Who will take on Obama in 2012?

Sadly, cartoonists don't usually study economics. People really need to understand that we don't have generally have an adversarial relationship with the wealthy. And when it comes to economic growth and jobs, it's the exact opposite. And it's a real pity that class warfare passes for political discourse.

By the by, I explained some of the basic thinking behind the idea that lowering taxes on the wealthy (or, to be accurate, not raising them on the wealthy) affects all of us earlier in this thread. It's pretty straightforward stuff, too.

Uh-huh. "Personal ties." We saw how well that worked with William Ayers. Right or wrong (and I tend to think it's wrong), people have often shown that they're not willing to sink a candidate for being in the general vicinity as extreme people. If they didn't have a problem with a fundraiser at a domestic terrorists' house AND attending a church with a bigoted preacher, I see little reason to think this stuff will find any more purchase.

I see no reason to believe Perry's candidacy is irrevocably doomed unless you, ya' know, want it to be. Maybe he'll be fine, maybe he won't. He's never been on this kind of stage before. But this is incredibly selective reasoning.

rotflmao

Here's another political cartoon I just wrote. Enjoy:

An elephant, a donkey, and a monkey are mountain climbing. At one point, the elephant and the donkey are both already at the top of a ledge while the monkey is still climbing. It takes the combined strength of both the elephant and the donkey to support the weight of the monkey with rope. If either let go, the monkey will fall to its death.

Just as the donkey is ready to start lifting the monkey again, the elephant says that it will let go of the rope until the donkey agrees to fork over its lunch. At first the donkey takes the elephant's claim to be a foul joke. The donkey simply cannot believe that the elephant would be willing to sacrifice the monkey for an extra helping of peanut butter! Still, the elephant does not relent. Its face remains deadly serious.

Now horrified, the donkey agrees, not wanting to see the monkey fall. Emboldened, the elephant next forces the donkey to agree to prepare his lunch for the following ten years. As unreasonable as the claim is, the donkey has no choice but to agree once again. Overjoyed by this turn of events, the elephant lets out a deep laugh and accidentally lets the rope slip a few inches. This jars the balanced position of the monkey and it slams his shoulder against the side of the mountain, scraping it badly and causing it much pain.

The elephant regains its grip again and starts pulling the monkey up with even greater strength than it was before, empowered by knowing that it will have a decade-long free lunch. The donkey, still disturbed and disoriented by the situation, pulls a bit lighter than normal, its strength sapped by the chaos of the last few minutes. Somehow the donkey knows that the elephant will pull the monkey all the way this time. The donkey is glad to see its friend the monkey safe again, although it had been injured in the process. The donkey will never look at the elephant quite the same again.

Later, all three have their climbing permits revoked.

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

A more accurate, comprehensive analogy would have the donkey first throwing the monkey over the side of the cliff after having done so many times in the past, and the elephant wanting assurances that it won't happen again if it helps pull him back up.

Ignoring how we got into this situation in the first place (or else pretending debt is harmless) seems to be the one thing all the condemnations of Republicans in this debate have in common.

I also find it amusing that, in the analogy, the elephant is the one getting a "free lunch," when in reality they're the ones who want to cut spending.

What you need to understand actually is that economics is currently broken down into two broad schools who are very much at odds with each other about this very topic of which classical is only half. Perhaps the problem is that you don't actually consider the school opposing yours a school at all but just nonsense, lies, obfuscation, and stupidity and therefore not economics at all.

Why don't you say "(neo)classical economics" instead of just "economics"? Why do you try and make it sound as if this half of economic thought is the only legitimate kind of economic thought? The debate lays not between "knowing economics" and "not knowing economics" as you so often put it, but rather between Keynesian vs. Classical/Chicago.

This was entirely addressed at your astounding claim that, simply because of the results final vote, the tea party is somehow completely absolved from their unethical (dare I say, fanatical) tactics and motives. For a Christian you are oddly extremely utilitarian/consequentialist. As if the vote would've even approached the date of the deadline if they had not been involved...

