I wish I had the tech skills to set one up, maybe linked to facebook.
The existing Presidential debate format is like a pillow fight. We might as well tune in to watch alternating candidate TV commercials. The candidates handlers insure that the format shields their candidates from questions that might actually reveal the vacuity of their rhetoric. If they do get a potentially difficult question they just talk about something else and the media moderator's let them get away with it.
The process produces no information beyond the carefully scripted sound bites from each campaign. The partisans at both ends of the political spectrum get reassured, the voters in the middle get nothing - we end up judging candidates on how they look, or act, not the cogency of their ideas. Nixon was judged to have "lost" the 1960 debate with Kennedy because he had a bad make-up job. George Bush Jr. was judged to have won in 2000 because Al Gore was stiff and boring, and Mr Bush exceeded (silly) media expectations by not being completely incompetent at stringing together sentences.
We should set up ground rules about questions (no trick questions, no questions assuming unproven facts) and then let each candidate's campaign question the other candidate(s), with the right to follow up questions where the answer is evasive. Have an independent panel of fact checkers to keep them honest. Then we might actually learn something useful as candidates will have to answers about unpalatable truths instead of just telling us what they think we want to hear.
Candidates won't want to use this format, but if voters won't vote for a candidate who doesn't participate, they'll have to do it.
If there is some tech person out there who knows how to set up a petition and start it circulating I would sign it in an instant and send it to everyone I know.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Free markets v. Socialism - Sweden booming
Sweden has offered its citizens a cradle to grave social safety net for half a century or more. Liberal unemployment benefits. Retirement at age 67 with a good pension. Government funded Health care is provided to the entire population and is consistently rated high in world quality of health care rankings (quite a bit higher than the US). Their health care costs have run consistently at about 9% of GDP since he 1980's while the US, on the other hand, spends 16% of our GDP on health care and some estimates see that rising to 25% in the future. The average for western industrialized countries is 8% of GDP (per World Health Organization).
Yet despite offering it's citizens the best of Socialism, and having Government spending in many years account for more than 50% of GDP (meaning very high taxes) Sweden has still managed to have a pretty strong market economy and maintain a high standard or living.
An article in the Economist, (June 11, 2011 (p. 58)) now notes that while the US and England sputter along, Sweden's economy may have grown 6.4% in the first quarter of this year. The thrust of the economist article is Sweden's coalition government has trimmed the excesses of the socialist safety net while leaving it substantively intact and adding market friendly policies that have encouraged economic growth.
I always read Economist articles keeping in mind their basic editorial ideology leans a little bit towards being true believers in markets as the solution to all human problems. What I took away from the article and its statistical and historical facts is that smart policies that recognize what markets do best and also recognize what government does best can provide a strong economic foundation with a strong social safety net.
Here in the United States our politics are still infected with gut level hatred for any form of socialism. That hatred is left over from our McCarthy era guilt by association linking socialism to communism, and it has been kept alive by Capitalist true believers to maintain their grip on political power. As a result we have a market based health care system that is outrageously expensive but still doesn't cover big chunks of the population, the market based portion of our pension system is collapsing from the weight of its speculative excesses (that allowed the very wealthy to skim off the value), and we scramble to keep the long term unemployed afloat.
Sweden has proved over the last half century that you can combine markets and government social programs and have the best of both worlds.
Yet despite offering it's citizens the best of Socialism, and having Government spending in many years account for more than 50% of GDP (meaning very high taxes) Sweden has still managed to have a pretty strong market economy and maintain a high standard or living.
An article in the Economist, (June 11, 2011 (p. 58)) now notes that while the US and England sputter along, Sweden's economy may have grown 6.4% in the first quarter of this year. The thrust of the economist article is Sweden's coalition government has trimmed the excesses of the socialist safety net while leaving it substantively intact and adding market friendly policies that have encouraged economic growth.
