing market based operating systems to our stifling political monopoly.

I hope that you’ll take the time to read the following analysis, Naviguesser. You’ve said that you believe government is too big. I believe that too. I don’t believe that there is anything inherently “evil” about government, I just believe that it is (and already has) outgrowing its constitutional mandate.






Lies, Damn Lies, and Conventional Measures of the Growth of Government

Robert Higgs
The Independent Review a journal of political economy
Volume IX, Number 1, Summer 2004

Many of us who believe that governments continue to grow relentlessly, at least in the economically advanced countries, have been criticized by analysts who claim that in fact the growth of government has petered out or slowed substantially. ?The latter group perceives us to be needlessly alarmed and faults us for a failure to acknowledge the decisive turn of events associated with the so-called Regan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s. Not to worry, they exhort us; the statistics are on the run, and a brave new world of market-oriented liberalism shimmers on the horizon.

My thesis here is that these seemingly level-headed realists are the ones who have failed to perceive correctly the ongoing growth of government. A major reason for their failure is their reliance on certain conventional measures of the size and growth of government. Some of these measures have a built-in tendency to exhibit deceleration even when a more compelling representation displays continuing steady growth. Often the conventional measures miss the growth of government because it has been diverted into channels beyond the scope of their measurement. To some extent, governments have been growing in important but unmeasured or poorly measured ways all along, and they continue to grow in these ways, perhaps more menacingly than ever before. Off-budget spending, for example, is a well-known resort of political scoundrels, but it is only one example among many of how governments employ hard-to-measure means to achieve their usual ends, especially when tax revolts, formal spending limits, or borrowing limitations frustrate their chronic desire to spend at a greater rate.



Government’s Share of Gross Domestic Product

The most common measure of the size of government is the amount of government spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP). In a recent monograph on the growth of government, for example, Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht present much of their data in the form of government-spending variables relative to GDP. A major theme of the book is: “Government spending [measured in this way] increased most rapidly until about 1980. Since the early 1980s, it has been growing more slowly and in some instances has even declined” (2000, 3).

Now, the first thing to notice is that a sure-fire way to make nearly any economic magnitude appear small is to divide it by GDP, because the latter, which purports to be the total value at market prices of all final goods and services produced within a country in a year, is always an enormous dollar (or euro or peso or other currency unit) amount. Government spending of $2,855,200,000,000, as in the Untied States in fiscal year 2001, seems to be an astronomical amount, but just divide it by the value of GDP and, voila’, it is a mere 28 percent – surely nothing to be alarmed about, especially in comparison with corresponding figures for many European countries that exceed 50 percent.

The next thing to notice is that because government spending for currently produced final goods and services is itself a component of GDP, the ratio of the former to the latter is immediately compromised. Any addition to such government spending increases the denominator as well as the numerator of the ratio. Suppose that in year one the government spends $100 dollars for currently produced final goods and services, and the GDP in that year is $500. Now suppose that in year two the government spends twice as much – that is, it increases its purchase amount by 100 percent – but nothing else changes. In year two, the government’s share of GDP will be 33.33 percent (or $200/$600), as compared to 20 percent in year one. An analyst focusing on the government’s spending share concludes, then, that government has grown not by 100 percent , as plainly has by construction, but only by 66.66 percent (that is, [33.33/20) – 1] X 100). The greater is the bias in moving from its absolute spending to the share concept to measure its growth. If government had begun with spending of $100 out of a GDP of $200, then doubled its purchase amount, other things being unchanged, it would have increased its spending share from 50 percent to 66.66 percent – a mere 33.33 percent growth.

Granted, many economically advanced countries have maintained a fairly steady government “exhaustive” share of GDP during the past couple decades (Tanzi and Schuknecht 2000, 25), but this steadiness merely attests that the government’s purchases of currently produced final goods and services have grown fully as fast as the sum of nongovernmental purchases of such goods and services during that period of substantial economic expansion, not that government has become quiescent or stuck in the mud. In the United States, for example, the total government share of GDP was 22.1 percent in 1975 and 17.6 percent in 1999. Lest one think that government had run out of steam during that quarter-century, however, one ought to notice that government increased its purchases of currently produced final goods and services from $361.1 billion in 1975 to $1,634.4 billion in 1999 – which is to say, it increased the annual rate of such spending by $1,273.3 billion during that period (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors 2001, 274-75). To be sure, inflation accounts for some of that increase, but even in constant (1996) dollars, the increase was from $942.5 billion to $1,536.1 billion (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors 2001, 277), or 63 percent – hardly a retrenchment. Population growth cannot justify the increased spending because the U.S. population grew by just 26 percent during the period (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors 2001, 315).

Of course, the really gigantic increases in government spending have most recently taken the form of transfers (including subsidies), which are not components of GDP and therefore do not give rise to exactly the same numerator-denominator bias that arises when government increases its purchases of currently produced final goods and services (“exhaustive” spending). Transfer spending also, however, is commonly placed for purposes of analysis in relation to GDP, which then serves as a sort of “normalizer” or standard of comparison, and whenever this ratio is used, some of the same problems identified earlier arise again. Why, one might ask, should government’s transfer spending be placed in a ratio to GDP rather than, say, in a ratio to population or some other base? And if the ratio to GDP remains constant, why, one might ask, should such constancy prevail? That is, why should government’s transfer spending increase whenever the economy’s output of final goods and services increases? Indeed such constancy would seem to betoken a kind of relative growth of government in its own right, inasmuch as people in a more productive economy presumably can get by more readily without government assistance; hence, as a rule, the ratio of transfers to GDP might be expected to fall in a growing economy rather than rise or even remain constant.