Well, firstly, I was responding to a cartoon there. While it's entirely possible the cartoonist is knowledgeable about economics and simply has a different view, I think it more likely that he's just reflecting a basic, unquestioned assumption. Perhaps the medium is obscuring the cartoonists' education, but even so, it's fair game when it presents such a simplistic argument. Actually, scratch that, it's not even an argument.

Second, sure, I think "neo-classical economics" is superior. I don't think Keynesianism really has answers for it, I think it's sold under multiple false pretenses, I don't think it explains or accounts for basic human motivation, and I think it thrives because of perverse political incentives, not because of merit. Absolutely.

But, to actually answer your main question: why do I just say "economics"? Because when I do I'm almost invariably arguing with someone or something who is not presenting a serious, nuanced economic argument. I almost always say it when I'm responding to something simplistic. I almost always say it when someone who has made no attempt to understand economics is nevertheless issuing some opinion on it.

I don't say it to people (or to cartoons) that I just disagree with it. I say it to people and things that show a complete lack of interest in even addressing the arguments between the two schools of thought you mention. Which is pretty much most people who have opinions about economics.

I have news for you. I could easily use some vulgarized Keynesian postulates to justify everything presented in that cartoon and simply call it "economics" as if it were the only thought out there. I could say something like, "Just tax and spend! It's obvious. It's basic economics for crying out loud."

The confrontation between the two schools is much more primordial. You don't just go around calling either side "fallacious" and, I dunno, seeing which fallacy is bigger. No, you address the critical point of rupture when the two schools split from each other (or at least a new school was formed).

This critical point is, of course, the Great Depression which motivated almost all of Keynes' notions. Without this rupture, then no, liberals would have no economic basis on which to argue their proposals; only ethical ones.

All I want to say here is that, unfortunately for you, liberals are not just bleeding hearts. They also have some firm economic theory behind their claims, and you shouldn't ever dismiss that theory as "not economics", because it should always be the point of confrontation.

TL ; DR: the problem is not one of ignorance. It is a true theoretical antinomy.

My "astounding" claim was simply in response to the claims of Will (and various pundits) that the Tea Party were rabid ideologues who were willing to drive the whole thing off a cliff rather than raise the debt ceiling. Since they didn't get everything they wanted, and yet still voted for the increase, this means that these people were excruciatingly wrong. They came in with the assumption that people they disagreed with must be extremists, saw everything in that light, and completely misjudged the situation.

You're talking as if this alleged "fanaticism" was a thing that exists independent of the final vote. It doesn't: the claim of "fanaticism" was about what they would do when we were up against the debt ceiling. So unless you want to defend the idea that merely asking and arguing for things in a a political negotiation is "fanatical," then the claim is bunk. If political posturing is fanaticism, we've got one hella fanatical government.

By the way, this is all assuming they we had to raise the debt ceiling. It's a pretty telling assumption that most people criticizing Republicans seemed to not even consider the alternatives (IE: more spending cuts). They just take it for granted that it's got to go up. That's part of the problem, and one of the reasons people are so upset about this: we're stuck in a political culture that isn't even really questioning, until now, whether or not we should raise the debt ceiling. And people are being called "fanatical" and "terrorists" for even suggesting that we should cut spending instead...even when they vote for it anyway! That's insane. Look at the invective Tea Partiers had to endure just to create the mere beginnings of a debate about long-term debt. Just to get the question out there.

Anyway, none of this really changes my augmentation of the analogy, in which you act as if the monkey (debt) is just this accident that nobody can be blamed for (not true), and in which we completely exclude the fact that this keeps on happening, and the dispute is about whether or not we make sure it stops happening. Both are crucial points of context. Behavior that may seem extreme in a vacuum looks much less so when it's done to stop something else extreme from happening again, and again, and again, and again...

We were up against the ceiling already when the first vote was proposed. There's a reason it was scheduled then and not on April 1st.

Asking is one thing. Arguing is another thing. Using a debt ceiling as a threat is yet another. This is crucial point of my cartoon. The Republicans threatened the Democrats and the American people (this, not debt, is the monkey). They held an economic gun to all of our heads. Whether or not that gun was loaded doesn't change the trauma of that kind of tactic. A bluff is a bluff regardless of whether or not it works. It forces the opponent into the same kind of ethical deadlock as in a "real" situation.

