A Speculative Fiction

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Last post then off to school...

People keep asking me where I've learned what I've learned. I don't tend to think I'm that knowledgeable yet... at least I'm nowhere near what I'm capable of and where I should be. Lack of discipline, family, and political obligations keep me too busy to do the intellectual leg work I'd like to do.

But if you like what I have to say I can give you a few recommendations
1. Read often and broadly

2. Read quality blogs (where I've gotten all of my economics for the most part)

3. Read different newspapers from different political perspectives. Most importantly the New York Times since it sets the national media agenda and is the newspaper for movers and shakers in the world. You want to know what they are reading and thinking. Secondly the wall-street journal. I'm sorry to see the decline since Murdock... and they've had some loses because of it. But the WSJ is a great news source. The opinion page is a joke... but the news is par excellance--the reason being if you are going to make good financial decisions you need to know whats actually going on with as little spin as possible. Also Financial Times is a good read as well... NPR in the mornings... when I do watch the news on tv its Jim Leher on PBS. And online news I get at Democracy Now probably THE BEST news source out there. But its so reality based that it sounds as if a news report from mars...

4. COntact people you come across authors, teachers, and other nonprofessional intellectuals you might come across. Stay networked.. ask questions

5. The back of the book... where are the sources and citations go... thats where you learn to leap from...

thats about it. A little tip from me to you. Please feel free to throw out your own in the comments page.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

trade deficit

Econobrowser asks:

Why is the trade deficit, even taking out oil, so large when the dollar is so weak? Maybe some insights can be gleaned from productivity measures.

I like this train of thought he gives...

One possibility is that exactly because productivity growth in the US is very rapid, future prospects for America's wealth (in the form of the present value of future net output) are very bright, and hence we should dis-save now, in order to smooth consumption

contending conservatives for a very good reason indeed--the economy.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Krugman on new census numbers...

About that Bush Boom …

The 2007 income, poverty and health insurance numbers are out. As far as I can tell on a first read, there’s nothing deeply surprising. Still, they represent a landmark — and not in a good way.

The key point is that 2007 was the end of an economic expansion — whether or not the NBER declares a recession, the employment situation, which is what matters to most people, has deteriorated sharply this year. So 2007 was as good as it got in this cycle. Yet median household income was lower than in 2000, while both the poverty rate and the percentage of Americans without health insurance were higher.

In short, the economic policies we’ve been following just aren’t working.
Is the bad economic news all Bush’s fault? No, of course not — but remember, the key argument of the right has always been that tax cuts and deregulation would produce good news, a rising tide that raised all boats. Boy, has that not happened.
But remember, we’re just a nation of whiners.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

compatancy???compentancy??? ahhh competancy!!!!

"The swelling tide of toxic home loans is proving to be even more worrisome than initially feared"

It would be nice if some of the people who get paid big dollars because they supposedly have high skills could acknowledge that they messed up. It would also be nice if the national media did not consider it part of their job to cover up for powerful people who messed up on their job.

Yes, that headline is a a direct quote. It also is the sort of statement that has no place in a serious news article. The swelling tide of toxic loans is not proving to be more worrisome than feared. The problem is that the people who were supposed to be regulating the financial system did not know what they were doling.

The people who did understand the economy knew that an unprecedented run-up in house prices, with no remotely plausible explanation based on fundamentals, with no corresponding increase in rents, was a bubble. We also knew that bubbles burst. And, we knew that when bubbles in a highly leveraged asset like housing burst, that lots of debts go bad and that banks then take really big hits.

The NYT should be exposing the incompetence of people who were paid big dollars to know the housing and financial markets (this includes both bankers at place like Citigroup, Merill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the top regulators) and completely failed in their responsibilities.

It should not try to tell readers that the housing crash was somehow an unforeseeable event that came out of the blue. It was an entirely predictable event and it was only incompetence that prevented these people from seeing it. Unfortunately, unlike dishwashers and custodians, bank executives and regulators are not held accountable for their performance. Instead, the media covers it up for them.

This goes under contending conservatives because they like to say people who earn a lot deserve it for "obvious" reasons... not so much in the real world.

Move away from sound good feel good theoretical world and conservatives have to run for the hills.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Fair Tax tactic...

There are some classic tactic that Fair Tax folks use...

not even making claims about the plan itself it just makes you start off questioning the legitimacy...

