What's The Economic Equivalent Of "There Are No Atheists In Foxholes"?
The Sun Gazette (no, I won't link to it) is a local "newspaper" delivered free of charge to where I live in the Washington, D.C. area. I put quotes around the word "newspaper" because it's really a brochure for the local real estate industry that masquerades as a news source. Not only are most of its ads from real estate agents, it even has ads for homes for sale that are written by the paper's staff and are published so that they look look like news stories.
Most important, the front-page lead stories are almost always cheerleading for local home sales, with headlines that, no matter what the statistics cited in the story say, somehow always give the impression that things are getting better and that this is a good time to buy buy buy.
The Sun Gazette usually just goes directly in the trash with all of the other garbage, but this week's edition deserves to be mentioned...or, actually, ridiculed. Yes, it had the usual cheerleading front-page story about home sales being up, but the headline mentioned the federal home-buyer tax credit as the reason for the jump in sales. The fifth graph in the story (Note to the Gazette's editor: If it's in the headline it should also be in the lead) began by saying "Sales likely were strengthened..." by the tax credit. A follow-up story on page 5 had a headline that said home sales had been "buoyed" by the federal tax credit.
I mention all of this because in addition to being a cheerleader for the local housing industry, the Sun Gazette routinely rails against government involvement of any kind in anything, but especially in economic matters. It always finds a reason to complain about government deficits and debt and challenges local federal office holders who support policies that increase them. In this same edition, for example, the Sun Gazette includes an editorial that celebrates the election of what it calls a fiscally conservative local city council.
There's no indication whatsoever that the newspaper even realizes how inconsistent it's being. On the one hand its very close ties to the local real estate industry require that it celebrate a federal policy that increases the budget deficit. On the other hand, its standard editorial position is that the government should stay away and allow the economy to operate on its own. In this case it can't do both but, in this case, when it was in the Sun Gazette's direct personal interest, increasing the deficit was okay.
Excuse me while I head to the trash.
So it's like Fox New?
So it's like Fox New?
The US economy has become too
The US economy has become too dependent on its real estate markets. The national discourse has been focused on the housing bubble for what has seemed like forever yet little has been said about this dependency regarding the vast number of man-hours that are being wasted.
A bubble though can not exist unless too much investment capital is coursing through the economy. The US economies' excessive dependence on real estate sales is much the same as its dependency on exotic financial instruments and a portion of all investment activities, a part of all of this is simply busy-work for the leisure-class. This version of busy-work is in part the result of a type of denial. To begin with there is a dependence of the investment-class on the rarely mentioned 'demographic dividend'. In other words US investors rely on global exploitation. Plus, US based corporations are using their international status to avoid paying any more than a small percentage of their corporate taxes(28% of US corporations paid no corporate taxes in 2006 [year?]). So ultimately what we have is an economy that has slowly but systematically found ways to create an investment-class that exists in part at the expense of everyone outside of their ranks, both domestically and globally. Yet, for the most part, most of the beneficiaries of this democratic tyranny do not realize that their success can not be justified in an economy that is floundering due to excess investment-flows.
But... for the scam that is the US economy to exist, the investment-class must be kept satisfied. Our society has evolved into what is an unprecedented form of democratic tyranny that relies on compliance, or on tacit approval, of those who are now supported at all costs regardless of how unproductive or parsedic their vocations might be (real estate sales for example,[financial services etc.]). That is why if US unemployment rates are divided into deciles it becomes obvious that the stimulas funds were directed far more at those who seem to need the least assistence. In the lowest decile of the workforce for instance the unemployment rate is 30.8%, in the second decile, that being incomes from $12,500 to $20,000, the unemployment rate is 19.1%. But in the upper deciles, the unemployment rate falls into the low single digits with the decile beginning at incomes of $100,000 per year at 3%. Compliance does not come cheap in democracy that relies on investing and on the denial of that reality.
No different than...
Rand Paul who is trying to run in Kentucky is as much a hypocrite:
"Tea party favorite Rand Paul has rocketed to the lead ahead of Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary here on a resolute pledge to balance the federal budget and slash the size of government.
But on Thursday evening, the ophthalmologist from Bowling Green said there was one thing he would not cut: Medicare physician payments.
In fact, Paul — who says 50% of his patients are on Medicare — wants to end cuts to physician payments under a program now in place called the sustained growth rate, or SGR. “Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living."
The new conservative mantra seems to be: "Small government for everyone as long as I've got mine!"
No different than...
Yep, from the candidates, to the editorial writers, to the voters.
My rep has the same "have it both ways" disease
Tea Partier Bachmann is also against big government, healthcare reform, and welfare handouts.
But her family farm has received over $250K in government subsidy payments these past few years.
And her husband's clinic took 30K in state-provided "socialist" medical reimbursement payments.
Her son has a government "make work" job (Americorps' Teach for America), paid by the taxpayers.
Go figure . . .
Answer
What's The Economic Equivalent Of "There Are No Atheists In Foxholes"?
"There are no libertarians in financial crises."
http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2008/07/17/%E2%...
Of course, they do tend to come back once the dust settles and then fervently attempt to re-write history.
Inconsistent
It's a serious question: is it wrong to oppose a policy while accepting benefits flowing from that policy, or policies like it? Not so clear.
I think the mortgage interest deduction is bad policy--yet more skewing interference by the feds in the national housing market-- but I claim the deduction on my federal return to reduce my tax burden. Not claiming it won't change the policy.
To one of the posts above, the fact that some members of my family may also accept the benefit, in spite of my opposition, is irrelevant.