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There is one important fact about wind. It isn't always blowing in upstate New York or, for that matter, most everywhere else. All regulators need to ask, who will pay when electric generating capacity must be supplied in some other form? Once intermittency is recognized as a true element of the real cost of this form of electric supply, and customers are charged accordingly, it can become a valid if very expensive part of the supply mix. It would almost never be appropriate for a small or medium size municipal supplier, since my understanding is that the typical wind farm has an intermittency factor on the order of 30%.
If you wake up to discover some well-meaning greens have loaded up your local utlity with wind contracts, (as opposed to linked a large number of profitable wind farms into a large grid) better get ready to pay a lot more.
You agree to the fare and the frequent flyer credits when you buy the ticket. You don't know the exact value of the frequent flyer credits until you use them. So you have an asset whose value depends on the operating status of the airline--you are a creditor.
Some people are better off in the presence of these programs. I'm thinking of folks who fly enough so that they can use the FF miles on first class tickets. Some people are worse off than if the airlines competed only on the price of the ticket.
I'm surprised you didn't ask the obvious question - are you going to repay the share of national debt you and the members of your family have been committed by Congress to service? If you had asked that, I think you would have gotten mostly negative responses from each state you visited.
The people in the hinterlands have refused to make it too clear, and lord knows the politicians and budget wonks in Washington are slow to understand, but the national debt is never going to be honored. No matter how much debt the incompetents inside the beltway rack up, the folks outside the beltway are mostly going to take a pass if and when it comes time to pay back their share, reasoning 'it isn't my debt, it is owed the US government. Let it repay its own debt.'
Let's just be glad of two things. At least for now, we can always create more debt to pay back whatever debt is about to come due. The second is that the rest of the world, who continue to float 'it' and the game, have yet to understand what is about to happen.
The current unemployment number may be understated due to people voluntarily leaving the workforce and other things.
Also, my guess is the 2 to 2.5% (see excerpt below) is understated.
by Summers in FT (see link at Mankiw blog)
Big Freeze part 4: A US recovery
Published: August 6 2008 20:17 | Last updated: August 6 2008 20:17
Excerpt:
How long will the economy stay weak on the current policy path?
The best available estimates suggest that the American economy is operating between 2 and 2.5 per cent below its sustainable potential level.
If Congress appropriates on a continuing basis for 09, and prepares a supplemental more to their liking for the next president in January, would Nussle be relevant?
Fiscal responsibility is a loser at the polls. Fiscal responsibility requires either cuts to popular programs or raising more revenue.
A candidate who promotes either of these will lose.
The budget does not occur in a vacuum. Congress has some power to modify a president's proposal. McCains wildly irresponsible fiscal policy might not be so bad because a Democratic Congress is unlikely to extend Bush tax cuts. Would McCain use a veto to force of budget showdown? If he did not would wealthy special interests clobber him for raising their taxes? It might not matter because McCain is too old currently to run for president. He would be way too old to run for re-election 4 years from now.
ObamaCare is a light weight proposal compared to the more robust HillaryCare. There are costs to extending health care to the uninsured, but we are already paying most of those costs elsewhere in the system. However, Obama is also for increasing the size of the military which IMHO is a waste of our tax dollars. So yes, something has to give, especially if Congress keeps Paygo.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Answer a fool according to his folly.
张家界旅游
There is a bit of irony in this op-ed too.
While not mentioning a single word about how they are going to meet Krugman's concern about raising the revenue needed to pay for Obama's promised universal health care program through a net tax cut, they make the solemn statement...
Sen. Obama believes that responsible candidates must put forward specific ideas of how they would pay for their proposals.
... then attack McCain for doing just that.
Sen. McCain's plan does include one new proposal that would result in higher taxes on the middle class. As even Sen. McCain's advisers have acknowledged, his health-care plan would impose a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years on workers ... Even after accounting for Sen. McCain's proposed health-care tax credits, this plan would eventually leave tens of millions of middle-class families paying higher taxes.
McCain proposes a limited health care reform, that will cost money, and he tells how he would pay for it. BAM! They slam him for that!
Obama proposes a universal health care program, coupled with a net tax cut, with apparently it, the deficit and everything else to be covered by cutting "wasteful and unnecessary programs" like
"payments for high-income farmers" (Good luck with that ... but isn't Obama a big supporter of ethanol subsidies?)
