On the stimulus

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Krauthammer on the stimulus:

“[Obama] did a huge Keynesian gamble, and it failed.”

But super-Keynesians such as Krugman say it failed because it wasn’t nearly super enough. It should have been bigger.

And Obama says if he hadn’t done it, things would have been much worse.

The beauty of it is that you can’t absolutely prove these statements untrue. You never can. The road not taken stubbornly remains untaken.

Logic would seem to dictate that if a large dose of something doesn’t work, more of the same won’t help. But believers argue that the dose didn’t reach the therapeutic threshold. And with economic interventions—as with all interventions that involve complex systems—it is stunningly difficult to tease out the effects of a single variable.

And so the argument continueth…

Irving Kristol and the Turnings: do we ever learn?

The New Neo Posted on by

A reader alerts me to this essay about one of the early neoconservatives, Irving Kristol. I especially liked this part:

For those of us who had lived through the tumults and frustrations of the seventies, a heyday of ineffective governance and economic torpor, such a litany of top-down, command-economy measures seemed like a return of the repressed, as if all the vital lessons of those dreadful years were being cast aside in favor of a mindless embrace of hoary statist delusions that had already amply proven their inadequacy. How, I wondered, did Irving feel about this development? Were we in fact going backward? Would we have to relearn the same lessons all over again?

“Of course we will!” he exclaimed without hesitation, smiling as ever, eyes flashing. “The younger generation never learns much from the past.” A pause, and then a more direct gaze. “But you hope it learns eventually.” And it struck me both then and now how perfectly these simple words distilled his outlook on life: skeptical, realistic, historically aware, unillusioned, and yet, despite it all, hopeful. I heard no hint of condemnation in his words, since he was speaking of all younger generations, very much including his own. He was stating a fact about the human condition, not hurling moral thunderbolts of disdain or prophetic admonition, and he spoke with a rueful smile, not a bitter snarl or sighing resignation or””least of all””anything remotely resembling despair.

This reminds me of the theory of the repetitive Four Turnings of history, described here:

The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. Old Prophets disappear, Nomads enter elderhood, Heroes enter midlife, Artists enter young adulthood, and a new generation of Prophets is born.

The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. Old Nomads disappear, Heroes enter elderhood, Artists enter midlife, Prophets enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Nomads is born.

The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. Old Heroes disappear, Artists enter elderhood, Prophets enter midlife, Nomads enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Heroes is born.

The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. Old Artists disappear, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood, and a new generation of child Artists is born.

It may well be that we are still in the midst of a Third Turning. Or do you think we’ve entered a Fourth?

The ominous Obamabus

The New Neo Posted on by

If Darth Vader traveled by bus, this is undoubtedly the one he’d choose:

But it would seem an odd choice for President Obama (I’m hardly the only one who’s used the Vader comparison). The bus has also been likened to an enormous hearse. And of course there have been the inevitable jokes about what and whom to throw under Obama’s bus.

To top it all off, the expensive vehicle was made in Canada.

One can’t help but think Obama was motivated by a desire to outdo Sarah Palin, but that conclusion would appear to be wrong: the million-dollar-plus bus was ordered by the Secret Service in July of 2010, a year ago.

So, was Obama planning this tour way back then? Or was it instead a Secret Service decision independent of Obama? Perhaps the latter, or some combination of the two:

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan emphasized that the bus wasn’t purchased solely for the president and would be used for other dignitaries in the future. He said the agency has not previously had buses in its fleet and was overdue to get some since it’s had to protect politicians traveling by bus for decades.

In the past, the service has had to lease buses and retrofit them for that purpose.

If that’s true, the plain design is because the bus will be used for other candidates and officeholders, too. But if I were Obama, I’d at least be putting some decorative stickers on it. And I probably wouldn’t be using it at all; the visuals are, quite simply, terrible.

Ed Schultz, propagandist, issues the most tepid and misleading of corrections

The New Neo Posted on by

Ed Schultz of MSNBC knows that the Big Bold Lie sometimes works, even in this day of internet checking. But sometimes, alas, it doesn’t, and then in certain high profile cases you have to issue a correction.

Not an apology, of course. That’s not necessary. Besides, why should you apologize when you’re fighting for the Forces of Good against Evil, even if you don’t play fair?