Don't even get me started about a culture that doesn't question. Why don't you ever question the logic of global capital?

This is yet another accusation of ignorance in place of an actual argument. (It's like how New Atheists simply think that all religious people are uneducated and deluded; no, there is an actual confrontation to be had there). The first thing I asked myself was what would happen if the debt ceiling didn't go up. Perhaps nothing in economics is certain, but the fact is that default would've definitely hurt the economy in some way (when does any sort of default not hurt the economy?), and that is simply unacceptable in a time of recession if it is fully preventable (i.e. if the elephant simply has to tug on the rope). Do not make it sound like rufnek made it sound as if the rope itself was fraying. It wasn't. The rope is a linguistic rope. State power is invested in declarative language.

So if you have that immeasurable power and you refuse to use it to prevent suffering, what does that make you? That's why the move was "not questioned" even though everyone questioned it when first trying to understand its extent.

Except that its not about imposing your (don't forget that this in itself is a point of contention) rigid ideology at gunpoint. Its about everyone having a voice and the resonance of unanimity in that polyphony of voice. You don't go about things through threats. Only fanatics feel they can do that because they are, well, fanatical about their views: they are so absolutely certain that they are correct, they don't care about other voices and will simply use violence to carry out their agenda because they are so obviously and undeniably correct in every way. The easiest way to spot a fanatic is how they not above using violence, whether that violence be physical or political.

Except that you wouldn't, because you know that our disagreements lie a level or two deeper than that. You have some idea of what the points of contention are, which is precisely why you don't say things like that.

When someone makes some broad, sweeping claim about a complicated subject, but which is very easily refuted, they are signaling that they don't really care about the subject. If they did, they'd already know the obvious response and they wouldn't lead with some bumper-sticker argument like "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer," or take some clumsy swipe at rich people. When I say something about "basic economics" in response, it's basically a friendlier version of "RTFM." In other words: hey, people are trying to have serious discussions, and you can't expect me to run through the first dozen rounds of back-and-forth just because you parroted some talking point. If you genuinely wanted the truth, or an honest discussion, you wouldn't have led with that, because you'd have been curious enough to explore opposing viewpoints and you'd already know why that statement doesn't cut it.

That's what I'm saying. It's an indication of my unwillingness to treat careless claims and simplistic arguments as if they were serious and nuanced. Even so, I still usually end up running through the basic reasons I disagree. And 9 times out of 10 I never get another reply, because they weren't really interested in the truth to begin with. They just wanted to take a free jab without making any genuine effort to understand things. I make no apologies for being somewhat annoyed with that.

Anyway, all that said, you know plenty well I'm up for a thorough discussion on Keynesianism. I'm just not up for trying to knock down a bunch of offhand remarks by people who I know might not even read my reply, much less reply to it, much less give it any real consideration. If they were willing to do those things, they would have made a different argument to start.

I'm not sure I understand the point; they were called fanatics the whole time. Pretty much as soon as they started questioning whether or not we should vote for an increase and rejected the notion of tax increases.

I can barely even argue with such loaded (heh, get it?) analogies, because every single one of them assumes a benign situation where the Republicans swoop in and create some crisis, or are indifferent to some crisis, when in reality you have to at least acknowledge the basic premise of their position, which is: we can't keep doing this. Our credit rating is going to go down. We're spending too much, and there's no point of having debt ceilings if we just raise them automatically.

Any analogy that does not account for this position somehow is a context-less caricature and should not require a response.

I do. And I like it. Not that finding something which other people do not question somehow changes my point that nobody's even really begun questioning the point of having debt ceilings at all. If you want to make the case that everyone has blind spots, my response is: yes, absolutely. And one of them is this debt debate, where a few dozen Congresspeople endured absurd amounts of ridicule just to create the conditions for this debate to begin. That's depressing.

You have a leap of logic in here. You go directly from "the debt ceiling doesn't go up" to "we default." In reality, there are things in-between. The debt ceiling not being raised simply forces government to decide which things to pay out and when, and see what it can cut or sell to avoid default.

And if you have immeasurable power over the problems the next generation will face, and you make little effort to lessen their plight, what does that make you?