There's no tax increase paying for things to attack like they attacked, no political liability, universal health care is sold as free ... but is this really a "new" kind of politics?
It's funny how economists like these during the election season start writing op-eds that could have been written by trial lawyers in the middle of a case.
it is clear that Washington dc has already decided on the recession, yet Wallstreet is in denial. washington can alter set wallstreet stock trends.
Phelps has the advantage of having competed at 19 and 23. (The announcers have consistently spoken of him as "young," while referring to the 25-26-year-olds as "veterans.")
There will be others who swim their first Olympiad at 18-19, and I doubt that either Olympiad individually would have people talking about "greatest ever." While even after Heiden had a career as a bicycle racer, people talked of his speed skating accomplishments.
But if I'm looking for definitive Olympians, I'm looking at durability: people like Oerter (what? five Olympics?), Nurmi, or Jean-Claude Killey, or even Jeannie Longo.
Or Nadia C., who redefined her sport; they changed the scoring process after her performance.
Phelps is an American Ian Thorpe. Talk to me in eight years.
Investors happy. People who are riding on the national health care promise, maybe not so much. Like Krugman, even before this:...
Barack Obama’s tax plan is more responsible than Mr. McCain’s ... also far more progressive ... [but] not enough to pay for universal health care, which was supposed to be the overriding progressive priority in this election. Why doesn’t Mr. Obama propose raising more money?
And that was back when Krugman was assuming the Obama plan would raise revenue, not reduce it as per...
"Senator Obama's advisers stressed several times that their modest tax increases for high income individuals were more than offset by middle class and small business tax cuts so that overall federal revenues under their plan would amount to 18.2% of GDP, slightly lower than today's 18.3% level."
(Krugman of course told the Asia Times "We should be getting 28% of GDP in revenue", ten points more than now -- which would be something!)
In these campaign promises, something has got to give.
We can cynically assume that campaign talk simply means nothing at all, candidates will just say whatever they need to say to get elected -- from FDR promising in '32 to balance the budget by getting rid of excess government job-holders, and promising in '40 to keep America's sons out of foreign wars, through Nixon's "plan" to get the US out of Viet Nam in '68 and Clinton's "middle class tax cut" in '92, and all the rest. (Though maybe it's not cynical to be realistic.)
Or we can say that campaign promises actually mean something, or at least should -- they should strengthen the elected by providing a mandate: "I said I was going to do this if elected, and you elected me, so now I am going to do it!"
But when the mandate is: "I said I was going to give you something valuable, and that I was going to lower taxes so you don't have to pay for it ..." well, if Obama is elected and then tries to get universal health care enacted, that is going to not help ... and in the larger picture, this is just more travel down the same road that's given us the $50 trillion unfunded entitlement liability.
Same old politics. But there is going to come a day when something will have to give.
"Our society functions as it does because of a broad social consensus on the rules of public behavior. This consensus rests in part on each player’s confidence that if he fails there is a safety net that makes it worth his taking the risk of playing." -Warren Coates
Therein lies the explanation of why the last 8 years have resulted in societal AND economic dysfunction. This administration did whatever it could to hammer social wedges precisely to destroy this consensus under the "divide and conquer" mantra.
The results are not pretty, to say the least.
"Our society functions as it does because of a broad social consensus on the rules of public behavior. This consensus rests in part on each player’s confidence that if he fails there is a safety net that makes it worth his taking the risk of playing." -Warren Coates
Amen
Some wit---I can't recall who--recently wrote that The Dark Knight is about a man who goes out every night wearing a rubber hat. Nearly three hours for that?
Go to Netflix and queue "The Narrow Margin" (1952)--a 72 minute taut, gritty noir thriller in glorious black-and-white. Plenty of fedoras and shadows but, thankfully, no rubber hats.
Heiden is an excellent choice. If we limit ourselves to the performance in a single Olympics then I’m strongly tempted to agree with you. The span in the distances that Heiden won, from 30 seconds to 15 minutes, is simply incredible. It’s like someone winning every running race from the 400m to the 3 mile. Heiden also competed, as far as I know, without any serious technological advantage over his competitors.