And don’t explain what you really did. Just say enough to acknowledge that you somehow—no doubt inadvertently, unknowingly, and accidentally—made a regrettable error when you were actually unabashedly and deliberately lying though your “journalist” teeth:

My guess is that Ed’s job at MSNBC remains quite secure. What do you think?

More on the Norway massacre—but no surprises

The New Neo Posted on by

Is any of this surprising? It shouldn’t be:

Among the other details now surfacing about the Utoya spree was the confirmation from police that Breivik, 32, called police several times over the course of the massacre to surrender. According to Norwegian media reports, the police did not at first take him seriously.

I have already written about the remarkable ineptitude the Norwegian police showed during the incident. Shocking though this new fact is, it is consistent with the rest. Previously, the police could not even envision an attack of this type (except, perhaps, in cowboy America) and were almost completely unequipped to handle it when it occurred.

I had thought that it was possible and perhaps even likely that, as we learned more about the massacre, additional details would come out that would indicate that some of Breivik’s unarmed victims tried to stop him—although unfortunately, in the confusion and speed of the attack, such efforts were probably uncoordinated, and were certainly ( and tragically) unsuccessful. So it is also unsurprising that it now appears that there was at least one such effort—and that it was made by two teenagers who had grown up in a very different environment than the relative peace of pre-Breivik Norway:

…[T]wo Chechen teenagers attending the Utoya camp managed to help several others survive the shooting spree by taking shelter in a cave. Prior to those rescue efforts, the two teens had tried, without success, to knock Breivik out by pelting him with stones.

Moysar Zyamaev, 17, and Rustam Daudov, 16, first thought it was a joke when they “saw a shouting man who was running after a group of youths,” Russia Today reported. “But after they witnessed the man shooting three people dead, including one of their friends, they retreated to the woods.”

Zyamaev and Daudov later hung back as Breivik, dressed in a police uniform, called over several young people who he then shot when they approached.

Zyamaev telephoned his father, “who instructed his son to stay calm, help others and try to stop the killer somehow,” Russia Today wrote.

After trying to hit Breivik with stones, Zyamaev and Daudov gathered 23 people “into a sort of cave they discovered near the shoreline,” Russia Today wrote. They also pulled three people from the water.

Coming from Chechnya is probably much better preparation for that sort of thing. And what a cool-headed father, to be able to give such helpful advice in the midst of what must have been the most horrific phone call he’d ever received.

Perry delenda est!

The New Neo Posted on by

The left must be very, very afraid of Rick Perry, because the attacks on him have come with almost unprecedented speed. There’s something about Perry that seems to make people think he may be the only really credible threat Obama has right now. Therefore, Perry delenda est.

He’s a Christian jihadi, or illuminati, or something like that! He’s a turncoat! He mustn’t take credit for the Texas economy! He’s a horrifying loose cannon! He’s pro-Muslim! He’s a crony capitalist (unlike Obama)! He’s sexist! He’s whatever people think will discredit him.

There’s no question that Perry is not everybody’s cup of tea. He’s one of the more conservative candidates in the field, for example, and he’s got that Texas swagger that makes a goodly part of America say oh no, not again!

But the trolls are out in full force. You can see it very clearly in the comments to this thread. Some of them are concern trolls from the left, pretending to be on the right. And some of them really are on the right, mostly disgruntled (are there any other kind?) Ron Paul supporters.

And then there’s the inimitable Bill Clinton, who calls Perry a “good-looking rascal.” Takes one to know one.

Does Paul Ryan stand poised…

The New Neo Posted on by

…at the edge of the cliff, ready to dive in?

I respect Ryan, and I happen to think he’d make a good president. But I’m not at all sure he’s really going to take the leap. And is he too wonky to have much appeal?

The paradox of the 2012 campaign is that, even though Obama is intensely vulnerable, he will be hard to beat because (a) there is lingering personal goodwill towards him on the part of much of the electorate; (b) the press will try to destroy any opponent, and protect him; (c) a truly conservative Republican nominee will be painted as a radical [terrorist] Tea Partier; (d) Obama is still formidable as a campaigner, his preferred mode; and (d) the Republican field is composed of candidates who are mostly either weak or relatively young and untested. Now that Obama has been president for a term, he may be weak, but he’s no longer young (gray hair!) nor untested. The fact that he’s failed the test may end up being secondary.