You're making this debate sound far, far simpler than it actually is.

And there's the crux on which the fallacy rests: the idea that a negotiating position is akin to a "threat" or even "violence." As if it's somehow not a threat when Democrats say any compromise package must include tax increases. And in support of which Obama even told Cantor "don't call my bluff."

They were negotiating. Saying you will not agree to X is not a "threat" or a form of "violence." It's a political position. It is no more a threat than saying we HAVE to increase taxes, or to simply refuse to cut spending sufficiently to avoid hitting the current debt ceiling. It's no more a threat than Obama literally threatening to veto certain things if the House passes them. These sorts of claims simply start from the position that things are humming along just fine and Republicans are throwing up roadblocks. That simply isn't true. There is no intellectually honest and consistent way to act as if Republicans are engaging in threats and Democrats are not, unless you believe that we can spend whatever we want without consequence AND that we should raise the debt ceiling without consequence or concession.

Just thought of a very good, succinct way of explaining the chasm between us on Tea Partiers and their "threats":

The difference comes from assuming that Democratic actions on spending were not a provocation.

That's pretty much the whole thing. If you think that authorizing all this spending was a mostly benign act, then naturally you would be flabbergasted at how Tea Partiers could negotiate the way they did to try to stop it (though I don't think they've really succeeded). If you recognize that racking up debt is a deliberate action that invites response and rebuttal, both rhetorically and legislatively, and which itself constitutes a threat to our economy, then their position suddenly looks (gasp!) reasonable.

Except that the government making cuts also leads to suffering in the here and now, so not only do you have a damaged economy, you also have invalidated government functions. At what point is this kind of thing supposed to help people again? Oh yeah... some point in the future when the market finally recovers itself and everyone who lost crucial years of their life will forget about those years.

Um... a conservative.

Conservatives want to destroy state power, no? They believe in a power of a different sort. Dare I say, a higher power? But, of course, this is where the confrontation lays.

It'd be cool if you used the word "fallacy" less, since none of us have said anything even remotely specific enough to actually create a situation applicable to classical logical analysis. The same applies to Hazlitt's rather free use of the word in his book.

Nope.

There were two debates going on here. Spending cuts and the debt ceiling. As I tried arguing before, the two are not as directly related as you might think. The distinction lays in the abstraction of capital versus the concretion of human life. Spending cuts have immediate costs to actual people. Raising the debt ceiling has virtual costs like, well, more "negative money" and our credit rating being demoted.

An easy way to avoid the debt ceiling would be to cut medicare completely. Just cut it. Bam. Easy, right? Not really if you believe in any kind of ethical injunction.

What the Republicans were doing was using the debt ceiling as a way to leverage for spending cuts. And, as the cartoon says, why are cuts the only third way? Why not raise taxes? My God, a direct inflow of revenue? Who would've thought that could ever work as opposed to the Laffer Curve? But, of course, as we both know, either option have immediately consequences on the people. Maybe it is my own prejudice that I don't care about rich people (as well as the simple fact that rich people are so excessively rich nowadays that taxes simply do not matter in the slightest to their well-being, whereas the government employees who would be laid off or the people dependent on medicare would certainly have their livelihoods disrupted greatly), but sure, I can admit that taxes do have some toll on the economy. We'll have to talk later about how much.

Still, you see how there is a clear separation between spending cuts (or tax hikes) and simply raising the debt ceiling, and how doing or not doing the latter remains entirely separate from the former.

This separation, this "using A to force B" is a threat at its purest, and force is the essence of all violence (inb4 moisture is the essence of wetness).

Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. This is fully and completely within his institutional powers.

Now, you might argue that it is fully and completely within the institutional powers of Congress to use a threat, but this is precisely what I am arguing: the illegitimacy of that sort of tactic.

For, if Congress is supposed to represent what the people believe in, then each vote should be the expression of a filtered voice. How is it then that the Republicans apparently did want to raise the debt ceiling but didn't vote for it right away? I'll tell you how: because they saw the vote's potentiality as a weapon. But why then, you might ask, is this different than, say, a filibuster? It is because of the nature of the force, isn't it? The fact that they literally threatened the American economy (and let's be honest, the global economy by extension) in order to achieve victory on a separate issue is what makes their tactic wrong.