If we’re considering an athlete’s entire Olympic career, then I have to vote for Bjørn Dæhlie, the greatest cross country skier of all time. In 3 Olympics Bjørn won 8 golds and 4 silvers, in two different techniques, over distances from 10km (24 minutes) to 50m (2 hours and change). Phelps might have more total medals, but keep in mind that there are only 5 cross country skiing events (1 relay) per Olympics, versus 16 events (3 relays) for swimming. Keep in mind too that it takes much longer to recover completely from endurance events than from short distance events. Also, cross country skiing is the most grueling endurance sport known to human kind, so that’s got to count for something.
(Full disclosure, Dæhlie competed in the Olympics from ’92–’98, so he got 3 Olympics in a 6 year span, instead of the usual 8 year span.)
My best abstract take on unfettered v. regulated
What the central planner (in the broadest, most general sense of the term) is unable to do -- at all -- is duplicate the zillions to the zillionth power different rational decisions that need to efficiently operate a market. What the central planner is able to do -- very efficiently -- is to interfere with or substitute any individual decisions that he can be personally aware of -- like deciding what the minimum price per hour of labor should be.
What any one of the millions of individual decision makers are not usually doing -- at all -- is seeking an outcome that the overall consensus of millions of decision makers would see as useful.
Fans of the unfettered free market believe its outcomes are perfectly proportional and that interfering with it is inherently inefficient. Actually, whether 80% of the profit of a fast food enterprise goes to labor and 20% to ownership -- or vice-versa -- has no direct effect on the consumer at all -- only affects what the profit will ultimately buy: perhaps better educated because better paid labor or perhaps more business investment because more profitable; both of which are within the realm of reasonable predictability to central planners.
Ditto for labor upping the price of a burger through minimum wage hike (or collective bargaining) to the highest price consumers are willing to pay (even it means selling fewer burgers for more labor profit per burger). "Natural" utility, if you will, should be seen as the highest price a product or service can command, not the lowest.
If a piece of land is sold at a fire-sale price because the owner is destitute and on the verge of starvation, that price probably wont fully reflect the utility the land might have to the purchaser. Unorganized labor is often in the same fire-sale position, since necessity may force it to accept whatever price will barely sustain it. There is nothing "naturally" efficient about sale of anything below the price which reflects its full utility to the purchaser. (There is something very naturally inefficient about keeping people too poor to reach the natural potential of their personal talents.)
First bites into the animal, anyway...
Pete, don't write until you've had some coffee. When I look at that chart, I see the rate plunging in the latter 80s, notwithstanding continuing deficits, a drop at the dawn of Clinton Administration, then a climb notwithstanding improvement (reduction) of deficits under Clinton, then a drop after Bush's gigantic increase of deficits.
Which proves what?
Government is supposed to help solve collective problems that require public consensus to resolve. There is a reason why the phrase "market failure" is used in every intro economic text. Republicans and current conservative philosophy has failed as a governing strategy. Modern conservative ideology denies market failure and the necessity for a society to come to a consensus on the rules that govern an economy. Clearly, infrastructure and productive workforce are necessary for a healthy economy. Modern conservative ideology and its focus on shrinking government stifles the ability of government to maintain and improve collective infrastructure.
The biggest problem facing the US is healthcare. The US healthcare system is far more expensive and fails to deliver outcomes that are as good as other developed countries. Our current system is bloated, inefficient and a drag on our economy. Health care costs are anti-business. As you well know, exploding health care costs are the largest threat to fiscal responsibility in future budgets. Reform must happen. McCain and Republicans deny that there is even a problem. If they deny the problem can they have a solution?
Republicans, including McCain have an answer to everything: tax cuts. Tax cuts are not a solution to most of our current problems one of which is underinvesting in infrastructure and workforce training.
Shrink the government ideology is a failure. It places conservative ideology at odds with the public demand for collective services. Staffing the government with people who believe that government cannot successfully deliver services is a recipe for failure. The result is placing responsibility for government in the hands of people who do not believe in it, do not like it, want it to go away. If people expect government to fail, how hard will they work to do a good job that you do not believe is possible? Would people who believe in government be more likely to succeed in making it work?
The way out of the dilemma is to ditch the wrongheaded ideology of shrinking the government. Private enterprise does not solve all problems faced by a society. That is why the phrase "market failure" is found in every introductory economic text. Conservatism would be much better to direct its energy to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the government we have. Can Republicans reform their ideology to one that is capable of governing, without a break from governing?
