Gridlock already started.

[catsittingstill]

New York Times article here.

This part particularly caught my eye.

One week into a lame-duck session, Democrats have been unable to gain traction on their top priorities, leaving them casting about for ways to avoid a year-end pileup of expired tax breaks, exhausted jobless benefits and federal agencies running out of money.

Seems to me you can't stop the Repubs from gridlocking, so make them fillibuster out in public, and make sure everyone knows who is responsible. What else can you do?

The tax breaks are particularly interesting. The tea party types, and the Republicans, say they want to reduce the deficit. Not once stimulus has made the economy healthy again, but right now. Okay, let the Repubs block extending the tax breaks for the middle class, as publicly as possible. Make sure everyone sees the Repubs do it. When the tax breaks expire--as planned by the Bush administration in what at the time appeared to be a cynical ploy to reduce the apparent long-term cost but can still, with adequate stewardship, be converted to an actual reduction in the long term cost--congratulate the Repubs on doing their part to solve the "deficit problem." Because it will--or at least it will be a significant step toward reducing the deficit.

They get some of what they want--a reduced deficit. We get some of what we want--people remembering just who is responsible for their economic woes. Everybody's happy.

Well, everybody except the unemployed, who won't be getting any extensions on unemployment in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. And who won't be seeing the economy pick up anytime soon either, because that would require an economic stimulus that actually worked (CCC and WPA type stuff, where the government creates jobs by, you know, creating jobs) which the Repubs would never agree to.

Anyway, of course, this deficit reduction / truth plan would require that the Democrats actually 1) grow a spine 2) call out right-wing lies, clearly and consistently, all the time (requiring 1).

While I'm at it, I'd like a pony too, please.

Guys, if you have time or money to donate to food banks and organizations that help the poor; now would be a good time. Seriously. Because you may think things are bad now, but I think we're all about to learn what bad really is.

Comments

[sedge]

When I went camping earlier this fall and saw a trail that had been built by the CCC, I nearly cried, because I knew we weren't going to get anything like that anytime soon.

"I think we're all about to learn what bad really is."

I fear you're right.

[tradarcher.livejournal.com]

I just gave $50 to the local rescue mission.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Good for you and thank you!

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I'm limited in how much money I can give, but have volunteered as part of next quarter's classes for a homeless women's aid organization and will put my time into serving breakfast and trying to teach confidence-building and life skills.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Good for you, and thank you!

Donating time is just as good as donating money, in my book.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

Sigh. The tragedy is that neither major party really understands economics. Most economists don't understand an essential part of it, although the truth is out there. Try reading Henry George, or modern Georgists like Professor Mason Gaffney (http://www.masongaffney.org/). Georgits like Dr. Fred Foldvary went on record predicting the recession years in advance, and explained why it would happen (real estate boom and bust).

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmm.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

Hmm indeed. I know that there are quite a few people out there with their various crackpot ideas about how to fix everything. I find it hard to come up with compelling reasons in advance why this crackpot idea deserves serious study. I respectfully suggest that you might invest a few minutes in Googling Henry George, or in reading some posts on my weblog, or looking at my homepage, where I have links to some articles I've written, and to other sources.

I read George's Progress and Poverty as a teenager, and was most impressed by the combination of clear thinking, high moral seriousness, commitment to deal with the problems of poverty and unemployment, and an unconventional view on just how to accomplish that. Other people have had more or less the same insights and ideas: for example, Thomas Paine in Agrarian Justice. Truth is visible, and apt to be rediscovered.

I've learned a few things since I was fourteen or fifteen, read plenty of other books, and flatter myself that I have a more sophisticated understanding of matters; but all that I've learned since then has not changed my view that Henry George basically got things right.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Economics is one of those fields in which there are major splits of thought, perhaps because it is not amenable to simple analysis the way basic questions in, say Physics are.

I am pretty impressed with Paul Krugman; I suppose you won't be, since he's a Keynesian, but it seems to me he has pretty much called it for the last couple of years. He said the stimulus wouldn't be big enough, and he was right about that; he said there wouldn't be political will to pass another and he was right about that. And Keynesian stimulus is what ended the Great Depression, so there is that also.

I'm sorry to say it, but if I'm going to be reading 18th century books, they will probably will be about canoeing, which I'm passionately interested in, and not about minority views of economics, which hold less interest for me. Time is limited and I have to pick my reading material with that in mind.

But thank you for letting me know, and if Krugman appears to be slipping, I will keep your suggestion in mind.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Not just now. Plan on it for the next two years, and support friends in need, too.

By 2012, the public is going to be ready to "throw the bums out" again, only with who will they replace them this time?

& the show trials of climate scientists haven't even started yet...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yes. I didn't intend to suggest that we should do it *only* now, though I see how I could have given that impression.

Supporting friends in need is a good plan and I intend to try--but some people have no friends. I think they still deserve to have a decent life.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I didn't think you intended either of those things. I thought the reminder was important because so many Americans only remember charity at the Christian holy days and are niggardly with friends and even family in genuine need. If there are positive lessons to be learned from this time of privation, this is surely one of them.

[antinomic.livejournal.com]

We need three requirements for anyone who wants to hold public office:

1. Take a college level course in Macroeconomics.
2. Take a college level course in Microeconomics.
3. Pass both courses.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

Courses taught by whom? A Keynesian? A monetarist? A Marxist? A supply-sider? A Georgist?