They knew that the debt ceiling had to be raised just as the elephant knew he couldn't kill the monkey, but its that dark of moment when the donkey looks into the face of the elephant that attests to the horror of the situation.

Let's face it, we have no real democracy. Congress is as close to being the people as we can get. And yet the Republicans actually used the livelihood of the people themselves as a bargaining chip! Incidentally, this is what Deleuze means by the autonomy of the Simulacra: fully freed from any relation to its model or referent. This is politics and the state at its worst (no connection whatsoever to the people).

I agree with the idea that things are not humming along, but the tactics are what I'm objecting against and they are much, much more violent than roadblocks (which would be more like a filibuster). They actually threaten destruction.

Just because I (and apparently everyone else including the Republicans) believe we definitely should have raised the debt ceiling does not mean that anyone liked doing it. Still, that does not change that it had to be done.

What you fundamentally fail to understand is the concept of ethical duty, or even more basic, the duty of a representation to the represented (which is actually free from ethics). When the representation actually uses the represented as a tool for its own ends, that fundamental relation is breached. The name of that fundamental relation is none other than democracy itself.

You don't think the Democrats can't count? If the Republicans were mainly opposed Pelosi would have fought for it (she did vote for it) and it would have passed with more Democrat support. Boehner was using arm twisting techniques to ge the vote through. She wsn't.

They were certainly acting they were willing to destroy the nation's finances until the eleventh hour. The way they emascuated Boehner on his plan makes no rational sense. In the end some of them backed down, after it was clear they would get the blame if it failed because the compromise was going to pass the Senate with bipartisan support.

When you say a larger percentge, you are talking about three votes, not statistically impressive, and this was a deal Pelosi and House Dems were not directly involved in, it was mainly Reid, McConnell. and Boehner. She was pissed she was being ignored.

__________________
It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

1) Some government functions should be invalidated.

2) It does not necessarily invalidate something to spend less on it. The fact that the government should do this or that in no way justifies ANY level of spending on it.

That second point has much larger implications, because when someone uses political rhetoric to suggest that a program is helping people (and not mentioning the unseen ways in which it's hurting others), the logical implication of that rhetoric suggests that even more would be even better, and on and on, to the point at which any cuts to any program are seen as heartless and cruel, regardless of how bloated and absurd it may have become.

Yeah, those people won't be us, they'll be all older versions of us! Ha ha, screw those guys!

I really shouldn't even have to explain why the quote above is all kooky. Putting our future selves or our kids in a serious financial bind because of a lack of self-control is not some different kind of suffering, or some lesser kind of suffering. It's just suffering later. If you understand why it's bad to obtain comfort now by putting yourself into horrendous debt, then you understand why this argument is specious.

I also think your implication that the benefits are going to be this long-gestating, delayed thing is wrong, as well, but the argument shouldn't even get that far.

Huh? I dunno if this is a joke or if you really didn't get what I was saying.

I probably use it a little loosely, I admit, but I'm not sure it's out of place here. It refers to fundamentally unsound arguments, and I regard equating political negotiation with physical force, or regarding the response to the debt but not its initial accumulation to be an act of aggression, to both be unsound premises from which to argue.

If you're implying that the "costs" of debt have no actual, real-world effect, I replied to that a few pages ago. It is most definitely not true.

There is a tiny argument to be made about the certainty of a problem we face now versus the speculative one we may face later, but at most it would be an argument to just bend the curve a little towards the present, and even then only in some instances. It still would not be a license to disregard future effects as fundamentally different, and I think even the slight bending would probably be based on an illusion.

The Laffer Curve doesn't say you can't raise revenue by raising taxes. It says that the returns are diminishing and, at a certain point, even inverse.

Why not raise taxes? Because we're in a friggin' recession (not afficially, but you know...) and the President keeps insisting that his first priority is jobs, so it'd be blatantly contradictory of him to do that. And because a lot of people feel the problem is not a lack of revenue, but an excess of spending. The argument is not that raising taxes can't stave off default. Of course it can. The argument is that it's not the best way to do it because it will cause significant, counterproductive harm to the economy we're supposed to be "saving."

