Ted Rall for August 30, 2010

No, there is a far better response as the economy collapses.

Tell the corporations that they must increase by thousands of dollars the payments they must make for health benefits for new employees. Increase taxes on the productive. Write tens of thousands of pages of regulations.

Then take the billions of dollars collected from the successful and hire millions of more government workers. Pay them 30% more than private enterprise, write rules so they can’t be fired, give them permanent retirement pegged to inflation. Then increase the national debt and deficit by trillions.

Then say see corporations can’t be trusted, let us take 50 cents on each tax dollar and give it unions, trial lawyers and Goldman Sachs, the ones who funded us.

Shock, the people are unhappy with us. Well, we always knew the public is stupid.

That script would look good on a chalkboard.

Anyone who thinks that the government giving money to corporations is any sort of “free market” knows absolutely nothing about what a “free market” actually is. Which is to say, pretty much all the leftist dingbats who rail against the evils of the “free market”.

^Um, Harrison, you had me until you started railing at the “leftist dingbats.” The government does indeed give vast amounts of money to corporations – directly or indirectly through giving cheap access to public lands and property – and you are quite right, it is not a true free market. As has been said, corporations have privatized their bonuses and socialized their risks, the banks being a case in point. The GOP talks a good game about “free markets,” but God forbid they should let any of their contributors get into trouble. The point of the cartoon above is that somehow the government – it’s more than Obama – has decided it is better to give money to corporations than to support or help the American people. But then again, corporations are better campaign donors, eh?

Soylent Corporations are people, too!

If Lassie was there, this wouldn’t have happened…

I’m sensing a theme here.

“Unfortunately for them the money will run out just like Clintons ”

I’m not sure I get you. Clinton did a fair bit to rein in the US federal deficit, so it’s not like the money “ran out.” Or do you mean their personal finances? I thought those were pretty solid, too.

So Libertarian,… if I’ve got this right….you believe that leaving the child in the well is best for everyone? I have to agree with Super Griz.

You can’t just sacrifice schools and safe streets in the short term for the sake of some long-term solution. That’s like telling a starving man to just be patient because food is coming next year.

‘Doctor, I have a sore throat’

‘You need a tax cut’

‘No, I need an anti-biotic for my throat infection.’

‘But with a tax cut would help everyone.’

‘A tax cut would do no one any good, and while we argue about this I just coughed all over your nurse, giving him my infection. In fact as we argue over your non-solution of a tax cut, the infection is spreading all over town. If you gave me the anti-biotic I needed, no one else would have gotten sick.’

Adam Sperry, you are a liar. By giving a tax cut to the guy with a sore throat he would be more likely to invest in creating jobs to get his sore throat cured. Or … something… . *

Tom

Have you never heard of private volunteer organizations. American Cancer Society, Red Cross etc etc? Let’s get that child out of the well by the best and fastest means possible. If that means Charlie next door gets a ladder etc that is the way to go.

One thing we know for certain, there is nothing less efficient in this world than big government. There is probably nothing more efficient than the individual or small business,.

I think today’s toon is a criticism of libertarian/teabagger social philosophies. Very 1890.

It turns out that the Obama administration is as wary of progressive ideas as well.

People want action. We’re not getting a proactive administration, which is hurting them in short run as well as the long run.

That child is just an unproductive parasite who doesn’t work for a living. We should let her drown.

And let’s disband the military, too. Government is too inefficient to run it. Turn the war in Afghanistan over to Blackwater instead.

Oh, I forgot. They have no ethics and they charge an arm and a leg, and we have no tax money to pay for them. Heck, foiled again.

jrmerm,

You forgot the other two horsemen: war and death.

Have a Happy Apocalypse.

siromsirom; CORRECTION; the child is a parasite once it gets out of the womb. Before that, it’s sacred.

A few days ago someone on the list (I forget who) said that those who advocate a stimulus program can never be proved wrong: after a trillion that doesn’t work, they will say another trillion is needed, and then another trillion, until there’s a turnaround – which would have happened anyway.

What’s wrong with this argument? Imagine trying to boil water. We have a pan of water at room temperature. The stimulus crowd says, add some heat. The water doesn’t boil. The stimulus crowd says add some more heat, but the water still doesn’t boil. Finally the stimulus crowd gets the heat up to 212 Fahrenheit, and the water boils, but the anti-stimulus people say it would have boiled anyway.

What’s wrong with this argument? When we are trying to figure out how to boil water, we can try the experiment over and over again in controlled circumstances, and we will find that every time when the water reaches 212 degrees it will boil. And then we can build a theory based on these controlled experiments. We can’t do similar experiments with the economy. We have only a limited number of real world examples, and we can’t control the circumstances. There will always be large numbers of differing circumstances from time to time. Furthermore, there is a good deal of feedback, especially since people buy more when they have confidence, and they may gain or lose confidence depending on what actions are being taken and how they feel about those actions. Water doesn’t have an opinion about added heat, but people do have opinions about added stimulus. There are economic models, but these are necessarily simplified and based on only imperfect data. It’s significant that conomists do not agree on the laws of economics, whereas sciences largely agree about the fundamentals.

Overall I think that an economic stimulus can be a good thing, but I think nobody knows for sure.

It was I who said that. We are beginning to see the results of the experiment you propose. See Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Japan et al.

Now look at Germany which decided not to spend, spend, spend but to try and balance. They are the only EU country doing well. Small sample but at least a place to start.

And I predict that in twenty years the liberal economists will find a way to say that the stimulus did work and the conservative economists will find a way to say that it didn’t. Just the way they talk about FDR’s stimulus.