Those automated restrooms

The New Neo Posted on by

Nowadays nearly every large rest stop and every restaurant, every airport and every theater, features automated bathrooms. It’s all very magical—or at least it seems so, at first.

The toilet is timed to flush right after you finish what you’re in there for. The sink turns on as soon as you put your hands under the faucet. And the towel dispenser gives forth its bounty at the mere wave of a hand in front of its magic sweet spot.

Except that my influence on all these brilliant inventions is to make them go haywire. I enter the stall, and the toilet greets my arrival with a preliminary flush to clear its already-clean palate. I approach the toilet, and it flushes again. But when I’m finished and step back, it refuses to flush; I may be finished, but it’s finished, too. Then I have to look around for a button or lever that can override its reluctance.

Next, the sink and the towel dispenser. Are my hands to small to activate them? Because quite often they stubbornly refuse to respond, and I’m forced to improvise special maneuvers that resemble Tai Chi: waving my hands slowly, and then increasingly frantically, in front of what I think is the sensor. Finally some random movement of mine triggers a response, or perhaps it’s just that the sink and/or dispenser has decided I’ve amused it enough and it’s time to end the game.

And, because this is the way my mind seems to work, this topic makes me think of the even more helpful (and more elegant) hands in this movie:

Warren Buffett to federal government: stop me before I pay low taxes again!

The New Neo Posted on by

Right off, I noticed a few things about Warren Buffett’s plea in the NY Times asking the federal government to stop coddling him and his fellow rich people and to please, please, PLEASE raise their taxes on income, capital gains, and dividends.

The first is that Buffett defines “rich” as beginning at an income of $1 million and then stepping up to a second (and even more taxable) category at an income of $10 million. He writes that in 2009 there were 236,883 households of the former type and 8,274 of the latter. Because Buffett is vague about exactly how much he thinks the taxes of the rich should be raised, we have no way of knowing how much this would increase government revenues (even supposing that he is correct about these people not changing their behavior accordingly in order to reduce their taxes). But doing my own admittedly crude math estimates, I can’t see how this would make much of a dent in the debt overall. It may be mostly window-dressing, even in the best-case scenario that Buffett assumes.

This is what Buffett has to say about how the rich will behave when their taxes are raised:

I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone ”” not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 ”” shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

I’m sure Buffett knows a lot more rich people than I do. But still, it’s silly to rely on anecdotal evidence, and I would guess that Buffett knows this full well. “Some of my best friends…” has never been the strongest of arguments. What evidence we do have is that tax increases are offset to a certain degree by tax-avoidant behavior of the rich, as least at the state level. On the federal level, it’s less clear what happens, and although I could spend the next twenty hours further researching the two sides of the argument, I’ll just link instead to this article, which gives a fairly even even-handed picture of what each side says about the possible effects of raising taxes on the rich, both pro and con. Short answer: we don’t really know, and experts differ greatly, but it may well be that whatever effect we would get would be relatively small either way.

Another thing that struck me about Buffett’s statement is the obvious: if the rich are so eager to contribute what they think is their fair share towards reducing the debt, what stops them right now from donating more to the government than they are already compelled to fork over? Buffett, like many rich people, does donate a great deal of money voluntarily—but to non-governmental foundations, both his own and others. He writes:

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Then why doesn’t he? Is someone stopping him and the rest? Somehow, I haven’t heard of Buffett or the other mega-rich giving more than what is required in taxes, although I suppose I might have missed something, since these are not the circles in which I run. But the prevalence and popularity of these private foundations seems to indicate the rich would much prefer to control their own money even when they give it away, and that they don’t trust the government to do what’s right by the money. And the existence and vigorous use of tax loopholes by the rich also seem to argue against Buffett’s notion that the rich would dearly love to give the federal government more of their money.

By the way, Buffett’s arguments could just as easily be used to pump for the Ryan plan, although that’s certainly not Buffett’s intent. But here’s how Ryan stated his own point of view back in April of 2011:

We’re saying keep tax rates where they are right now and get rid of all those loopholes and deductions — which, by the way, are mostly enjoyed by wealthy people — so you can lower tax rates. A simpler, flatter, fair tax code more internationally competitive so we can create jobs: That’s what we’re proposing. This isn’t tax cuts.