I always read Economist articles keeping in mind their basic editorial ideology leans a little bit towards being true believers in markets as the solution to all human problems. What I took away from the article and its statistical and historical facts is that smart policies that recognize what markets do best and also recognize what government does best can provide a strong economic foundation with a strong social safety net.
Here in the United States our politics are still infected with gut level hatred for any form of socialism. That hatred is left over from our McCarthy era guilt by association linking socialism to communism, and it has been kept alive by Capitalist true believers to maintain their grip on political power. As a result we have a market based health care system that is outrageously expensive but still doesn't cover big chunks of the population, the market based portion of our pension system is collapsing from the weight of its speculative excesses (that allowed the very wealthy to skim off the value), and we scramble to keep the long term unemployed afloat.
Sweden has proved over the last half century that you can combine markets and government social programs and have the best of both worlds.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Market theory - money as the only motivator
The theory of free markets that has dictated US policy for decades is based on the assumption that people are motivated to work and achieve almost exclusively by economic considerations, or, more succinctly, money. So law should view money as the primary way to motivate people.
In my experience this assumption is correct as to some percentage of the population but completely wrong as the large portions of the population.
Certainly we all like money, very few of us would turn down a raise in pay if it was offered. But some of us like it a whole lot more than others.
Many people work to make money, and where they can make the most money is the sole determinant of their job. In some cases it is just having lots of money to play with, in some cases it is because making more money than others is the way they validate their importance. Paying these people more as a carrot to increase productivity works if productivity goals are easily quantified (like increasing profits). If necessary they will sacrifice family, health and endure stress to achieve their single most important goal.
But many other people have a more diverse set of values, where making lots of money may be far down the list of values. Things like liking what they do. Treating other people with honesty and consideration. Having time to spend with family and friends. Taking care of their health. Taking pride in being good at what they do. There is a point where once they have a reasonable level of security paying people more will not lead them to be more productive, because they are unwilling to sacrifice their other values.
Using money as a motivator generally is pretty effective in the private sector, because the goal is so easily quantifiable (make more money). In the public sector where goals are diffuse and complex, paying too much money attracts the folks motivated by money, and crowds out very competent people whose basic inclinations are more in line with the service nature of the public sector. Public sector compensation should be structured to provide long term security, not riches.
In my experience this assumption is correct as to some percentage of the population but completely wrong as the large portions of the population.
Certainly we all like money, very few of us would turn down a raise in pay if it was offered. But some of us like it a whole lot more than others.
Many people work to make money, and where they can make the most money is the sole determinant of their job. In some cases it is just having lots of money to play with, in some cases it is because making more money than others is the way they validate their importance. Paying these people more as a carrot to increase productivity works if productivity goals are easily quantified (like increasing profits). If necessary they will sacrifice family, health and endure stress to achieve their single most important goal.
But many other people have a more diverse set of values, where making lots of money may be far down the list of values. Things like liking what they do. Treating other people with honesty and consideration. Having time to spend with family and friends. Taking care of their health. Taking pride in being good at what they do. There is a point where once they have a reasonable level of security paying people more will not lead them to be more productive, because they are unwilling to sacrifice their other values.
Using money as a motivator generally is pretty effective in the private sector, because the goal is so easily quantifiable (make more money). In the public sector where goals are diffuse and complex, paying too much money attracts the folks motivated by money, and crowds out very competent people whose basic inclinations are more in line with the service nature of the public sector. Public sector compensation should be structured to provide long term security, not riches.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Striving to be an Armadillo
In the Washington hubris back around 2005 or 2006 a member of Congress from Texas famously sneered about middle of the road voters that they were like Armadillo's, they get run over from both sides of the road.
Ideologues from all sides of the political spectrum dislike moderation. Their intellectual worlds are built around logical constructs built on foundations of simplistic assumptions and characterizations about human nature and the world we live in. They like clean logic, they don't like the messy ambiguity that often characterizes life. Once they have their logical ideology in place they can be an expert on anything thereafter by plugging into the ideology and starting to talk, without the time consuming necessity of investigating facts or considering options.