Yes, there are some technical matters on which almost all minimally qualified economists agree, and that would be enough to understand why some really dumb ideas of the left and the right won't work. Other ideas are more controversial, though; what would happen if to pass the macro course, you had to believe in, or pretend to believe in, Keynesian ideas about the liquidity trap and the paradox of thrift?

Back in the 19th century, one university (was it the U of Pennsylvania?) demanded a pledge from its economics professors. They had to swear that they were protectionists, not free traders, to get and keep jobs there. A requirement such as you propose would be susceptible to abuse.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Those sorts of pledges get a lot of attention precisely because they are so rare.

And the technical matters on which almost all economists agree would be a good start, I think.

So, Georgian economics doesn't believe in the paradox of thrift?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Even technical matters are disputed these days, though the facts are clear to honest observers. The discipline has been thoroughly corrupted, or rather is still struggling to climb out of the pit of 19th-century bigotry and social darwinism. In economics the basic scientific ethic of the primacy of reality collapsed, and the discipline went off a cliff, to the horror of honest, competent economists like Krugman and Delong. I think it will be at least a generation before economics recovers.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

I don't share your admiration of Krugman and DeLong (even though Brad DeLong is a personal e-acquaintance of mine; he used to be active on the Bujold list), but I agree about economics having been corrupted. Are you by chance familiar with Mason Gaffney's book, The Corruption of Economics?

His thesis is that the development of neoclassical economics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was warped by anti-Georgism. Application of Henry George's proposals would have injured some malfactors of great wealth, so the robber barons had their pet economics professors at the universities they endowed argue against Georgism explicitly, and also redefine economic terms away from the meanings they had had in classical political economy, for the purpose of making George's terminology harder to understand. Anti-Georgist polemics got recycled into standard textbooks, and came to be accepted by people who had no idea what they had originally been directed against.

For a parnoid conspiracy theory, it has a surprising amount of documentation.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about Delong myself--my impression of him is that he was far too uncritical of the people who have made the new depression for far too long. He is, however, willing to admit error, and there is much to be said for that.

My general take on Gaffney's argument is that neoclassical (or neoliberal) economics was warped out of shape through its opposition to socialist theories, of which Georgism is one; a socialist theory based on commumnal ownership of land. I don't know enough economic history to judge Gaffney's argument. I do think that theories[1] of wealth based on the productivity of land, which is what Georgism is, a socialist theory of wealth based on the idea that the basic source of value is land, seem to me to be unrealistic. Land is important, no question of it. But one will not get very far in understanding an industrial capitalist economy if one assumes that the basis of its wealth is similar to that of an agrarian feudal economy, and one is likely to be equally lost facing the emergent economy whose mode of production is based on information.

[1] an economic theory, in the 19th century sense, is an idea about how to organize an economy. What was called an economic theory in the 19th century would, in other disciplines, be called a design. One of the transformations that is still incomplete, as economics becomes a science, is the separation between its scientific practice--studying and understanding economics--and its political practice--shaping economics.

Ref: Gaffney's contribution to Harrison's Corruption may be read at his web site, here (warning: huge PDF file.) It is a long essay, but it is only part of the book and I have only read a bit of it. Harrison himself has a web site here.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

Gaffney and Harrison believe that neoclassical economics was warped out of shape by opposition to Georgism specifically; Gaffney writes that the Marxists and the rightwing neoclassicals are mirror images of each other, since both deny the distinction between land and capital. On the Right, people treat land as just another kind of capital to oppose demands for land reform, and refuse to consider questions about just how land becomes private property, anyhow. On the Left, people propose to socialize capital produced by human effort as if it had somehow come into existence for the use of all, without effort on the part of anyone in particular.

You may consider Georgism socialistic; George's opponents on the Right did; but his opponents on the Left did not. In particular, Karl Marx denounced Georgism on the grounds that it would restore capitalism, and set it on a firmer basis than before.

Land is important, and while an industrial capitalist economy differs from an agrarian feudal economy, both depend on land, as does any other economy in the physical universe. City land suited for industry, and close to transportation, workers, customers, etc. is far more valuable than land used for farming.

Henry George had both an economic theory in the sense of design, and in the sense of explanation. The two fit well together, although they are distinguishable; some people have essentially agreed with him about the causes of unemployment and recessions, and opposed his remedy because they wanted wages to be low for the benefit of landowning gentlemen.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I think anyone who wrote, "This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils which flow from it: we must make land common property." *** qualifies as a socialist. In fact, a communist as far as land ownership is concerned. Are you arguing otherwise?

It might be said that Marx thought that George did not go far enough. His comment, in a letter to Engels, was, "All these 'socialists' since Colins [by Marx's account, someone who predated George, with similar ideas about land ownership] have this much in common that they leave wage labour and therefore capitalist production in existence and try to bamboozle themselves or the world into believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves." ***.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

Why, yes, sir, I am arguing otherwise. I think that the late David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, would also have argued otherwise, since he favored land value taxation. Henry George was in favor of socializing land rents, but against an income tax, against most governmental direction and interference, against the Marxist kind of socialism, etc. He went on record saying so, sometimes sounding like Friedrich Hayek before Hayek ever wrote.

I would disagree with Karl Marx that George was bamboozling himself; but then, I find Marx easy to disagree with -- "the prince of muddleheads," as George called him.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

At least I don't paticularly believe in the paradox of thrift, and Georgist economics explains recessions without needing to invoke the paradox of thrift. Henry George never explicitly addressed the point, so far as I know, since he lived and wrote before Keynes.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-)

Certainly it would be helpful for people to understand the basics.