However this matter might be viewed, in reality the ratio has risen enormously in all the economically advanced countries during the past several decades, and it now stands at more than 20 percent on average for a group of seventeen important industrial countries studied by Tanzi and Schuknecht, up from less than 10 percent as recently as 1960 (2000, 31). Increasingly, transfer spending is becoming recognized as the Godzilla that threatens to consume New York, Tokyo, Berlin, and nearly evey other city on the planet. A few countries, such as Chile, have taken effective measures to deal with this looming threat to government fiscal viability, but so far most politicians in most countries have kept their heads planted firmly in the sand, ignoring everything beyond the next election, while government’s transfer spending has grown ever more bloated, and the severity of the adjustments that will have to be made when the day of reckoning can no longer be postponed has grown ever greater.



Government’s Share of Employment

Government employment as a percentage of total employment has often served as an index of the size of government. This measure, too, has a built-in bias toward suggesting that the rate at which government is growing is decelerating over time even when government increases its share of employment by, say, one percentage point every year. Thus, for example, when government’s employment share increases from 2 percent to 4 percent, the government grows by 100 percent, but when the share increases from 20 percent to 22 percent, gobbling up the same incremental proportion of total employment, the government grows by just 10 percent.

In the group of seventeen advanced countries analyzed recently by Tanzi and Schuknecht, the government’s average employment share increased from 5.2 percent in 1937 to 12.3 percent in 1960 to 18.4 percent in 1994 (2000, 26). The rate of increase of this ratio has declined during the past two decades in most countries, but one ought not to make too much of that deceleration. In the United States, increases in the amount of “contracting out” of government functions have led to a replacement of formal government employees by a growing “shadow” army of many millions of seemingly private employees – grantees, contractors, and consultants – but the latter are doing what they are doing only because the government arranges and pays for it to be done (Blumenthal 1979; Hanrahan 1983; Light 1999a, 1999b). According to Paul Light’s estimates, the U.S. federal workforce is not the fewer than 2 million persons officially reported (as of 1996), but nearly 17 million persons – “and the count does not even include the full-time equivalent employment of the people who work on a part-time or temporary basis for Uncle Sam – for example, the 884,000 members of the military reserves,” although it does include some 4.7 million federally funded workers already counted in the all-governments total as employees of state and local governments (1999a, 1).

Moreover, governments increasingly have established regulations that in effect require bona fide private parties to work for the government. Tanzi and Schuknecht themselves take note of such “quasi-fiscal policies,” which they describe aptly as regulations that “become alternatives to taxing and spending” (2000, 203). In this recognition, they follow in a long line of analysts stretching back at least to Richard A. Posner in his capacity as the author of the 1971 article “Taxation by Regulation.”

The relevant class of regulations, though, is much wider than it is usually recognized to be in the standard literature of economics and public choice. To be sure, all sorts of economic, environmental, health and safety, and social regulations continue to spew out of Washington and Brussels, among many other government centers. In addition, however, the U.S. government especially requires ever more uncompensated information collection and reporting by its subjects in order to slake the Surveillance State’s insatiable craving for the most minute details of everyone’s conduct (Bennett and Johnson 1979; Twight 1999). These Big Brotherish demands are justified by the despicable slogan that only those with something to hide will object, but in truth this vile rain falls on the righteous and the wicked alike – and one would have to be pretty dimwitted to expect the latter to report truthfully even if officially required to do so.

According to a recent summary of U.S. federal regulation by Clyde Wayne Crews Jr.,

The 2001 Federal Register contained 64,431 pages….

In 2001, 4,132 final rules were issued by agencies….

Of the 4,509 regulations now in the works, 149 are “economically significant” rules that will have at least $100 million in economic impact. Those rules will impose at least $14.9 billion yearly in future off-budget costs….

The costs of meeting the demands of off-budget social regulations were as high as $229 billion according to the Office of Management and Budget. A more broadly constructed competing estimate that includes economic regulatory costs and paperwork costs pegs regulatory expenditures at $854 billion in 2001, or 46 percent of all FY01 [fiscal year 2001] outlays. (2002, 1-2)


The foregoing summary, shocking as it is, describes the regulatory burden being imposed at only the federal level of government. The state and local governments, as well as various international bodies, simultaneously continue to pour out endless streams of their own regulations, all of which entail resource costs and sacrifices of citizen’s liberties.

Because the public has less awareness of the burdens imposed by these regulations, many of which remain obscure and indirect in their operation and effects, governments encounter even less resistance to their ongoing imposition of regulatory burdens than they encounter in their quest to collect greater revenue from explicit taxes laid on incomes, sales transactions, and property values. So far it seems that there is no natural limit to the number of regulations governments can and will impose. Hence, we are fast approaching a condition in which everything that is not forbidden is required, even as Americans, acting for all the world like faux-patriotic zombies, continue to reassure themselves incessantly that “it’s a free country.”

For present purposes, the point is that people occupied with regulatory compliance are not truly privately employed. Instead, they are in effect stealth government servants, working not for their own ends but doing the bidding of their political masters. In the present Western world, then, nearly everybody is actually a government employee, but rather than getting a government paycheck for our efforts, we are required to pay the government for the privilege of our own serfdom and to bear the risk of prosecution and imprisonment should our unpaid work on the government’s behalf prove unsatisfactory to our “employer.”



All That and More

Astronomical taxes and expenditures, regulations distended beyond human comprehension; gigantic borrowing and lending; countless prohibitions and subsidies; innumerable loan guarantees; multitudes of fines, fees, and charges; mountains of surplus commodities distributed like manna; precious private property seized at the whim of the forfeiture police; foreign wars without end; internal-security measures that treat all human beings going about their daily lives as criminal suspects – all that and more, much more, ever more constitute the glorious realm of government in today’s economically advanced countries (you know, the ones that are color-coded as “free” on the maps prepared by research institutes better left nameless on this occasion). Each day the galling chains around us are pulled tighter. Yet until the last breath of liberty is squeezed out of us, we can rely on “hardheaded” scholars to trot out the anemic and biased measures of the growth of government and to announce calmly that we have no valid cause for alarm. My advice: if you value your life, liberty, and property, do not employ one of these experts as your night watchman.
last edited: 2/18/05 7:05:19 PM”

“Sorry, Naviguesser. My wife need attention as well. Please don't tell her that I'm really enjoying my time with you.