A Comment from my last fair tax post

The problem with your question is that basically all the serious economists with any credibility are paid think tankers in one way or another. Almost unanimously, those who have put the most study into the proposal agree that it would be a very good thing in the long run. Those who conclude against the FairTax usually do so because they deem the transitional problems to be too tough to weather.

Show me an unpaid economist who comes down against the FairTax and I will show you where he has missed something or changed something in his model.

I made an empirical statement and asked for an example... its bad form to try to flip the question around on me as if its now my obligation to prove the opposite. To try and make it seem... "wow thats obvious..." but never cite anyone isn't an answer. its an aversion.

I'll check out the post he mention when I get home...

fair tax people don't help their case...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

More pink floyd

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

a theme for the day.... no?

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

And you may ask yourself....

My mind... can't my mind.... "can't think... where am... what time... who? errr...." He looks over at the small box with music coming out. All he see is 2:32.... 2:32... 2:32... seems to mean something but he is not quite sure.

"What time does that mean? When do I have to go to work? What do I do? Why can't I concentrate on what this little black box is trying to tell me?" 2:32. Still bemused... still staring... his fiances whispers over to him. Its 2:30.... you got to go.

"Yup... knew that... most definitely... I'm JUST NOT SURE WHAT THE CONTEXT FOR THAT NUMBER IS... ahh... wait. Yes 2:30... I have to leave by 3:00. I work at UPS. This is my beautiful house.... that is my beautiful wife... My name is Jim and my mind doesn't work cause it went to bed about 2 and half hours ago. Noting more nothing less."

Its strange when your mind just doesn't work for just a brief moment that seems like eternity. It was very funny... very surreal... very scary/weird.

For fun....

okay this is more like it....

I love my life... even when its weird....

"get some, get some, get some---go again"

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Obama and new census report

Statement From Senator Obama on the Census Income, Health Insurance and Poverty Numbers

Today’s news confirms what America’s struggling families already know – that over the past seven years our economy has moved backwards. We have now lived through first so-called economic ‘expansion’ on record where typical families saw their incomes fall, and working-age households lost more than $2,000 from their paychecks. Another 816,000 Americans fell into poverty in 2007 – including nearly 500,000 children – bringing the total increase in Americans in poverty under President Bush to 5.7 million. And on Bush’s watch, an additional 7.2 million Americans have fallen into the ranks of the uninsured. This is the failed record of George Bush’s economic policies that Senator McCain has called ‘great progress.’ While Senator McCain is promising four more years of the failed Bush economic policies, my economic plan will restore bottom up economic growth that benefits all Americans by cutting taxes for working Americans, providing affordable, accessible health care for all, and investing in new energy, education and infrastructure so we can create millions of good jobs here in America,” said Senator Barack Obama.

Highlights from the Census report:

Between 2000 and 2007, median income for working age households fell by $2,176. When elderly households are included, median income declined by $324 over the same period. This is the first economic expansion on record where typical households have seen their incomes decline. Under the Clinton Administration, median household income increased by $6,200.

African American household income fell by $1,804 between 2000 and 2007; Hispanic household income fell by $1,256 over the same period

Based on declining wages over the first 7 months of this year, median household income is likely to fall by at least $700 in 2008, bringing total income lost for the typical household under the Bush Administration to over $1000.

An additional 816,000 Americans fell into poverty in 2007, bringing the total increase in Americans in poverty under President Bush to 5.7 million.

500,000 children fell into poverty in 2007. There are 1.7 million more children living in poverty than in 2000.

Between 2000 and 2007, an additional 7.2 million Americans have fallen into the ranks of the uninsured. This is the largest increase in the number of people without health insurance of any Presidential Administration on record.

The share of Americans with private health coverage fell from 67.9% in 2006 to 67.5% in 2007. This share has fallen every year that President Bush has been in office, declining a total of 5 percentage points since 2000.

940,000 African Americans have lost health insurance since 2000, along with 3 million Hispanics

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

I don't live in my mothers basement!!!

anymore.

Ta-Nehisi Coates:
The problem with "traditional media"

I'm with Matt. I just don't have much sympathy of people working at big newspapers whining about the netroots attacking them. Reporters--if they're doing their job--spend their lives bringing scrutiny to other people. There's something weak about complaining when someone does the same to you. Matt points to this particularly egregious quote by Richard Cohen:

"I used to get a lot more on the right," said columnist Richard Cohen, who broke with liberals when he supported the Iraq war. More recently, the left has picked apart columns that are perceived as being favorable to John McCain.

"If you're a little bit critical of Barack Obama, you get really a pie of vilification right in the face," Cohen said, adding that his liberal critics "were born too late, because they would have been great communists."

