To love is to stop comparing.
Bernard Grasset
The Dirty Deed Is Done:
Not 30 Pieces of Silver
$4T in Fiat Currency
There was never a doubt in my mind yesterday when the Senate overwhelmingly passed the unholy bargain between Biden and McConnell with nearly 90 votes. Speaker Boehner had already committed to bringing the measure up to a vote. The House GOP was boxed in; it would be scapegoated for rejecting a bipartisan deal; and it was more of a take-it-or-leave-it. The only question was whether Boehner would get enough support to pass it with Dem support. (The House Dems knew the best they could hope for was the original Senate bill. I saw one report that Boehner had 100 votes behind him, although Majority Leader Cantor made it clear he opposed the bill.) The final vote was 257-167.
I would have voted 'no' just as I pleaded in yesterday's post. I am pragmatic, but I thought the deal was too one-sided with McConnell mostly playing defense on tax policy: according to CBO, only about $15B in cuts and over $600B in new taxes. I don't buy the tax hikes would have triggered a recession--or the sequestration in the context of a $15T economy. But maybe more middle class voters would be vested.
I'm not sure where the new Congress goes from here, but I think we'll soon see another credit downgrade. Boehner might look at resurrecting Simpson-Bowles.
Social Security Disability Fraud
Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has this observation:
The disabled are part of the far larger number of Americans who have left the labor force altogether since the recession, and who don’t seem to be coming back. About 88.9 million people in the U.S. are now out of the labor force, 2.4 million more than a year ago and 11.4 million more than in 2006. Thirty years ago, there was a 40-to-1 ratio between the total labor force and those workers receiving Social Security disability payments. Today that ratio is less than 18-to-1.An Important George Will Speech
Peggy Noonan calls George Will's speech last month at Washington University one of the most important of this young century. Will mentions his paternal grandfather was a cleric but he himself is not the member of any organized faith. Nevertheless, he sees value in America's religious heritage (and seems to believe Europe's funk is correlated with declining influence of religious institutions there). In particular, he contrasts two different Presidents--Madison, a skeptic regarding majoritarian influence. and Wilson, a firm believer in the expanded role of (progressive) government.
Social Justice and Libertarians: A Basic Discussion
The professor here is from the University of San Diego; I actually went on a campus visit (expenses-paid job interview) there in the early 1990's. One of my best friends from UH is on faculty there. When I initially was inspired to get my doctorate, I was in a Catholic university (OLL). When I graduated from UH, I loved doing research; I wanted the opportunity to teach graduate classes and do research. Only UWM gave me that opportunity, and when I was threatened over tenure my first semester (and found myself in hell at UTEP 3 years later), l longed to go to small university; USD was the first of 3 Catholic universities to interview me (also Providence College and a Chicago area college), none of which made an offer.
The professor here does a good job framing the issue. He doesn't specifically address, say, Obama's pathetic attempt to contrast megalomaniac economic fascism with "social darwinism"; in fact. libertarians see a fundamental injustice in morally hazardous policies... We need to discuss opportunity costs of well-intended counterproductive public policy, like the minimum wage.
Musical Interlude: Christmas Retrospective
Dan Fogelberg, Same Old Lang Syne. This marks the end of my holiday series. I'll resume my Carpenters' retrospective in tomorrow's post.