Naviguesser, I don’t mean to be crabby or anything, but I dislike emotional sophistry: Are you going to continue to quote John Stossel? Oh, the poor bat boy.

“arc, you bemoan the fact that as a person with a minority view point you are not represented by government…”
Naviguesser

I do not “bemoan” anything of the sort.
Bemoan - To express disapproval of.

“You decry that the monied interests have more of a say in government than "The People", but laugh at me when I say that the monied interests have too much power in society as a whole….”
Naviguesser

I do not “decry” anything of the sort.
decry - To condemn openly

You know that I understand what are the meanings of those words. Your use of those terms is fallacious at best. fallacious - Containing or based on a fallacyI won’t use the “L” word here. Excuse me, you just didYou remind me of the journalist who misrepresents “loaded” terms to produce emotional responses in his readers; consciously, or unconsciously, trying to sway them to a particular emotionally biased viewpoint. That won’t wash here. Let’s keep the discussion on an informative basis.
Naviguesser, you’re a hoot! Your stream-of-consciousness comedy reminds me of Carrot Top or Lenny Bruce.
acrlite

I think I have more grounds to take offense than you.

Do you think you can come up with a standard that we both can adhere to?




You got a letter of response from your representative in congress? I hope that it was a personal reply and not just a form letter. Did he respond to your ideas? A few months back, I emailed one of my State representatives. He was trying to get a bill passed that would have forced the University of Florida and the University of Miami to play football every year. I let him know that I felt he should be paying attention to more important matters and not trying to force typical government intrusion into a part of our lives that government has no business. He wrote me back a response saying that, hell yes he was going to go ahead with the bill. It died a lonely death somewhere in our State congress, a total waste of our money. I have no idea whether I affected that outcome at all. And I don’t know where you get the idea that I expect government to change for me?

I complained to a supervisor, at Sam’s Club, that I had received lousy service at their service desk. She said that she would do her best to see that service was improved. Then she gave me a free year’s membership and a $36 dollar gift certificate. Now THAT’S a response and a change.
I'm glad you had such a good experience. Mine at Best Buy was quite the opposite.
You get better service from the marketplace, I get better service from my representives.



“…you gave no consideration to the way Microsoft has stifled competition. Isn't that more to the point of this conversation?…”
Naviguesser


I give plenty of though to the way Microsoft does business and I have mixed emotions. You use the word “stifled.” My guess (and I may be wrong) is that you have strong feelings against “Big Business.” You’ve used the term “robber baron” more than once. Do you know the history behind that term?

“Cornelius Vanderbilt and his fellow tycoon John D. Rockefeller were often called “robber barons.” Newspapers said they were evil, and ran cartoons showing Vanderbilt as a leech sucking the blood of the poor. Rockefeller was depicted as a snake. What the newspapers printed stuck – we still think of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller as “robber barons.” But it was a lie. They were neither robbers nor barons. They weren’t robbers, because they didn’t steal from anyone, and they weren’t barons – they were born poor…

…It’s telling that the “robber baron” name-calling didn’t come from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained, and persuaded the media to join in.”

John Stossel
Give Me a Break
Robber Baron - One of the American industrial or financial magnates of the 19th century who became wealthy by unethical means, such as questionable stock-market operations and exploitation of labor.

First coined in the 1860s, but became a symbol of corporate power and the evils of unrestrained economic freedom only with the publication of Matthew Josephson's bestseller "The Robber Barons" in 1934.

Sophistry?

Between the poor bat boy and now a new definition of Robber Baron I suggess you don't use Mr. Stossel as source anymore it reflects poorly on you. I'm also disappointed that you think so little of me that I would swayed by this bias.


Wow! That’s quite an indictment on your use of language, Naviguesser. What about your views on another “big business”, Microsoft? Here is the way economist William Anderson viewed the Microsoft “monopoly”:

“As things stand currently, the once-vaunted bull market is in flux. This is partly due to the government’s arrogance in believing it could attack Microsoft without harming other high-technology firms that have been the most visible in the current economic expansion. That the NASDAQ has lost much of its value since Janet Reno’s Department of Justice [DOJ] won the first round of its attempt to dismember Microsoft bears testament to the administration’s foolishness regarding economic matters.”
Where do you get this stuff? It was other high-technology firms, Sun Micro, Cisco, and one other one I can't recall right now, that first sued Micro Soft. Then the government got involved. Then the EU sued too.
As I recall all the suits were won to one degree or another.
Do you think there's a connection here?

Let’s compare business “stifled” to political “stifled.”

Here are your choices of operating systems (that have actually been used) and their competing developers:

AIX / AIXL IBM
BSD BSD
Caldera Linux SCO
Corel Linux Corel
Debian Linux GNU
DUNIX Digital
DYNIX/ptx IBM
HP-UX Hewlett Packard
IRIX SGI
Kondara Linux Kondara
Linux Linus Torvald
MAC OS 8 Apple
MAC OS 9
MAC OS 10
Mandrake Linux Mandrake
MINIX MINIX
MS-DOS 1.x Microsoft
MS-DOS 2.x
MS-DOS 3.x
MS-DOS 4.x
MS-DOS 5.x
MS-DOS 6.x
NEXTSTEP Apple
OSF/1 OSF
QNX QNX
Red Hat Linux Red Hat
SCO SCO
Slackware Linux Slackware
Sun Solaris Sun
SuSE Linux SuSE
System 1 Apple
System 2
System 3
System 4
System 6
System 7
System V System V
Tru64 UNIX Digital
Turbolinux Turbolinux
Ultrix Ultrix
Unisys Unisys
UNIX Bell labs
UnixWare UnixWare
VectorLinux VectorLinux
Windows 2000 Microsoft
Windows 2003
Windows 3.X
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows CE
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows XP
Xenix

I have used a number of these systems. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean the competition is stifled. A democracy is all about choices.
Take that list and remove the obsolete systems and then compare market share. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean the competition is stifled. No, but if competition is stifled, does that mean something is popular or there was a lack of choices?