Dude, you get paid to state your opinion. Why do you care what some D&D-playing, popcorn eating, living in his mother's basement blogger is saying? I mean really. These guys want the megaphone, and then not the criticism. All power. No responsibility.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

What i'm reading this very second...

Aug. 27 Locke, Second Treatise, sections 132-168, 199, 201-204, 221-229 and 240-243

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke2/2nd-contents.html

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

response on taxes and economy...

Anonymous said...
Jim

You say look at what made our economy the greatest in the world. If you don't believe in the FairTax fine. Now look at what is ruining our economy in relation to the tax laws of other nations. We are becoming more and more uncompetitive.

Exactly! This is the consequence of our move away from Keynesian economics towards the back of a napkin supply side economics. The Laffer curve is laughable! But the impacts of cutting taxes at the expense of our infrastructure and making the middle class.. and future generations pay for it has hurt us dramatically.

I'll quote myself...

The impacts of the Bush tax cuts have been huge. And it has hurt our business competitiveness around the globe. That is reason--as the book, "the politics of Bad Ideas" points out--that the World Economic Forum the deterioration of the US public finances has begun to damage US competitiveness. This is a business research institute in Switzerland. The US experienced the most dramatic drop in rankings of ALL nations.

Also there is a myth that American businesses are being strangled by taxation at the expense of competitiveness. I'll outsource to Economist Mark Thoma at U. Oregon "The Greek Menace" who brings together some stuff around the web... I'll quote the larger point--aside from conservatives once again manipulating with hyperbole rather than data...

Economist Dean Baker:

Washington Post Misleads Readers to Push for Lower Corporate Tax Rates
Today, the preferred policy is further reductions in corporate income taxes. To advance this agenda the Post tells readers that, "U.S. companies operating abroad already labor under a bigger tax burden than most foreign competitors."

That's not what the OECD says. Data from the OECD show that in the average member country corporate taxes are equal to about 3.5 percent of GDP. In the United States, corporate taxes have generally been between and 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP over the last two decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office (Table F-4).

But more broadly this decline comes from the conservative revolution. The Regan myth--keep in mind he raised taxes twice to try to correct the harm done from his tax cut at the beginning of his term--of taxes cuts creating economic growth was considered flawed by many economist in theory... and now we have the data to back it up. But the propaganda has remained useful. Our society has become less equitable with the reductions in the top economic bracket. Disparities of wealth over the long term have a huge impact in undermining the market system. We haven't seen such disparities of wealth since the 20's. And we have Regan and the pathology of tax cuts.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

still not doing homework!! I swear I'm leaving now!

Scale in the Housing Market

The NYT discusses efforts by local governments to use public money to purchase and renovate foreclosed properties to help revitalize hard-hit areas. At one point the article presents a comment from an economist at the CATO Institute complaining the program that supports this effort will distort the housing market and that it would be best to leave this process to the private sector.

It would have been helpful to put the size of the program in context. The program involves $4 billion in federal money. This is equal to approximately 0.02 percent of the value of the $20 trillion housing stock. It is equal to approximately 0.3 percent of annual housing sales. Spending of this magnitude is not likely to lead to large distortions in the housing market.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Henry Dems blog post...

I work my ass off debating conservatives... some times I think its pointless... I hope people learn something from it... (see main post for links)

This liberal lacks a retort? McCain, Obama, and the economy

I'm glad to see we are getting a more active blog. The more we debate... the more we discuss... the more we have dialouge. The less the right wing swift boat attacks and urban ledgends that Republicans have used time and time again will work.

The discussion is on McCain and his 8 houses... or however many.

Henry Libertarian commented:

That shows how "out of touch" and "privileged" Obama is, which Liberals like to ignore. Sure it is fun to point across the isle and snicker, but when you are guilt of the same thing suddenly you get defensive and don't see the humor anymore. If you want to call McCain rich then show me a politician at the federal levels that isn't. You obviously don't have a retort or you would have said something better. Obama wants to tax businesses that make goods and provide services which will make goods and services more expensive. With Obama's Trillion-Dollar Spending Plan, who do you think is going to pay for it?

First... "when you are guilty of the same thing? How so? The Rezko smear has been shown to be a complete fabrication for more see Factcheck.org which is a nonpartisan group that I highly recommend to those like myself who want to deal in policy and not whitewash the issues. Read the Rezko Reality to see that Henry Libertarian like many Republicans is misinformed on the issue.