That’s a Republican talking, by the way.

Buffett also sneaks a little sentence into his op-ed that you might miss if you happen to blink [emphasis mine]:

Job one for the 12 [on the Congressional committee] is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues.

So, just as Republicans say, the first thing to do is cut spending, including (perhaps) entitlements?

[NOTE: I want to point out (hat tip: Althouse) that this is the illustration for Buffett’s op-ed:

Plus, there’s the cover of this week’s New Yorker:

Once again, neo-neocon—right on the cutting edge. It’s Mr. Monopoly all over again!]

[ADDENDUM: for some more technical critiques of Buffet, see this and this (hat tip: Instapundit).]

Taxing the wealthy is popular

The New Neo Posted on by

You may not agree with their opinion, but nearly two-thirds of Americans polled would like to raise taxes on higher-income Americans and on businesses. And a strong majority would also like to cut domestic spending—just not Medicare or Social Security.

The poll failed to ask respondents to define what they meant by “higher-income,” and the pollsters offered no suggestions on where the cut-off should be. So people were free to define the term as they wished—which may often mean some category of people with an income slightly higher than the respondent. “Do it to Julia, not to me!”

The whole thing makes me think of this image, a guy who would definitely qualify as the sort of higher-income person most people would have in mind, the sort that President Obama likes to stir up resentment towards:

Doing a little research for this post, I discovered that the Monopoly guy above (since 1999 officially known as Mr. Monopoly, but previously bearing the moniker Rich Uncle Pennybags) was based on the real-life J.P. Morgan, the legendary financier. The following seems awfully interesting to me; it’s about the Panic of 1907 (remember that, folks?) and the creation of the Fed. Finance—and financial rescue—was apparently a lot more personal back then:

The Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis that almost crippled the American economy. Major New York banks were on the verge of bankruptcy and there was no mechanism to rescue them until Morgan stepped in personally and took charge, resolving the crisis.Treasury Secretary George B. Cortelyou earmarked $35 million of federal money to quell the storm but had no easy way to use it. Morgan now took personal charge, meeting with the nation’s leading financiers in his New York mansion; he forced them to devise a plan to meet the crisis. James Stillman, president of the National City Bank, also played a central role. Morgan organized a team of bank and trust executives which redirected money between banks, secured further international lines of credit, and bought plummeting stocks of healthy corporations. A delicate political issue arose regarding the brokerage firm of Moore and Schley, which was deeply involved in a speculative pool in the stock of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company. Moore and Schley had pledged over $6 million of the Tennessee Coal and Iron (TCI) stock for loans among the Wall Street banks. The banks had called the loans, and the firm could not pay. If Moore and Schley should fail, a hundred more failures would follow and then all Wall Street might go to pieces. Morgan decided they had to save Moore and Schley. TCI was one of the chief competitors of U.S. Steel and it owned valuable iron and coal deposits. Morgan controlled U.S. Steel and he decided it had to buy the TCI stock from Moore and Schley. Judge Gary, head of US Steel, agreed, but would there be antitrust implications that could cause grave trouble for US Steel, which was already dominant in the steel industry. Morgan sent Gary to see President Theodore Roosevelt, who promised legal immunity for the deal. U.S. Steel thereupon paid $30 million for the TCI stock and Moore and Schley was saved. The announcement had an immediate effect; by November 7, 1907, the panic was over. Vowing to never let it happen again, and realizing that in a future crisis there was not likely to be another Morgan, banking and political leaders, led by Senator Nelson Aldrich devised a plan that became the Federal Reserve System in 1913. The crisis underscored the need for a powerful mechanism, and Morgan supported the move to create the Federal Reserve System.

Here’s another vignette from J.P.’s life:

Morgan was the founder of the Metropolitan Club of New York and its president from 1891 to 1900. When his friend, Frank King, whom he had proposed, was black-balled by the Union Club because he had done manual labor in his youth, Morgan resigned from the Union Club, and then organized the Metropolitan Club. He donated the land on 5th Avenue and 60th Street at a cost of $125,000, and commanded Stanford White, “Build me a club fit for gentlemen. Forget the expense.” Of course he invited King as a charter member.