You want monopoly? Here are our choices of competing political party that hold power in our government:
Democrat
Republican
I would love to see more parties. How about one that's not wraped around an individual (Perot) or so far in the fringes that they can only attract a minority (Green) (Peace & Freedom).

If you really want to get daring you can add Libertarian, Independent, Green, … and a few other small parties that haven’t yet had any impact on government. A democracy is all about choices.




I am slack-jawed here:

“My sources on the California Energy Crisis? The L.A. Times and my own electricity bills.”
Naviguesser

Your information about an extremely complex socio-economic issue comes from what you’ve read in your local newspaper and from looking at your utility bills? What do I say to that? How do I respond to that without laughing?

You call yourself a centrist. You claim: “What's changed? Oh yeah, no Enron.” Of all these myriad factors that have changed since that time, you simplify the problem down to “big business” again. You claim that one company, Enron, was responsible for the entire “California Energy Crisis”?

I am truly slack-jawed. You refuse to acknowledge any of the information that I presented about this issue. Instead, you offered conclusions that you seem to believe explain the issue better. Now, I must admit that an hour-long Frontline documentary on the causes and effects of the “California Energy Crisis” is not enough for me to be absolutely sure beyond all doubt that the Frontline investigators discovered all of the causes. But if you don’t understand how much more information there is in a Frontline documentary, verses what you read in your local paper and your utility bills, then I can’t explain it to you.
I would hardly call the L.A. Times a "Local" paper.
When was Frontline documentary done? During the crisis? Shortly after?
Do you think more information has come out since then? Like during the Enron trails when (Again, I'm sorry his name escapes me. You can trust me or look it up.) this guy testifies that he called power plant managers and told them to shut down for "maintaince" during peak hours.
No, it's wasn't just Enron. There were other Energy Traders, and thery're being sued by Calif. too.
How complicated do you want to make it?

If you have any inkling that what I’m saying is true, do yourself a favor and research the issue a little better. Here is an interesting site:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/california/subsequentevents.html




“Talk about "Give Me a Break"!
Just how long do you think it will take our "Free Market" to get back to Charles Dickens's time if we did get rid of the Child Labor Laws?”
Naviguesser

Nav, you keep displaying a virulent reaction to the business world for someone who claims to be a centrist.

THAT is your example, a story about Wal-Mart putting innocent young children’s lives at stake? I say it is an excellent example of government intrusion into our lives. I say it is an excellent example of the ridiculous lengths some in this country will go to protect us from ourselves. Imagine teenage workers using a chain saw? Imagine how the government would have shut me down when I was 12 years old and running my own lawn service. What about the snow blower I used to run every winter? Give me a break!

I used a chain saw before I was 14. Most kids in rural areas learn how to use guns as early as 12. There aren’t any laws against teenagers shooting guns in the proper environment. Is the Labor Department saying it’s all right for kids under 18 to shoot guns but not operate paper balers and forklifts? Do you believe that these teenagers weren’t properly trained in the use of this incredibly hazardous equipment? Did anyone ask the kids if they felt that their lives were in imminent danger? Did Wal-Mart force them to operate this hazardous equipment? How do you suppose the teenager’s parents felt about this? The story doesn’t give us all of the relevant information. This is the type of information you were “researching” to understand the “California Energy Crisis?” This is a typical newspaper story. And it is a perfect example of the idiocy of one-size-fits-all government intrusion into our lives.
Again you miss the point. WalMart broke the law. they didn't try to change it, they broke it.
If the law was changed from 18 to 15 or even 10 do you think WalMart would have any more respect for it?
I'll agree that the laws can be too strict, but I don't think WalMart will be watching out for safety issues without them.




I can’t check your statistics. I can’t tell what they show. They may very well show that government can play an important role in reducing the bust component of the cycle. But again you completely ignore my information in your zeal to defend government. I acknowledge that government may aid the recovery process in the short run. I have stated that much. What you fail to acknowledge is that government may actually stifle economic growth. In the long run, is it wise to accept less down-side, while accepting less up-side? This is a question that is worth pursuing.
I don't know of any businesspeople the don't like a stable economy (except maybe Future Traders) So, yes, they would all take less down-side even if it ment less up-side. Just to put that statement into perspective I've dined with VPs from Toyota (America and Japanese), Nippon Denso, Viacom. I also lunched with one man garage owners, and pretty much everything in between.
Here is the link where I got my information on the Boom / bust Cycles: www.nber.org/cycles.html
Honestly I don't know much about them, but they looked pretty straight.
I broke the chart into pre 1929 and post 1929.
Pre 29 there were 433 months of contraction, I divided that by 20 the number of "Busts" and came up the average lenght of contraction - 21.6 months.
Post 29, same method, 10.4 months.
Conclusion: Contractions were shorter by 1/2 FDR and after
Same method for expansion:.
pre 29 average 25.3 months.
post 29 average 58.2 months.
Conclusion: Expansions were longer by over 1/2 FDR and after.
Looks to me like we've had lower down-sides AND longer up-sides with government assistance.
Maybe you would like to re-read the economic analysis provided by various economists in my previous post. I hope that you will read the economic article that I post at the end of my discussion. William Anderson believes that government may have contributed to the bubble:

We have, supposedly learned our lessons since the 1970s. Alan Greenspan knows more than previous Federal Reserve chairmen, Robert Rubin was a brilliant Secretary of the Treasury, the internet is providing new ways of doing business, and Bill Clinton has marvelously orchestrated the whole thing. The stock market is rising, and government (or at least the current regime, according to Al Gore in his stump speeches) knows how to continue the prosperity. This time, we really are experiencing the New Economy.