If you want to call McCain rich then show me a politician at the federal levels that isn't.

That is known as a straw man in logic. I'm not arguing that Obama has note earned an impressive income. Or that middle class and working class americans are seldom representative of elected officials.

But here is the deal. Obama understand that Americans deserve to be empowered... he wants to help middle class Americans get a higher quality of life. John McCain wants to cut taxes on the rich... which has harmed our economic health over the past 30 years of supply side reganomics.

I mean there are reasons why European nations--and Canada too!--have more economic mobility than we do in America. These are all repurcussion of conservative economics--a less equitable outcome for hard working americans.

So saying I want to have it both ways because "Obama is rich too" is either a misunderstanding or clever rhetorical trick which won't work. I'll assume its a misunderstanding.

Obama wants to tax businesses that make goods and provide services which will make goods and services more expensive. With Obama's Trillion-Dollar Spending Plan, who do you think is going to pay for it?

First... lets go back to the core questions. Obama wants to bring back the strong economic growth that was seen before the conservative revolution of tax cuts at the cost of quality of life.

The impacts of the Bush tax cuts have been huge. And it has hurt our business competativeness around the globe. That is reason--as the book, "the politics of Bad Ideas" points out--that the World Economic Forum the deterioration of the US public finances has begun to damage US competitiveness. This is a business research institute in Switzerland. The US expereienced the most dramatic drop in rankings of ALL nations.

Also there is a myth that American businesses are being strangled by taxation at the expense of competativeness. I'll outsource to Economist Mark Thoma at U. Oregon "The Greek Menace" who brings together some stuff around the web... I'll quote the larger point--aside from conservatives once again manipluating with hyperbole rather than data...

Economist Dean Baker:

Washington Post Misleads Readers to Push for Lower Corporate Tax Rates

Today, the preferred policy is further reductions in corporate income taxes. To advance this agenda the Post tells readers that, "U.S. companies operating abroad already labor under a bigger tax burden than most foreign competitors."

That's not what the OECD says. Data from the OECD show that in the average member country corporate taxes are equal to about 3.5 percent of GDP. In the United States, corporate taxes have generally been between and 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent of GDP over the last two decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office (Table F-4).

Also here is the tax policy center on Obama's "business tax increases" that you claim will destroy our economy (pg 22)

Obama’s proposal to make permanent the Research and Development (R&D) credit and the renewable energy production credit would make it easier for firms to make investment decisions because they would no longer have to worry each time the credits approached their expiration. Both credits encourage particular behavior that Congress has deemed worthwhile and the change would likely increase both the amount of business investment in R&D and the development of more renewable energy sources. Most economists believe, however, that credits for selected investments in renewable energy are a less cost-effective way of reducing global warming and dependence on imported oil than approaches that raise the price of fossil fuels (including the cap-and-trade proposals advanced by both Obama and McCain) and allow private markets to select the least costly ways of reducing fossil fuel use.

The two sets of revenue-raisers that Obama has proposed would raise taxes on corporations and individuals engaging in particular activities and thus might cause them to change their behavior. To the extent that the provisions close loopholes in the current tax system, they could lead to more efficient use of resources, in terms of both how firms invest their funds and the use of financial strategies to exploit loopholes. The Obama campaign is probably overstating how much revenue additional loophole-closing proposals can raise, however, particularly with regard to proposals to reduce revenue lost from taxpayers who conceal offshore income and exploit international differences in tax rates to shift income to low-tax jurisdictions. There is little hard knowledge about how much revenue is lost to these transactions and administrative efforts to control them are ongoing.

These are equitable and smart chagnes in the tax code. Not perfect for my market theory wonkish Jim Nichols world... but politics is about compromise and consensus and this is a great step towards creating a more equitable economy that not only empowers middle class america but increases all our prosperity through economic revival and a move away from supply side economic nonsense.

Your concern about goods and services is moot since the incomes and savings of middle class and working class americans will rise... which will happen since ending the Bush economic fiasco will improve our longterm economic forcast. WHy do you think the Bush tax cuts created a recession recovery that faired so poorly compared to other post war recorvies?

With Obama's Trillion-Dollar Spending Plan, who do you think is going to pay for it?

Trillion dollar spending worries you? Obama would boost the debt by $3.5 trillion but at the same time increase spending and tax cuts that help middle class Americans. McCain would increase the debt by $5 trillion and all we get is more of the Bush economy stagnation and tax cuts for people who will just by bigger houses and nice boats.