Ideologues don't like moderates because moderates always seem to want to complicate their grand ideas with inquiries into whether assumptions are true.
If your only ambition in life is to be a politician its not a bad idea to latch onto an ideology. You can speak confidently and authoritatively on any subject, on a moments notice, while people actually evaluating options and facts are being silent. And a big plus is most voters don't have time to evaluate options and facts, in fact they don't even have time to listen to a long spiel about facts and options. They like a short sweet sound bite that is emotionally appealing and will often go with it.
Unfortunately, if you actually want to be a positive influence in your life, history suggests being an ideologue is probably not the way to go. In the United States the great depression of the 1930's and the great recession we are still recovering from both followed years of conservative ideology running the show. From 1921 through 1933 Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. That didn't happen again until 2001 to 2007. Both periods were marked by unwavering belief that cutting regulation on business, cutting taxes and cutting the size and influence of Government were the key to a prosperous future. Of course what actually happened at the end of each period was the two worst economic crashes in the last 100 years.
What about the Democrats you say? Evidence suggests the ideological left wing, while it certainly exists in this country, has never come close to the kind of power the ideological right has achieved. Unlike many Western European countries we have never had anything like socialist control of any branch of government. We have had a number of periods when Democrats controlled both house of Congress and the Presidency, and those periods saw the passage of Social Security, LBJ's great society, and the creation of lots of consumer and environmental protection legislation, but the periods where Democrats have controlled all branches of Government also included the years during WW I, WW II and the Korean War where big legislative initiatives were on the back burner. For whatever reason, no pattern of disaster following Democratic control reveals itself.
I also personally believe the nature of right and left ideologies makes Democrats in the United States less extreme in their views. Republican ideas are rooted in self reliance and personal responsibility - they are focused on what is good for the individual, and heavy with overtones of "leave me alone so I can do what I want". They flow easily from the values from our pioneer heritage, so as a nation we are inclined to be sympathetic to those values. The middle of the road in the United States is actually to the right of center by the reckoning of many other countries. But the frontier is gone. Most of us can't walk out the back door and go shoot our dinner, or chop up a downed tree to keep us warm. We can't get up and move because we now have a neighbor a mile away and we want our space. We are town folk, heavily reliant upon each other. Democratic ideas are rooted in that interlinked nature of society, in the common good, in shared responsibilities and tolerance. Democrats think consensus is a value in itself. Republicans think winning is the only value. So even when Democrats are in control Republicans have more influence than when the reverse situation exists.
In a functioning modern society you need both these views. They each have strengths and weaknesses and should be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. We need the selfishness that is at the root of Republican ideology because that is what drives much of our economic development. But Republicans often regard government as at best a nuisance (excerpt when they getting subsidies) but in fact Government plays a key role in creating a society that allows our culture and economy to thrive. We need the sense of group identity, or group responsibility, that underpins most Democratic ideology.
That's this Armadillo's view.
Ideologues from all sides of the political spectrum dislike moderation. Their intellectual worlds are built around logical constructs built on foundations of simplistic assumptions and characterizations about human nature and the world we live in. They like clean logic, they don't like the messy ambiguity that often characterizes life. Once they have their logical ideology in place they can be an expert on anything thereafter by plugging into the ideology and starting to talk, without the time consuming necessity of investigating facts or considering options.
Ideologues don't like moderates because moderates always seem to want to complicate their grand ideas with inquiries into whether assumptions are true.
If your only ambition in life is to be a politician its not a bad idea to latch onto an ideology. You can speak confidently and authoritatively on any subject, on a moments notice, while people actually evaluating options and facts are being silent. And a big plus is most voters don't have time to evaluate options and facts, in fact they don't even have time to listen to a long spiel about facts and options. They like a short sweet sound bite that is emotionally appealing and will often go with it.