Pardon me if I dissent. If history tells us correctly, we are in our third “New Economy” in the last 80 years. The first episode of “prosperity forever” came in the late 1920s, as the bull market, low unemployment numbers, and general good times led newly elected President Herbert Hoover to declare, “In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure.” We know the rest of the story. (2000, 5)”




“What I hear you saying is that the government has no business being in the road building business.”
Naviguesser

I don’t know how you logically reached that conclusion, but let me now inform you that it is the wrong conclusion.

I believe that there are things only government can provide. Government can provide courts of law. Government can provide for the defense of the country. Interstate highways may be a very good use of government. But I don’t like to be closed-minded. I always like to think about possibilities.

Did you know that New York’s first subway was built by private companies? The city government “…took it over after it bankrupted the company by refusing to allow them to raise the “five-cent-fare.””

Jersey City NJ got a private contractor to complete work on their aging water system after city worker told the mayor the pipes couldn’t be fixed. “And the private company saved the taxpayers $35 million.”

Pinellas County, Florida privatized its ambulance service. “Not only were taxes lowered because the county was now paying less for ambulances, but the workers were happier and ambulance service was better.”

Meanwhile, “The Federal Aviation Administration still uses antiquated vacuum tubes in its radar system.”

“A company rented the empty space in the middle of the 91 Freeway in California, and used it as a toll road – a better one. It has no tollbooths; computers scan the cars as they drive by (you don’t even have to slow down) and bill people electronically. Since traffic jams lower profits, the private company did innovative things to keep traffic moving. It has cameras trained on the road, so if a car breaks down, they see it, and someone quickly comes to help. If you run out of gas, they give you a free gallon. Tolls change according to how many people are using the road (“congestion pricing”). A ride that costs $4.75 at rush hour might cost 50 cents at midnight.”

John Stossel
Give Me a Break
This company couldn't make it and the state had to buy them out.


I believe that government can perform certain functions better than the private sector. How best can government and the market work together? Instead of monopolizing highway construction, maybe they could just have provided the incentive to get business started. I was upset when Reagan ended government funding for solar energy projects. Not enough people want to be the first to bite the bullet because solar systems cost so much and take too long to pay back system cost. If government provided a kick-start incentive, production of solar systems might increase. If production increases, it will become cheaper to build the systems. If prices would drop demand may very well increase. If demand increases, business will devote more resources to producing better and cheaper systems. So far the market hasn’t responded because the demand isn’t there. There are some things to which I wish the market would respond. But who am I to try to stifle the freedom and liberty that embodies the market?
You know you come across a lot clearer when you say what you think than when you cut and paste these volumes.
With what you just posted above, I think we'll both be surprised how much we think alike.

arc, I'm asking a favor of you. Pick a subject, limit it to 5 or so paragraphs. Lets discuss that subject. Thses "books" as enjoyable as they are, are thaking up too much time.

Did you read my comments about Company Provided Health Insurance?
Do you know when companies started giving health insurance.




Understanding the causes of something like the “California Energy Crisis” (did a crisis really exist or was it just media hype?) takes more research than reading a local paper, adding up utility bill payments, then pointing fingers at a single company.

I’ve shown how the free market provides more choices than government when comparing market based operating systems to our stifling political monopoly.

I hope that you’ll take the time to read the following analysis, Naviguesser. You’ve said that you believe government is too big. I believe that too. I don’t believe that there is anything inherently “evil” about government, I just believe that it is (and already has) outgrowing its constitutional mandate.






Lies, Damn Lies, and Conventional Measures of the Growth of Government

Robert Higgs
The Independent Review a journal of political economy
Volume IX, Number 1, Summer 2004

Many of us who believe that governments continue to grow relentlessly, at least in the economically advanced countries, have been criticized by analysts who claim that in fact the growth of government has petered out or slowed substantially. ?The latter group perceives us to be needlessly alarmed and faults us for a failure to acknowledge the decisive turn of events associated with the so-called Regan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s. Not to worry, they exhort us; the statistics are on the run, and a brave new world of market-oriented liberalism shimmers on the horizon.

My thesis here is that these seemingly level-headed realists are the ones who have failed to perceive correctly the ongoing growth of government. A major reason for their failure is their reliance on certain conventional measures of the size and growth of government. Some of these measures have a built-in tendency to exhibit deceleration even when a more compelling representation displays continuing steady growth. Often the conventional measures miss the growth of government because it has been diverted into channels beyond the scope of their measurement. To some extent, governments have been growing in important but unmeasured or poorly measured ways all along, and they continue to grow in these ways, perhaps more menacingly than ever before. Off-budget spending, for example, is a well-known resort of political scoundrels, but it is only one example among many of how governments employ hard-to-measure means to achieve their usual ends, especially when tax revolts, formal spending limits, or borrowing limitations frustrate their chronic desire to spend at a greater rate.



Government’s Share of Gross Domestic Product

The most common measure of the size of government is the amount of government spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP). In a recent monograph on the growth of government, for example, Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht present much of their data in the form of government-spending variables relative to GDP. A major theme of the book is: “Government spending [measured in this way] increased most rapidly until about 1980. Since the early 1980s, it has been growing more slowly and in some instances has even declined” (2000, 3).

Now, the first thing to notice is that a sure-fire way to make nearly any economic magnitude appear small is to divide it by GDP, because the latter, which purports to be the total value at market prices of all final goods and services produced within a country in a year, is always an enormous dollar (or euro or peso or other currency unit) amount. Government spending of $2,855,200,000,000, as in the Untied States in fiscal year 2001, seems to be an astronomical amount, but just divide it by the value of GDP and, voila’, it is a mere 28 percent – surely nothing to be alarmed about, especially in comparison with corresponding figures for many European countries that exceed 50 percent.