You don't have to care about rich people. You just have to care about what happens to business, investment, and ordinary people when you tax them more.

I can't imagine how. There cannot be a "clear separation" between spending cuts and raising the debt ceiling when sufficient cuts make a debt ceiling raise unnecessary. That's like saying there's a clear separation between the direction you're facing and whether or not you fly off the road. Change direction, you don't fly off a cliff. Stop spending so much, you don't hit the debt ceiling.

Aye, the argument that they are also fully within their powers to "threaten" to do something is quite sufficient. But it's even stronger than that, because they're not even threatening to do something: they're just refusing to. I'm defending their right to be passive and force the government to work within the limits its set for itself.

But whether you regard it as active, passive, or whatever, Congress saying it will not vote for something is well within its rights, is a reasonable posture to adopt if it finds it necessary, and is IDENTICAL to Obama saying he won't sign something. Both attempt to modify proposed legislation by threatening not to support it.

Lemme stop you right there. I do not expect leaders to merely act as a mouthpiece for the people. I expect them to listen to the people, but also to do what they think is right. We do not elect leaders for the mere pragmatic convenience of being able to accomplish things without holding constant nationwide referendums. We also elect them because, if we are sensible enough to elect leaders wiser and braver than many of us, they will occasionally do the things that are necessary, but not always popular. The fact that the public often wants contradictory things (like less spending and more benefits) highlights the necessity of this. The public can be fickle, and our government is constructed in such a way as to reflect them while simultaneously creating some stability. That's why we have varying term limits for the House, Senate, and White House, and why we stagger Senate elections and the like. Governing only via polls would not be a good idea, even if we merely assumed that polling were an exact science to begin with.

I don't think they wanted to raise the debt ceiling. I just think they were willing to do it if they absolutely had to. Which shows that all the talk of them as being completely rigid idealogues was flat. Out. Wrong.

Anyway, I have two problems with this. The first I've already mentioned:

1) It's not a separate issue. Spending is not separate from debt.

2) You talk about this as if it's not the basic mechanism by which people negotiate laws. Like saying you won't vote for something is this obscure, unconscionable maneuver, rather than a fundamental part of bargaining in all things, regardless of the stakes.

The best way to expose the problems with this are to simply consider its alternatives. Should people NEVER be permitted to take a firm stance in these negotiations? If so, then there's no incentive to cut spending or react to the hitting of the ceiling in any way, because everyone will know that everyone's going to vote for it. It just becomes this thing that is automatically raised no matter the consequences because, according to you, it would be responsible to even suggest that you might not vote for it. That's the implication of your criticism.

There's no way to have a government at all without people negotiating and bargaining with life-alterting policies. Even completely altruistic ones, which will inevitable go to support research in one area than another. People will live or die based no government policies no matter what. So unless you think Congress should never negotiate or bargain amongst its various beliefs and elements (which is basically saying government should not exist), nothing here requires explanation.

Again you fail to even acknowledge the opposing position, which is that rampant spending is what threatens us with destructions, and the debt ceiling is a necessary checkpoint that can (and should) be used to reign this sort of thing in. And there is no way to do so without invoking the threat of actually enforcing the limit.

I don't see how someone can make an argument against the Tea Party's negotiatory postures by just repeating over and over again that the debt ceiling has to be raised, without considering the events they are responding to, and trying to prevent a recurrence of.

Or we could've cut a lot more spending. Or not spent it to begin with.

I don't think so. I think my disagreement stems from several beliefs that you do not seem to share:

1) Suffering is not less important just because it's unseen or will come later.

2) Racking up debt is an inherently provocative and threatening action.

3) There is no way to have a debt ceiling with any purpose if one cannot bargain for concessions before raising it, and that can't happen unless the possibility of actually enforcing the limit is available.

I'm afraid I can't argue with parallel universe hypotheticals. They didn't vote for it, Will. You can't rant for weeks about how incredibly important it is and how deeply irresponsible voting against it is and then toss out some casual explanation as to why they might have voted against it. If the ceiling had passed, but the Tea Party caucus had largely voted against it, there is absolutely zero chance you would accept this argument from me.