Unfortunately, if you actually want to be a positive influence in your life, history suggests being an ideologue is probably not the way to go. In the United States the great depression of the 1930's and the great recession we are still recovering from both followed years of conservative ideology running the show. From 1921 through 1933 Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency. That didn't happen again until 2001 to 2007. Both periods were marked by unwavering belief that cutting regulation on business, cutting taxes and cutting the size and influence of Government were the key to a prosperous future. Of course what actually happened at the end of each period was the two worst economic crashes in the last 100 years.
What about the Democrats you say? Evidence suggests the ideological left wing, while it certainly exists in this country, has never come close to the kind of power the ideological right has achieved. Unlike many Western European countries we have never had anything like socialist control of any branch of government. We have had a number of periods when Democrats controlled both house of Congress and the Presidency, and those periods saw the passage of Social Security, LBJ's great society, and the creation of lots of consumer and environmental protection legislation, but the periods where Democrats have controlled all branches of Government also included the years during WW I, WW II and the Korean War where big legislative initiatives were on the back burner. For whatever reason, no pattern of disaster following Democratic control reveals itself.
I also personally believe the nature of right and left ideologies makes Democrats in the United States less extreme in their views. Republican ideas are rooted in self reliance and personal responsibility - they are focused on what is good for the individual, and heavy with overtones of "leave me alone so I can do what I want". They flow easily from the values from our pioneer heritage, so as a nation we are inclined to be sympathetic to those values. The middle of the road in the United States is actually to the right of center by the reckoning of many other countries. But the frontier is gone. Most of us can't walk out the back door and go shoot our dinner, or chop up a downed tree to keep us warm. We can't get up and move because we now have a neighbor a mile away and we want our space. We are town folk, heavily reliant upon each other. Democratic ideas are rooted in that interlinked nature of society, in the common good, in shared responsibilities and tolerance. Democrats think consensus is a value in itself. Republicans think winning is the only value. So even when Democrats are in control Republicans have more influence than when the reverse situation exists.
In a functioning modern society you need both these views. They each have strengths and weaknesses and should be complementary rather than mutually exclusive. We need the selfishness that is at the root of Republican ideology because that is what drives much of our economic development. But Republicans often regard government as at best a nuisance (excerpt when they getting subsidies) but in fact Government plays a key role in creating a society that allows our culture and economy to thrive. We need the sense of group identity, or group responsibility, that underpins most Democratic ideology.
That's this Armadillo's view.
Monday, May 30, 2011
The rewards of being "tough on crime"
For the last 35 years or so a lot of politicians have built careers on being "tough on crime". The ideas resonated so well with voters it got to the point where no politician who valued his career would question whether the tough on crime measures, which usually mean putting more people in jail for longer periods, actually reduced crime.
Academic studies have identified factors that clearly correlate with the level of crime. Most crime is committed by young men between (roughly) 15 and 25 years old. When there are more of them around, crime levels go up, when the 15 to 25 year olds are a smaller percentage of the population, crime levels go down. The better policing techniques developed in the last couple decades strongly correlate to reduced levels of crime. But to my knowledge no study has been able to conclusively show a link between incarcerating more people for longer and a long term reduction in crime levels.
"Tough on Crime" supporters argue if criminals are off the street they can't commit crime. Intuitively that seems true, but evidently for that to work you have to incarcerate every criminal for life because as law enforcement professionals and criminologists have noted for years, sending people to prison is like giving them a scholarship to crime graduate school. If those 15 to 25 year old young men aren't career criminals going in they probably will be coming out.
What is crystal clear about our decades of being tough on crime are the enormous negative consequences. Being tough on crime was politically popular nationwide (although California seems to have done it best as we incarcerate a higher percentage of our citizens than any other state). As a result the United States, the "land of the free", incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. The worst dictatorships in the world - countries like Cuba or North Korea - incarcerate a smaller percentage of their population. Countries that fill their jails with political dissedents - countries like Russia, Iran, China, or African dictatorships, all incarcerate a lower percentage of their population than we do. Advanced democracies that we think of as like us, like Canada, Japan, European countries, incarcerate about 1/3 as many people, as a percentage of population, as we do. Mexico only incarcerates about 1/3 as many of its citizens as we do, by percentage of population.