The next thing to notice is that because government spending for currently produced final goods and services is itself a component of GDP, the ratio of the former to the latter is immediately compromised. Any addition to such government spending increases the denominator as well as the numerator of the ratio. Suppose that in year one the government spends $100 dollars for currently produced final goods and services, and the GDP in that year is $500. Now suppose that in year two the government spends twice as much – that is, it increases its purchase amount by 100 percent – but nothing else changes. In year two, the government’s share of GDP will be 33.33 percent (or $200/$600), as compared to 20 percent in year one. An analyst focusing on the government’s spending share concludes, then, that government has grown not by 100 percent , as plainly has by construction, but only by 66.66 percent (that is, [33.33/20) – 1] X 100). The greater is the bias in moving from its absolute spending to the share concept to measure its growth. If government had begun with spending of $100 out of a GDP of $200, then doubled its purchase amount, other things being unchanged, it would have increased its spending share from 50 percent to 66.66 percent – a mere 33.33 percent growth.

Granted, many economically advanced countries have maintained a fairly steady government “exhaustive” share of GDP during the past couple decades (Tanzi and Schuknecht 2000, 25), but this steadiness merely attests that the government’s purchases of currently produced final goods and services have grown fully as fast as the sum of nongovernmental purchases of such goods and services during that period of substantial economic expansion, not that government has become quiescent or stuck in the mud. In the United States, for example, the total government share of GDP was 22.1 percent in 1975 and 17.6 percent in 1999. Lest one think that government had run out of steam during that quarter-century, however, one ought to notice that government increased its purchases of currently produced final goods and services from $361.1 billion in 1975 to $1,634.4 billion in 1999 – which is to say, it increased the annual rate of such spending by $1,273.3 billion during that period (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors 2001, 274-75). To be sure, inflation accounts for some of that increase, but even in constant (1996) dollars, the increase was from $942.5 billion to $1,536.1 billion (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors 2001, 277), or 63 percent – hardly a retrenchment. Population growth cannot justify the increased spending because the U.S. population grew by just 26 percent during the period (U.S. Council of Economic Advisors 2001, 315).

Of course, the really gigantic increases in government spending have most recently taken the form of transfers (including subsidies), which are not components of GDP and therefore do not give rise to exactly the same numerator-denominator bias that arises when government increases its purchases of currently produced final goods and services (“exhaustive” spending). Transfer spending also, however, is commonly placed for purposes of analysis in relation to GDP, which then serves as a sort of “normalizer” or standard of comparison, and whenever this ratio is used, some of the same problems identified earlier arise again. Why, one might ask, should government’s transfer spending be placed in a ratio to GDP rather than, say, in a ratio to population or some other base? And if the ratio to GDP remains constant, why, one might ask, should such constancy prevail? That is, why should government’s transfer spending increase whenever the economy’s output of final goods and services increases? Indeed such constancy would seem to betoken a kind of relative growth of government in its own right, inasmuch as people in a more productive economy presumably can get by more readily without government assistance; hence, as a rule, the ratio of transfers to GDP might be expected to fall in a growing economy rather than rise or even remain constant.

However this matter might be viewed, in reality the ratio has risen enormously in all the economically advanced countries during the past several decades, and it now stands at more than 20 percent on average for a group of seventeen important industrial countries studied by Tanzi and Schuknecht, up from less than 10 percent as recently as 1960 (2000, 31). Increasingly, transfer spending is becoming recognized as the Godzilla that threatens to consume New York, Tokyo, Berlin, and nearly evey other city on the planet. A few countries, such as Chile, have taken effective measures to deal with this looming threat to government fiscal viability, but so far most politicians in most countries have kept their heads planted firmly in the sand, ignoring everything beyond the next election, while government’s transfer spending has grown ever more bloated, and the severity of the adjustments that will have to be made when the day of reckoning can no longer be postponed has grown ever greater.



Government’s Share of Employment

Government employment as a percentage of total employment has often served as an index of the size of government. This measure, too, has a built-in bias toward suggesting that the rate at which government is growing is decelerating over time even when government increases its share of employment by, say, one percentage point every year. Thus, for example, when government’s employment share increases from 2 percent to 4 percent, the government grows by 100 percent, but when the share increases from 20 percent to 22 percent, gobbling up the same incremental proportion of total employment, the government grows by just 10 percent.

In the group of seventeen advanced countries analyzed recently by Tanzi and Schuknecht, the government’s average employment share increased from 5.2 percent in 1937 to 12.3 percent in 1960 to 18.4 percent in 1994 (2000, 26). The rate of increase of this ratio has declined during the past two decades in most countries, but one ought not to make too much of that deceleration. In the United States, increases in the amount of “contracting out” of government functions have led to a replacement of formal government employees by a growing “shadow” army of many millions of seemingly private employees – grantees, contractors, and consultants – but the latter are doing what they are doing only because the government arranges and pays for it to be done (Blumenthal 1979; Hanrahan 1983; Light 1999a, 1999b). According to Paul Light’s estimates, the U.S. federal workforce is not the fewer than 2 million persons officially reported (as of 1996), but nearly 17 million persons – “and the count does not even include the full-time equivalent employment of the people who work on a part-time or temporary basis for Uncle Sam – for example, the 884,000 members of the military reserves,” although it does include some 4.7 million federally funded workers already counted in the all-governments total as employees of state and local governments (1999a, 1).

Moreover, governments increasingly have established regulations that in effect require bona fide private parties to work for the government. Tanzi and Schuknecht themselves take note of such “quasi-fiscal policies,” which they describe aptly as regulations that “become alternatives to taxing and spending” (2000, 203). In this recognition, they follow in a long line of analysts stretching back at least to Richard A. Posner in his capacity as the author of the 1971 article “Taxation by Regulation.”

The relevant class of regulations, though, is much wider than it is usually recognized to be in the standard literature of economics and public choice. To be sure, all sorts of economic, environmental, health and safety, and social regulations continue to spew out of Washington and Brussels, among many other government centers. In addition, however, the U.S. government especially requires ever more uncompensated information collection and reporting by its subjects in order to slake the Surveillance State’s insatiable craving for the most minute details of everyone’s conduct (Bennett and Johnson 1979; Twight 1999). These Big Brotherish demands are justified by the despicable slogan that only those with something to hide will object, but in truth this vile rain falls on the righteous and the wicked alike – and one would have to be pretty dimwitted to expect the latter to report truthfully even if officially required to do so.

