[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Re: Krugman on the economy

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, someone wrote:

> The Republicans are quite proud of their penchant for keeping government 
> expenditures low--well, low on things for the ordinary people, i.e., as 
> opposed to oil companies, etc.
>
> "Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy."

As in, we must pay to educate all of our citizens so that we have a strong 
workforce in our high-tech world.  Even the most selfish person can see 
the value in that argument.  But education is a dangerous thing, as Karl 
Rove has pointed out:

   "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they
    have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be
    too much of a good thing."

So the Republican goal has to be to promote certain kinds of education 
that improve worker quality without promoting liberal ideals.  It seems to 
be doable.  The strategy should be to control exposure to ideas by pushing 
mass media to promote a certain view of life and to simultaneously crush 
the proponents of alternative ways of thinking (e.g., humanities 
professors):

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/will-the-humanities-save-us/

Regarding "expense and true economy," I love the line Barney Frank 
attributed to "an old Boston politician" in an interview on PBS Newshour:

   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/frank_09-03.html

   PAUL SOLMAN: Of course, national health insurance will cost money,
   raising the old charge: tax-and-spend Democrats. But, Frank counters,
   when you don't spend, you get tragedies like the Minneapolis bridge;
   laid-off workers with a bleak future; rotten housing for the poor, the
   issue Frank has pushed hardest of all to correct. People want specific
   government programs, he says. They just don't want to pay for
   them. It's a lesson he learned in his youth when talking to an old
   Boston pol.

   REP. BARNEY FRANK: And I was complaining about people who wanted the
   mayor of Boston to build them a swimming pool and, once he decided to
   build a swimming pool, began to complain about the noise and the dirt
   that was coming from the fact that we were building a swimming
   pool. And I said, "Boy, people are so inconsistent." And he leaned over
   and patted me on the knee and he said, "Hey, kid, ain't you heard the
   news? Everybody wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to die." And I'm
   afraid, you know, people want the public services, but we can't have
   the public services without some level of taxation.


> The quote is from Edmund Burke, who, arguably, was smarter than at least 
> half of our legislators, governors, presidents, vice-presidents, and 
> high-level government administrators today. They ought to give Burke's 
> view careful consideration during the deliberations that lead them to 
> conclude that any government expenditure (except for war, graft, and 
> corruption) is damnable.

One expenditure a politician of any stripe will almost always be behind: 
Buying more votes for himself.  That means feeding his state at the 
federal trough -- bringing government contracts to companies in his state. 
This is a hard problem to solve.  It's another "Tragedy of the Commons" 
problem:

http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/journals/science/19681213_Hardin_Tragedy_of_Commons.pdf

If we had 50 states of equal size contributing equally to federal coffers, 
then every state will have paid 2% of the total federal budget.  If a 
state takes, say, $1 million from the federal government, they paid for 
only 1/50th of that themselves, or $20,000.  States then have no reason to 
want to reduce spending of federal dollars because only 2% of their 
federal spending is funded by their own tax revenues.  In other words, 
when a state spends federal money, the state receives a 98% discount.  To 
get "98% off" is an irresistable sale price and no one will want forgo 
such a great opportunity, not even a strong opponent of "tax-and-spend 
liberalism."  Of course the reality is that states do not contribute 
equally to federal coffers:  In fact, the "blue states" are giving while 
"red states" are receiving.  This is probably justifiable because of 
national security, or something, I guess (it really might be because there 
is much more land per person and more military bases in "red states," but 
I'm not sure).


> In trying to type "corruption," I twice made the typo "curruption." I 
> think that is a neat neologism. Fits lots of crooks.

It's the new corruption!

Mike

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