Just Another Maniac Monday

Yeah, I am well aware that it is not "maniac" in the Bangles tune - it's a play on words, get it :)

So I am just trying to get back into the habit of writing something everyday, even if it is just a quick comment; otherwise I get swamped with my ideas and thoughts and get overwhelmed and never put proverbial pen to paper.

Just a quick response to Supergoober's comments on the blog on salary regulations - as I said in my response to him, I don't think that the salary caps on executive pay are what is the largest flaw in the so-called stimulus bill (the only thing it stimulates are the pundits squawking about it), but I just used it as a leaping off point into what is fundamentally flawed about use of this technique.

Of course, it is also tragically flawed because it puts the onus on the wrong people, it seeks to enhance a sense of class jealousy, and expiates the need for responsibility on the part of the irresponsible borrower and blames only the irresponsible lender (there is plenty of blame to go around on all sides; people borrowed who shouldn't have, people lent who shouldn't have, and people created unrealistic regulations and ignored the need for reform).

But I guess the bloom is off the rose for you, Supergoober, eh? I don't honestly know why you believed that Obama would cut taxes on the middle class - he has no history of doing that, so why were you expecting it? It was simply campaign rhetoric designed to pull moderate voters off of the fence (people who didn't really want to vote Republican, but who also didn't really have a reason to vote at all). Besides, "middle class" is a moniker that is ill-defined in the political realm; both sides use it to describe different things.

The really big problem with the "stimulus" package is that it is simply an over-abundance of government spending in weird and often inconsequential directions. Infrastructure expenditures do little to actually stimulate the economy (though I have actually heard Democrats argue that these things would filter through the market by people employed being able to spend more money, freeing up business capital, therefore allowing the banks to become more solvent and deal with businesses better - a remarkably Reagan-esque argument that sounds a lot like "trickle-down" economic theory) especially because there is no actual value backing up the money that is to be pushed into the economy - therefore, inflation is a real risk.

Unfortunately, when these policies don't work, it will be a regular blame-fest on Republican opposition to the bill, and how G.W. really loused up the economy and even a genius like Barrack Obama couldn't fix it.

And what about the "politics of pessimism" that Obama said that he would avoid; right now he is making the claim that the entire economy will fall apart if his bill isn't passed.

In reality, no bill is going to have an immediate effect (except perhaps indexing capital gains to inflation, and that ain't ever gonna happen, even though it should), whether from the Republicans or Democrats, and of course I believe that my solutions are more reasonable than the Dem. solutions, otherwise I wouldn't put these forth as ideas.

But all-in-all, no one can really do that much harm or good, the economy will eventually come back, unless Obama and the Dems in the legislature decide to go full-on FDR for us, then we are in for a long haul. His idea was that you should create tons of government projects and handouts and to fund these projects he increased taxes on businesses. Of course, this slowed down the economy, and we were mired in an economic slump for more than a decade. Don't get me wrong; many of the infrastructure projects were quite valuable, but the main accomplishment of FDR was extending the tendrils of federal government into many more facets of our lives, and fundamentally changing the character of the nation. Some view it as a good change, by and large, I do not - it was really just the biggest power grab in US history, and if you do not believe that it was deliberate, and if you think FDR was not power hungry, may I remind you that he was the first president to ignore the long standing two term tradition set up by George Washington (and we were not yet involved in WWII, yet, so that is not an excuse - that was the excuse for his 4th term). People recognized this later, and set up the 22nd ammendment to cap the presidency at two terms. Do you really think that FDR wouldn't have run for a 5th term if he had survived?

Maybe I'm excessively cynical, but I am almost certain he would have. And it takes a certain kind of unbridled arrogance and egotism to even do what he did - bucking 150+ years of tradition. Not that tradition is always right, but there is something to be said for men being able to step down from authority and not do a blatant power grab.