According to a recent summary of U.S. federal regulation by Clyde Wayne Crews Jr.,

The 2001 Federal Register contained 64,431 pages….

In 2001, 4,132 final rules were issued by agencies….

Of the 4,509 regulations now in the works, 149 are “economically significant” rules that will have at least $100 million in economic impact. Those rules will impose at least $14.9 billion yearly in future off-budget costs….

The costs of meeting the demands of off-budget social regulations were as high as $229 billion according to the Office of Management and Budget. A more broadly constructed competing estimate that includes economic regulatory costs and paperwork costs pegs regulatory expenditures at $854 billion in 2001, or 46 percent of all FY01 [fiscal year 2001] outlays. (2002, 1-2)


The foregoing summary, shocking as it is, describes the regulatory burden being imposed at only the federal level of government. The state and local governments, as well as various international bodies, simultaneously continue to pour out endless streams of their own regulations, all of which entail resource costs and sacrifices of citizen’s liberties.

Because the public has less awareness of the burdens imposed by these regulations, many of which remain obscure and indirect in their operation and effects, governments encounter even less resistance to their ongoing imposition of regulatory burdens than they encounter in their quest to collect greater revenue from explicit taxes laid on incomes, sales transactions, and property values. So far it seems that there is no natural limit to the number of regulations governments can and will impose. Hence, we are fast approaching a condition in which everything that is not forbidden is required, even as Americans, acting for all the world like faux-patriotic zombies, continue to reassure themselves incessantly that “it’s a free country.”

For present purposes, the point is that people occupied with regulatory compliance are not truly privately employed. Instead, they are in effect stealth government servants, working not for their own ends but doing the bidding of their political masters. In the present Western world, then, nearly everybody is actually a government employee, but rather than getting a government paycheck for our efforts, we are required to pay the government for the privilege of our own serfdom and to bear the risk of prosecution and imprisonment should our unpaid work on the government’s behalf prove unsatisfactory to our “employer.”



All That and More

Astronomical taxes and expenditures, regulations distended beyond human comprehension; gigantic borrowing and lending; countless prohibitions and subsidies; innumerable loan guarantees; multitudes of fines, fees, and charges; mountains of surplus commodities distributed like manna; precious private property seized at the whim of the forfeiture police; foreign wars without end; internal-security measures that treat all human beings going about their daily lives as criminal suspects – all that and more, much more, ever more constitute the glorious realm of government in today’s economically advanced countries (you know, the ones that are color-coded as “free” on the maps prepared by research institutes better left nameless on this occasion). Each day the galling chains around us are pulled tighter. Yet until the last breath of liberty is squeezed out of us, we can rely on “hardheaded” scholars to trot out the anemic and biased measures of the growth of government and to announce calmly that we have no valid cause for alarm. My advice: if you value your life, liberty, and property, do not employ one of these experts as your night watchman.
last edited: 2/18/05 5:05:19 PM”
arclite”

“Are we having fun yet?”

“Geo, it looks like arc and nav are”

“bump for arc.”

“Naviguesser, please let me slow this conversation down. These long posts are allowing us to talk past each other. I hate that S#!t. Let us try to define some standards. I’d like to clarify just one point in this post:

1. Let’s use logic instead of “emotional sophistry.”


Here are some term definitions-

Sophistry- 1. Plausible but fallacious argumentation. 2. A plausible but misleading or fallacious argument.

Logic- The study of the principles of reasoning, especially of the structure of propositions as distinguished from their content and of method and validity in deductive reasoning.



Emotional sophistry, as I’ve coined the term and tried to explain, is a misleading use of “loaded” words. I define a “loaded” word as a word that is used to evoke an emotional feeling. I explained it in the context of journalism. I would continue by saying that journalists like to use the word “crisis” when writing headlines for their articles. We have the “California Energy Crisis”, we have an obesity “crisis”, we have and education “crisis”, we have a Social Security “crisis”, ad infinitum. The term crisis is used to evoke a feeling of urgency. It also evokes fear and anxiety. There are many examples of “loaded” words that I could use from journalism alone.


Bemoan - To express deep grief or distress or to regard with displeasure, disapproval, or regret.

This is a “loaded” word. It is an attempt to create an emotional picture; a picture that in this case says, “oh woe is me.” I did not express deep grief, distress, displeasure, disapproval, or regret about not being well represented. I merely stated a fact. You may have assumed that I expressed these emotions. By using this word it created an inaccurate picture of what I was saying. The word bemoan implies that I was distressed about this situation and that I was arguing from an emotional viewpoint. You could have used the word complain. You could have said that I stated that I was not well represented. No, you chose the less accurate, but emotionally charged, word bemoan.

decry - To condemn openly

This is a “loaded” word. It is an attempt to create an emotional picture. I did not express condemnation. I was not expressing this concept as an emotion, I merely stated a fact. You may have assumed that I felt that the influence of money in politics was reprehensible, wrong, or evil. My feelings on the matter are much less intense. You could have used the word complain. You could have said that I stated that money influences politics. No, you chose the less accurate, but emotionally charged, word decry.

Please don’t play dumb about your use of those words. Those words were chosen carefully. They were positioned at the beginning of declarative statements: “You bemoan/decry…” There are many other words in the English language that are not so emotionally charged as bemoan, decry, and crisis.

That is why I use the term fallacious. I give you the benefit of the doubt that you may have come to wrong assumptions or misinterpretations. I did not call you a liar. You are wrong when you say that I did.

Stating, “Your use of those terms is fallacious at best”, does not say that I am calling you a liar. That is logic. Stating, “I won’t use the “L” word here”, is not calling you a liar. To state otherwise is sophistry. I haven’t called you a liar yet. You may just be misinformed.