The fact that you're parsing percentages is kind of hilarious. I don't care if it's barely more, exactly as much, or even slightly less. The fact that it's even close (let alone higher) is the point, because one side you've supported throughout this entire debate, and the other you called "terrorists." The fact that they're even in the same statistial universe is all that's needed to point out how crazy that was.

Ah. So, voting against the Most Improtant Bill Ever because you're pissed at being ignored = harmless. Voting against it because you're pissed that we're spending trillions of dollars we do't have = you're a terrorist. Got it.

Just how different would reality have to be from something you say for you to come in here and say "whoops, my bad, I was wrong"? If it's not even possible, let me know, so I'll stop expecting it and being disappointed.

Obama disassociated himself from his church. And Ayers was such a remote connection to be laughable and was in the past. What does Perry do just before he announces he is running for the presidency? He organizes an event with these extremists! This is Perry's problem. He apparently thinks he can get the Republican nomination the way he won elections in Texas. He can't. He can be conservative, very conservative. but he can't openly embrace the extreme fringe nut job right, which works in Texas and parts of the South, and win the nomination. The only way a Southern politician can become President is by by being "new South" in style like Carter, Clinton, and Bush, not be evoking George Wallace and Lester Maddox. The only Republican candidate that campaigned from the hard right and won was Ronald Reagan and he was still to the left of Rick Perry. Reagan didn't associate with the John Birch Society. He didn't repeat Barry Goldwater's mistakes. The religious right are not as popular as they once were and have become a problem even among Republicans. Even Michelle Bachmann emphasizes her fiscal credentials and deemphasizes her evangelical ties. What does Perry do? Holds an old time revival prayer sounding like Elmer Gentry that excluded non Christians. His phony prayer was obviously a thinly disguised plea for his own candidacy to save the country from Obama. And his pipeline to God doesn't seem to be very effective. Earlier this year he prayed for rain and the predictions are now the Texas drought could go on for another two years. A sign from the heavens God doesn't listen to and disapproves of Rick Perry? Now it is clear that Rick Perry is going to run like Rick Perry there is no way he can win in primaries in the big Northern states including New York, California, Ohio, and, yes, Pennsylvania. He may win Iowa, but will be a big bust in New Hampshire, may get some traction in parts of the South, and then he will flame out. He didn't have to change who he is and what he stands for, but he had to understand Texas political strategy doesn't work outside of the deep south and clearly he doesn't. If the Republicans are so stupid to nominate Perry the negative campaign against him will be tremendous. But Republicans will vote for Romney. They have no choice now.

We'll talk.

Sure, it might. Whatever. I don't want it. I would rather just spend and worry about that later, yahmeen?

Still, you make it sound like raising taxes is a much, much worse idea that cutting spending. But what about the people the government employs? Are they somehow not part of the economy? Furthermore, what about the people who actually need government programs? Not only is it ethically wrong to let them suffer when we have the power to prevent it, it is also detrimental to the economy, since their purchasing power is only increased when part of their expenses are subsidized by the government.

Either way we have flows being redirected from one place to another. You can't escape that. Capital always has to come from somewhere (unless the state creates it). Just because the movement is termed a "cut" does not mean you are somehow avoiding a redirection of money away from group A and toward group B.

We'll talk.

Let me explain this again fully.

Our debt is theoretically infinite (the predictably minimal impact of S&P's demotion makes this even more clear). Essentially each dollar from spending contributes to the debt. The only thing that makes the unsustainable is the debt ceiling. One can imagine a situation where the debt ceiling always follows ahead of the debt (as it has been doing), rendering itself functionally invisible, therefore extending the ceiling to infinity. In other words, the debt ceiling is modulated in such a way as to render debt infinite.

The choice is not between increasing the debt or shrinking it. The choice is between rendering debt finite or allowing it to remain infinite, acknowledging that the former choice is default and that the latter is business as usual. No matter how many spending cuts you make, we will always be in the same position in relation to the debt ceiling, which bears the modifiable character always giving debt its infinite potential. In other words, just because we've made some cuts doesn't mean that the debt is in any "better" of a relation with the debt ceiling, because the ceiling will always be raised ahead of default.

We'll talk.