Dear Stan,
"Isn't it possible that at least some of the 80 percent that hasn't yet been spent will be spent in the coming months. Does a stimulus have to have an immediate impact (and what do we mean by 'immediate'?) to be considered a success?"
Certainly. Just as some workers (fewer and fewer, but still some) have income in one quarter that they end up "spending" in the next. Do we call that stimulating, or just "not saving"?
Or, more appropriately in this case, if I borrowed $100 last quarter, but only got around to spending $20 of it (though I still owe interest on the whole kit and caboodle), is that Stimulating?
"according to the White House, economic growth was much higher last quarter than it would have otherwise have been? If Feldstein is right, is the administration wrong?
I was always told that, to be effective, a stimulus had to be one percent of GDP..."
It appears here that you believe that there was a stimulus. Or at least that you believe the Administration believes. And let us say you and they are correct.
Reality: 1.9 GDP growth was expected to be 2.5 due to the stimulus. So the stimulus was underspent by 0.6 of expectations. So let's do a finger exercise.
Assume we thought about 1/2 of the Stimulus Debt would be spent. Only 20% was, so that 0.6 difference is 30% of the whole expectation. So the full spending would have produced 2% annualised GDP, or about 0.5% on the annual GDP growth.
But we only expected 1% annualised for the quarter (and got 0.4%). So Feldstein may be correct--well under expectations--while the Administration says "Some people spent the money because they had to, so that's good."
Alternately, we can assume you are correct that the stimulus was 1% of the 1.9%, which leads us to assume (finger exercise again), that the expectation was that only 32% of the stimulus (20=1 and x=.6, so x = 12) would be spent. In which case 68% of the "stimulus" is doing nothing but accruing Government Debt.
A stimulus that increases debt twice as well as it increases spending is poorly targeted at best.
"Do we really need additional spending by consumers of one percent of GDP?"
Fair question, but let's rephrase. "Do we really need the cash-strapped record-nominal-deficit government to throw enough money willy-nilly at consumers that it causes spending to increase by 1% of GDP?"
If the alternative is admitting a recession going into a Presidential election, the answer from the current Administration appears to be "YES."
YMMV.
While I agree almost entirely with your post, there are a few areas in which I feel we will inevitably disagree:
1. I had actually considered this when writing my last post, and I am sure that it is true, however I do feel that even though the United States may be 'winning,' being in the lead is not synonymous with good performance in this case (you can win a race crawling if everyone else is asleep).
2. We have definitely been growing as an information economy, but we are quickly growing too dependent on raw information, rather than human beings (OPINION).
3. You must define success. If we continue to head towards information dependence in this fashion, and sustain increasing sacrifice to keep up with our neighbors (see Europe, Japan), how will we ever match them without sacrificing what they have already abandoned? Also, what would we really have gained?
4. Also true, it would be extremely hard to grow more specific to each child without falling into the trap of an "effort" mentality, where there is zero accountability.
5. You are correct in that if I were never taught the simplest essay structure, I would never know that I had to expand to greater things to excel.
6. I enjoy the "Make them tiny" theory. Somewhere exists a perfect balance between a public and private school. Lack of resources is a huge issue.
7. I have never found basics boring... the first time around. Even second and third times, basics are interesting. It is when basics begin spill into where the next step should be that problems exist. This could go on, but I'm sure you can see where it would end up (lack of resources once again).
8. Yes, and I believe that anyone reading this is part of a larger experiment than that, considering that public education of such a grand scale is relatively very young. Any current issues with the system have not been around long enough to sustain a harsh judgement. It is an evolutionary process, and we are the beginning.
9. I agree with this so much, and it somewhat relates with what I said in response to 5. Paralleling what I just said in 8, this whole thing is a process. There is a stage right now where it appears that creativity itself (or the general public's perception of creativity) has been held up as an idol for conformity.
Conclusion: Agree.
My Consclusion: America can only swallow creativity to a certain degree, but as long as we can have these conversations, the Man is doing something right. In terms of the US education system, I would have to say that it parallels democracy:
"It's garbage, but it's the best."