Please understand that I’m not saying economics is of no use or interest. I just don’t think it has reached the status of a predictive science. Certainly there was no generally agreed upon prediction of the current downturn.

The ancients would have said we need to sacrifice Ben Bernanke and sprinkle his blood on the Capitol steps. They considered that an exact and proven “science.” Maybe it’s worth a try?

Actually lonecat economics can be a predictive science. The problem lies in learning about past behaviors and trends that tend to put a hamper on economic growth.

In the 1970’s the oil embargo put this country on its knees. In the 1980’s it was deregulation. In the 1990’s it was tech stocks. In the 2000’s it was credit (debt). You could make an arguement that it started in the 80’s but this is when it came full circle.

These and other little details can tell us what to expect a country’s economic health should be. With our insane policies we are nowhere near stable and won’t be until we get a handle on our manufacturing base.

“With our insane policies we are nowhere near stable and won’t be until we get a handle on our manufacturing base.”

Then it’s a really good thing that Obama saved the auto industry.

Tax cuts = mc2. The universe can’t be wrong.

lonecat - while I am not a big fan of economics, your statement implies an equality that is not so. The vast majority of all economists, regardless of political stripe, agree not only that FDR’s stimulus helped pull us out of the Depression, but also that it faltered when he listened to the conservatives and tightened down briefly.

The only things most corporations have proven to be efficient at are killing civilians, spilling oil, stealing retirement money, and piling outlandish bonuses on their otherwise incompetent executives.

:)

American manufacturing is dead. It is time to give up and move on already. Stop trying to reverse the irreversible.

A slain Bernanke would appease the angry credit gods…

Sirrom, they changed their name and therefore are no longer anything like Blackwater. Get it together.

The “leaders” who claim to be proponents of the free market are the same ones who fight hardest for subsidies paid with your taxes.

I surrender, Lib1. The people with all the money could not possibly be responsible for problems. It is the poor people and always has been for the six thousand years of earth.

^The same things that go wrong if you listen to Keynesians.

Motive has just proven my point. We poured billions into the economy and the reason it didn’t work was it wasn’t enough. if we had spent more then it would have worked. Always if you spend more it eventually works. A perfect philosophy. always correct because if it fails, it just means we didn’t spend enough. Of course WWII didn’t hurt.

Someone should create a computer simulation testing the various theories on how to run the economy. Meanwhile, I would suggest to bail out every single person’s mortgage, car, and rent debt instead of bailing out those “too big to fail” corporations, make those darned banks pay back their unproportional, outlandish fees slyly imposed on their clients, and then nationalize them. Then, end the medical-industrial complex by paying new students, instead of burdening them with debt, their medical courses and bring some competition around to lower the astronomical costs of medical care, and then nationalize health care. Then, start taxing the wealthy. If they run away en masse let them go, the government can take their place and bring about some real jobs for a change–and then become part of Canada or invade them if they don’t want to.

Blackwater is such a great, evil name – I just can’t let it go.

“We poured billions into the economy and the reason it didn’t work was it wasn’t enough.”

Maybe planting dollar bills on the ground will result in the growing of money trees.

“That’s makes absolutely no sense.”

Exactly! Why are we pouring truckloads of cash into Reaganomics? It doesn’t work and never did. To think that a corporation has the interest of the people at heart via no regulation is stupid. Start regulating these crooks and stop the nonsense!

edmondd

Your idea about adding many new physicians and thereby expecting more competition and lower fees eg classic capitalism has been proposed many many times. It never works and actually society ends up paying out much much more.

Why? Because now each doctor as expected will see fewer patients but now with the time and incentives will order numerous more very expensive tests, writes many more prescriptions and spends much more per patient.

I get paid far less per patient than I would guess you imagine. Assume I get paid $30-50/pt from Medicare. Say more physicians out there cuts my load in half. What does Medicare save? $60-$100? I now have much more time per patient and what has always ended up happening is “I guess I will order an MRI for that”. Pts now are demanding the very best care and since there are so many doctors I must satisfy the patient. There goes $1000 and the imaginary savings you thought you would have produced. This is what has happened every single time. How would you stop that? Remember medical services as expected by the patients are totally unlimited.

motive – thanks for your post. I trust your knowledge of these things more than I trust mine. But there’s this pesky group of conservative economists who seem to have a lot of influence….

The Solutionators have already been too active. The U.S. debt clock today gives the public debt at $13.397 trillion. The Republicans have been particularly “active”. Bush, Bush, and Reagan are responsible for over 70% of the debt as at January 1, 2009. Reagan increased the debt 189%, Bush1 56%, Clinton 36%, Bush2 89% and Obama to date 23%. Assets per citizen $238,263 minus Liabilities per citizen $355,363 equal Net Worth per citizen negative $117,100. (Liabilities includes unfunded liabilities) How does it feel to be bankrupt?

My problem with Blackwater is that they took such a great name and ruined it.

Getting murdered by Xe is such a letdown.

<======^Dead people have feelings? Who knew.

What you do then, Libertarian, is letting the government intervene in the “free market”, bring about some investment in medical equipment so as to make them tests way more affordable.

I can’t help but thinking that Ted took his first panel here from a classic locus in Confucian philosophy - Gongsun Chou I 6, where Meng Zi (Mencius) uses the image of the spontaneous feeling of compassion that arises in an observer when a child falls in a well to argue that human nature is good. The following panels show how far we have progressed during the last 2300 years….

Henri