How do we explain this? Are Americans inherently more criminal? Or is our approach to crime wrong?
The "tough on crime" approach of the last 35 years has unequivocally changed the nature of our society. We were closing libraries, parks, counseling services, after school programs, and cutting funding for education as we happily threw money at building new prisons. A few years ago we reached a noteworthy milestone where we started spending more money on prisons than we spent on higher education.
If you are reading this and busy thinking of all the reasons I am wrong, please explain to me how the following statistic (which you can easily verify in a couple minutes of research) makes any sense whatsoever:
There are about 10 employees of the California Department of Corrections that were paid more than $500,000 in 2010.
Just to provide a little comparison, the President of the United States is paid $400,000 a year. The Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, the man responsible for running the largest and most respected and successful military service in world, makes around $250,000 a year.
Why do we spend more on Prisons than we do on higher education? Why do the people who run our prisons make so much money? Because the Prison Guards Union supported and contributed to "tough on crime" politicians, who in turn rewarded that support.
The legacy of the past couple decades of being "tough on crime" has been to trade hope for fear, and opportunity for punishment.
Academic studies have identified factors that clearly correlate with the level of crime. Most crime is committed by young men between (roughly) 15 and 25 years old. When there are more of them around, crime levels go up, when the 15 to 25 year olds are a smaller percentage of the population, crime levels go down. The better policing techniques developed in the last couple decades strongly correlate to reduced levels of crime. But to my knowledge no study has been able to conclusively show a link between incarcerating more people for longer and a long term reduction in crime levels.
"Tough on Crime" supporters argue if criminals are off the street they can't commit crime. Intuitively that seems true, but evidently for that to work you have to incarcerate every criminal for life because as law enforcement professionals and criminologists have noted for years, sending people to prison is like giving them a scholarship to crime graduate school. If those 15 to 25 year old young men aren't career criminals going in they probably will be coming out.
What is crystal clear about our decades of being tough on crime are the enormous negative consequences. Being tough on crime was politically popular nationwide (although California seems to have done it best as we incarcerate a higher percentage of our citizens than any other state). As a result the United States, the "land of the free", incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. The worst dictatorships in the world - countries like Cuba or North Korea - incarcerate a smaller percentage of their population. Countries that fill their jails with political dissedents - countries like Russia, Iran, China, or African dictatorships, all incarcerate a lower percentage of their population than we do. Advanced democracies that we think of as like us, like Canada, Japan, European countries, incarcerate about 1/3 as many people, as a percentage of population, as we do. Mexico only incarcerates about 1/3 as many of its citizens as we do, by percentage of population.
How do we explain this? Are Americans inherently more criminal? Or is our approach to crime wrong?
The "tough on crime" approach of the last 35 years has unequivocally changed the nature of our society. We were closing libraries, parks, counseling services, after school programs, and cutting funding for education as we happily threw money at building new prisons. A few years ago we reached a noteworthy milestone where we started spending more money on prisons than we spent on higher education.
If you are reading this and busy thinking of all the reasons I am wrong, please explain to me how the following statistic (which you can easily verify in a couple minutes of research) makes any sense whatsoever:
There are about 10 employees of the California Department of Corrections that were paid more than $500,000 in 2010.
Just to provide a little comparison, the President of the United States is paid $400,000 a year. The Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, the man responsible for running the largest and most respected and successful military service in world, makes around $250,000 a year.
Why do we spend more on Prisons than we do on higher education? Why do the people who run our prisons make so much money? Because the Prison Guards Union supported and contributed to "tough on crime" politicians, who in turn rewarded that support.