“Naviguesser, I don’t mean to be crabby or anything, but I dislike emotional sophistry:”
arclite
Are you going to continue to quote John Stossel? Oh, the poor bat boy.
Naviguesser

Help me to understand what you mean here. It appears as if you think I am quoting John Stossel in this sentence. There is nothing in my sentence quoting John Stossel. If you are referring to the phrase “emotional sophistry” that is of my own creation. You are wrong if you assume that any part of that sentence quotes John Stossel.


“Oh, the poor bat boy.”
Naviguesser

That is “emotional sophistry” Naviguesser. You refer to a respected journalist, who has won numerous awards in his field, as “the poor bat boy.”

Do you understand why this is “emotional sophistry?” It is an attempt at argument ad hominem.

Description of Ad Hominem
Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A's claim is false.

The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

Example of Ad Hominem
Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."



We are both adults, Naviguesser. I assume that you are educated and understand what is logic. Do you agree that educated adults have intelligent discussions using logic? Logic follows rules that preclude sophistry. Logic follows rules that preclude insulting emotionalism such as name-calling.

Do you believe that name-calling such as “the poor bat boy” adds anything intelligent to our discussion? Do you believe that yours is the way an educated adult should make his point?


Can we agree to try not to make use of “emotional sophistry?””

“Naviguesser, you’re a hoot! Your stream-of-consciousness comedy reminds me of Carrot Top or Lenny Bruce.
acrlite

I see you didn't think this needed any comment.


Are you going to continue to quote John Stossel? Oh, the poor bat boy.
Naviguesser

Help me to understand what you mean here. It appears as if you think I am quoting John Stossel in this sentence. There is nothing in my sentence quoting John Stossel. If you are referring to the phrase “emotional sophistry” that is of my own creation. You are wrong if you assume that any part of that sentence quotes John Stossel.

This is what I ment by "poor bat boy".

In Georgia, 12 year old Tommy McCoy was having the time of his life working as a batboy for a minor-league baseball team. Then the Savannah Morning News published a story about him. “The next day, the Labor Department was at my front door,” said Rick Sisler, general manager of the Savannah Cardinals. He was told he was breaking the law and had to fire Tommy.

The crime? A child under 16 may not work on school nights. The law is supposed to make sure kids have time for schoolwork, but the stadium was filled with kids. If it’s okay for them to watch the game, why is it terrible for the batboy to work the game?

Tommy McCoy said, “I was disappointed that somebody would take somebody’s dream away like this.”

Fortunately, there was enough publicity about Tommy’s firing that Robert Reichy, then U.S. Secretary of Labor, intervened. So Tommy lucked out. Child actors luck out, too – the Labor Department gives them a special exemption. Farmworkers also get one, and so – for some reason – do wreath makers. Is that how regulation should work? Special breaks for some, often those who lobby best? Aren’t we all supposed to be equal under the law?

Why does America even need a Department of Labor? Today’s workers have plenty of choices. There are 14 million businesses in America and they compete hard for workers. People change jobs frequently. That marketplace competition protects workers better than any job-killing Labor Department rules. If Burger King treats a kid badly, he can get a job at McDonald’s.”

Give Me a Break
John Stossel
Copyright 2004 by Jon Stossel
ISBN 0-06-052914-8
(pages 40-42)


So, if you don't use “emotional sophistry” in that sentence (which I was not refering to) but you use it later, then that's OK?”

“No it's not OK. And please, if you think I'm contradicting myself, or being hypocritical, call me on it. You'll be doing me a tremendous favor. I count on friends to keep my own BS in check.


Naviguesser, I was trying to be funny. I don't believe there is emotional sophistry in my sentence:

“Naviguesser, you’re a hoot! Your stream-of-consciousness comedy reminds me of Carrot Top or Lenny Bruce.”


Where are the “loaded” words designed to elicit an inappropriate emotional response? Sarcasm, yes, but then I was trying to be funny. In all honesty I found your posts to be so devoid of any logical reasoning that I was hoping that you too were trying to be funny. I’ll try not to use sarcasm. It can be too easily misinterpreted or it can be nasty.


This is the idea to which I was hoping that you too were trying to be funny:

Imagine, a guy who takes a complicated socio-economic issue like the “California Energy Crisis” and says he has it all figured out from reading his local paper?

We all know not to believe everything we read in the papers. That is common knowledge. I even pointed out how newspaper stories are incomplete. They don’t give us all the information. Anybody off the street knows that. Then you say “How complicated do you want to make it?” I say it is a lot more complicated subject than what you will learn in a newspaper.

If I were going to debate the subject in class, or if I were going to present an argument before a court of law, and I told everyone that my source was a newspaper, I would be laughed out of the building. I’d flunk the class and it would be justified. The judge would have me thrown out of court for contempt and it would be justified.

You treat the subject simplistically, not simply, simplistically. Don’t I keep hearing some folks complaining that those hicks in the sticks, who voted for Bush, see the world in black and white? That they oversimplify things?

Well anyone who has ever discussed a subject before an audience will tell you that a newspaper is not enough source information for an informed opinion.

My guess is that you never even bothered to visit this website for more information on the subject:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/california/subsequentevents.html

If you did, you completely dismissed it. You certainly didn’t think it was worth mention.


In a later post you even say: “Where do you get this stuff?”

I clearly stated that economist William Anderson was the source. I have documented my sources for your reference. Is this a humorous attempt at being slow? I read, Naviguesser; I read prolifically on many subjects. I watch PBS. I watch The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and most any educational show that catches my interest. I love to learn and spend time trying to inform myself about issues. I have subscriptions to a number of journals and book clubs, I visit my library, I search the web, and I am drawn like a moth to a candle to bookstores. I hope you read more than newspapers.

You haven’t quoted any other sources than the L.A. Times and your own opinions. Naviguesser, I don’t believe that you’ve just got all this “stuff” figured out on your own.

Are you an expert on all of the subjects that we are discussing? Are you an “expert” on any of them? Even if you were, why would only one point of view (yours) be important? I have provided you with a number of sources. The appearance that you don’t want