Submitted for stipulation:
1. The US has substantially more productive creativity by percentage of population than any other nation.
2. We are and have been in an information economy for the last 30-50 years.
3. Success in information economy depends almost entirely on education.
4. Education must be broadly available across income and social classes to avoid "too-early" selection of "stars" who will simply represent groupthink of the selectors (see Europe, Japan).
5. There are indeed basics for entry into the information economy (reading, writing, technology, etc.) and there are time-tested ways of teaching those that survive the fads...and occasionally take good tips from fads to improve overall. If these basics are not transmitted, the potential creativity will likely be lost.
6. Transmitting those "basics" very broadly involves spending a lot of money on ensuring equality and offering special ed services to get people who are otherwise perfectly able to creatively contribute to a basic level needed for interaction with the economy. (Note: next frontier is figuring out city schools. Tom's theory is "Make them tiny").
7. Learning basics is boring to human beings, especially children...especially children who are brought up to believe that they are incredibly special (part of the Creativity plan).
8. The plethora of private schools are constantly testing the boundaries of our "accepted" public school solutions, on both sides: more basics and more freedom. We have to watch out for the self-selecting nature of these school populations, but the experiments truly improve our overall schools.
9. A lot of the "crushing my soul" stuff we read is the equivalent of someone who wants to be Itzhak Perlman without learning how to read music. Those people who complain would simply die under some of the school systems we've been asked to emulate.
Conclusion: Our schools (including our college system) are in fact primarily oriented towards optimizing for productive creativity compared to those of other cultures/nations.
As much as I like Heath Ledger (although I am afraid to admit it for fear of being pegged a 'fairweather fan'), I have yet to see this movie. Now, however, I feel as though I have. I'll probably wait for the Box Set in 30, after the next two movies are made, forgotten, then come back into the spotlight on whatever new media form all the classics will have to conform to.
Public schooling may not entirely kill the creativity in a child, so much as prohibit the creativity from blossoming in select areas.
For an obvious example of creativity, one can look to visual art. Public school art programs around the country are diminishing in funds and attention, as acceptance for "effort" is growing. Children are being taught that creativity is always something easy, which, in my opinion, parallels nonexistence.
Another example is in the composition of papers and essays. Children are taught how to write for the sole purpose of passing essay questions on tests.
Intro (Thesis)
Body
Body
Body
Conclusion.
This format is clearly the nationwide simple standard, and can be useful up to a certain age.
When my 12th grade AP Literature and Composition class teaches this, however, personal feelings tell me that something is very wrong. This simple essay structure is only the tip of the problematic iceberg, as it is usually coupled with identical structure in each paragraph, repetitive sentence structure, etc.
Personally, I am an avid reader, and have always been. What I pin as my own creativity (in writing), I can attribute to my outside reading and two teachers throughout my school career who have made it their personal gaol to fuel all students to excel outside of any box.
I feel there are more questions to be asked here:
To what extent do school systems simply fail to feed childrens' creativity?
Is this failure, in effect, homogenous to killing creativity?
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex by Olivia Judson
Funniest Biology book ever written.
Home schooling quality varies widely . . . the choice of teacher (teacher training and experience) is often limited ;-) I've seen some horrible home schooling situations and some great ones.
We're blessed to have excellent public schools here . . . we have open enrollment and charter schools, so there's healthy competition among schools and it generally raises the bar for all. Public schools lose state aid when they lose students, so they work hard to keep them.
There are privates, a few with slightly different models (Montessori, for example, but elements of Montessori have been worked into most early childhood classrooms). Private high schools are nearly all structured the same as public.
My kids used special needs services, and those generally don't exist at the same level at the privates. Public schools were, by far, the best choice for my children. Both completed K-12 and moved on to top colleges. I'm happy, and as they are A students at excellent colleges, they feel they were better prepared than their peers (many of whom attended private schools) to succeed at the post secondary level.
In general people like to point to schools as the source of whatever ails the child (it's the easiest place to put the blame). The truth is that most learning occurs outside of school, and the most important brain development takes place between age 0-5 -- before most formal schooling begins (in the US).
Schools can't kill creativity if the child is engaged in creative activities outside of school . . . which is more than half their time anyway (and summers are a great time to run with creative endeavors). If the child is sitting in front of a TV or playing mindless video games on their "off" time they will become zombies.