The legacy of the past couple decades of being "tough on crime" has been to trade hope for fear, and opportunity for punishment.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Gay Marriage
I see the Minnesota Legislature is considering putting a ballot measure out for voters to ban Gay Marriage.
I was for much of my life a homophobe. I didn't realize of course. It just felt perfectly normal to think gays were lesser beings - that was what I learned growing up, thats what all my friends thought, and I had no reason to rethink it. It felt right and had no impact on my life so I accepted my feelings as true.
Eventually events in my life forced me to explore my beliefs, to analyze, to understand, so they made sense with other things I had examined and knew were inherently right. It took a couple years to deconstruct my gut level prejudices. Some remnants are probably still there, and will always be there, buried in some circuitry in my brain now solidified and unchangeable through the passage of years. But I developed new circuitry to adjust my responses to fit with the other beliefs I have come to as I grow older and wiser.
Now a prejudice I struggle against is a prejudice against people who support the ban on gay marriage. I've been there, I have felt that gays are less deserving, that it was right to treat them differently than the rest of us, and felt justified, even wise in that belief. Now, since I have been through the process of examining the lack of foundation for those beliefs, I am impatient with those who aren't actively examining their beliefs.
I am particularly impatient with the people who wrap themselves in Jesus to justify their bigotry. I know what Jesus said, and their behavior is totally antithetical to what Jesus taught. They build their beliefs around the harsh, judgmental law of Leviticus, and are oblivious to the fact Jesus rejected that view of God in his teachings. They cherry pick snippets of biblical verse out of context wherever they can to support their desire to judge and punish gays, oblivious to Jesus express teachings not to judge. Not to punish. To love.
If any Christians are reading this blog and feeling unjustly treated, I ask you to contact me and tell me where you think Jesus deputized you to judge gays and then act to treat gays as second class citizens. I am pretty confident you will not be able to find any words out of Jesus's mouth remotely supportive of that view of God's instructions to us. What you will find is:
John 8:2-7 where the scribes of the temple were trying to corner Jesus into saying Leviticus was wrong, so they could charge him with heresy and lock him up. Jesus outsmarted them by pointing out why Leviticus was wrong, without actually saying Leviticus was wrong. We are all sinners, it is God's job to judge and punish sinners, not ours.
Luke 6:27-28 Jesus says love your enemies, do good for those who hate you, pray for those who curse you, implore God's blessing on those who hurt you.
Mathew 7:1 - Jesus says Judge not lest ye be judged.
Mathew 7:12 - Jesus says the Golden Rule is the law of Moses. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. If Gays were a majority in this country would you like them to ban you from being able to marry to protect and share the benefits of marriage with your partner?
The Christian opposition to gay marriage tramples on Jesus's teachings in their haste to protect their gut level prejudices and fears.
I was for much of my life a homophobe. I didn't realize of course. It just felt perfectly normal to think gays were lesser beings - that was what I learned growing up, thats what all my friends thought, and I had no reason to rethink it. It felt right and had no impact on my life so I accepted my feelings as true.
Eventually events in my life forced me to explore my beliefs, to analyze, to understand, so they made sense with other things I had examined and knew were inherently right. It took a couple years to deconstruct my gut level prejudices. Some remnants are probably still there, and will always be there, buried in some circuitry in my brain now solidified and unchangeable through the passage of years. But I developed new circuitry to adjust my responses to fit with the other beliefs I have come to as I grow older and wiser.
Now a prejudice I struggle against is a prejudice against people who support the ban on gay marriage. I've been there, I have felt that gays are less deserving, that it was right to treat them differently than the rest of us, and felt justified, even wise in that belief. Now, since I have been through the process of examining the lack of foundation for those beliefs, I am impatient with those who aren't actively examining their beliefs.
I am particularly impatient with the people who wrap themselves in Jesus to justify their bigotry. I know what Jesus said, and their behavior is totally antithetical to what Jesus taught. They build their beliefs around the harsh, judgmental law of Leviticus, and are oblivious to the fact Jesus rejected that view of God in his teachings. They cherry pick snippets of biblical verse out of context wherever they can to support their desire to judge and punish gays, oblivious to Jesus express teachings not to judge. Not to punish. To love.
If any Christians are reading this blog and feeling unjustly treated, I ask you to contact me and tell me where you think Jesus deputized you to judge gays and then act to treat gays as second class citizens. I am pretty confident you will not be able to find any words out of Jesus's mouth remotely supportive of that view of God's instructions to us. What you will find is:
John 8:2-7 where the scribes of the temple were trying to corner Jesus into saying Leviticus was wrong, so they could charge him with heresy and lock him up. Jesus outsmarted them by pointing out why Leviticus was wrong, without actually saying Leviticus was wrong. We are all sinners, it is God's job to judge and punish sinners, not ours.
Luke 6:27-28 Jesus says love your enemies, do good for those who hate you, pray for those who curse you, implore God's blessing on those who hurt you.
Mathew 7:1 - Jesus says Judge not lest ye be judged.
Mathew 7:12 - Jesus says the Golden Rule is the law of Moses. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. If Gays were a majority in this country would you like them to ban you from being able to marry to protect and share the benefits of marriage with your partner?
The Christian opposition to gay marriage tramples on Jesus's teachings in their haste to protect their gut level prejudices and fears.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Budget ironies
Budget deficits and battles over taxes and cuts to government are the norm these days. It just seems to me that Republican policies are perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Here in California the Democratic coastal areas of the State pay more taxes to the State than they receive back in benefits from the State. The inland counties that form the backbone of the Republican party receive more back from the State than they pay in taxes. So Republican areas of the State pay less taxes and get more benefits from State spending than the areas that are Democratic.
Yet for twenty years California Republicans have had no agenda other than cutting taxes and cutting Government. We are now at the point their obstinacy is probably going to result in major Government cuts.
If it wasn't for the human cost, I would enjoy the delicious irony as the Central Valley experiences the impact of the loss of that major ongoing injection of State money into their already flimsy local economies.
On the National scene the same situation is true. More tax revenues come from the Democratic leaning states, more tax money goes out to Republican leaning states. Republicans in Congress will not accept any increase in taxes.
Of course we all will be impacted eventually. Big corporations and Wall Street will do OK no matter what happens. They are busy selling stuff to the rest of the world, they don't need us anymore. But it will hit a lot of main streets hard. We pulled out of the last economic free-fall through massive government spending. Government threw money at big corporations to keep them from failing and sending us into a depression. Distasteful but reasonably effective. Now we are going to effectively remove Government from the picture with nothing in sight to replace governments economic contribution. We could be headed for a long and painful decade or so.
Here in California the Democratic coastal areas of the State pay more taxes to the State than they receive back in benefits from the State. The inland counties that form the backbone of the Republican party receive more back from the State than they pay in taxes. So Republican areas of the State pay less taxes and get more benefits from State spending than the areas that are Democratic.
Yet for twenty years California Republicans have had no agenda other than cutting taxes and cutting Government. We are now at the point their obstinacy is probably going to result in major Government cuts.
If it wasn't for the human cost, I would enjoy the delicious irony as the Central Valley experiences the impact of the loss of that major ongoing injection of State money into their already flimsy local economies.
On the National scene the same situation is true. More tax revenues come from the Democratic leaning states, more tax money goes out to Republican leaning states. Republicans in Congress will not accept any increase in taxes.
Of course we all will be impacted eventually. Big corporations and Wall Street will do OK no matter what happens. They are busy selling stuff to the rest of the world, they don't need us anymore. But it will hit a lot of main streets hard. We pulled out of the last economic free-fall through massive government spending. Government threw money at big corporations to keep them from failing and sending us into a depression. Distasteful but reasonably effective. Now we are going to effectively remove Government from the picture with nothing in sight to replace governments economic contribution. We could be headed for a long and painful decade or so.
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