Remeber a tax cut is government spending... like it or not.. So McCain is definately not your guy--why defend the worse of two evils by your own parameters.

I'll conclude with the Tax Policy Center again...(Intro)

The two candidates’ tax plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those tax cuts would be small as a share of after-tax income. In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income

This Liberal lacks a retort? Mama said wonk you out...

We understand economics... and we will bring policies that protect and empower Americans. The every man for themselves mentality Republicans promote not only hurts our citizens, our economic competativeness... but its just plain old bad economics and ways of treating our fellow man...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

China communist?

Neal Boortz seems to think that infrastructure investment is communist?

At a campaign stop in Chester, Virginia Obama said, "everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now and the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly superior to us now, which means if you're a corporation deciding where to do business, you're starting to think, Beijing looks like a pretty good option."

So not only is Obama praising the Chinese government, but he honestly believes that it takes government in order to make a country great. He honestly thinks that spending your tax dollars will be what makes our country more appealing to corporations ... no mention of the brutally high corporate interest rates in the United States. Maybe that's a reason, Obama, why businesses wouldn't look to the United States as a great place to invest? I guess that's the not the way the "progressive" mind sees it though.

The idea that Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Joseph Stiglitz are communist is laughable and speaks to Neal's knowledge about economics... but heres the question: does anyone still think China is communist? State-Capitalist yes, but yeah Communist? not so much. Someone smarter than I might be able to explain why Neal Boortz is right on this one....

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Fair tax become law?

CAN IT PASS -- ARE YOU KIDDING?

Someone wrote to this blog saying Fairtax can still pass.

Are you kidding?

THe leaders have abandoned ship. No one is even trying to get a Congressional hearing. The 1.5 million man Fairtax rally in Washington was a total flop - NO ONE showed up.

There is nothing going on anywhere that we can see about Fairtax.

Very very strange -- especially since Fairtax was supposed to be so well "researched" with 70 sponsors in Congress, and hundreds of thousands - over a million -- active supporters.

In fact, Fairtax leaders are making sure there are NO hearings. Apparently Fairtax leaders seem more interested avoiding questions - particularly questions under oath -- about their plan.

So how on earth can it pass?? No one is pushing it. Its not only off the national radar -- its off its OWN radar. Even Fairtax supporters have nothing going on.

Thats probably because the leaders found out, what many of us said from the start. Fairtax is a farce. Literally, a farce. Not sort of a farce, not kind of a farce, its a total farce.

For one thing- its the highest sales tax on the planet earth. And it on your RENT. ITs on your UTILITIES. ITs on your car insurance.

And medical costs. These lunatics were going to put the highest sales tax on EARTH on your cancer surgery, chemo, on your child's dental work, on your ER visit.

So the parents of a child with leukemia could have to pay 100K in SALES taxes because they had the audacity to spend money to try to keep their child alive?

When you start to realize things like this -- you start to see the Fairtax would be wildly, absurdly unpopular. People won't like 100K is sales tax on their hospital bill, especially when they don't make half that.

Will renters just go ahead and pay thousands of dollars a year in sales tax on their rent? And food. And utilities. And virtually everything they buy?

Hell no they won't. And Fairtax leaders started to figure this basic fact out. So they wisely just walked away from this well meaning, but luney idea.

Now sit down a minute, and think. Think about this real real hard. Cause its real real easy. Do you really think people will WANT to pay the highest sales tax on earth, on their rent? Their car insurance? AND their medical cost, utilities, ect ect?

You see, few of Fairtax fans even KNOW what the plan is. Oh, they know the hype. THey know the BS. But they have no clue what the real plan is.

What do you think the impact would be if suddenly people were paying the highest sales tax on earth --- on their rent? No one else even charges a sales tax on -- and rent, but Fairtax idiotically pretends all renters will pay these insanely high taxes on their rent.

So Fairtax is a rent tax. Its also a medical tax.

A car insurance tax. A food tax. A utility tax. A cancer surgery tax. A prescription drug tax. Not just a "modest" tax -- but the HIGHEST sales tax ON EARTH tax.

SO people wouldn't go for this tax -- not when they find out what it really is.

Fairtax couldn't possibly pass. Not when people find out.

If the leaders would have Congressional hearings -- people would know better. Thats why you won't ever see Congressional hearings. The leaders are too smart to have any.

But wait will people would find out -- its not 23% _- its more like 60-70%. Because the 23% figure was based on the lie that they could collect 800 billion in revenue FROM the government. Idiots. Take that farce away, refigure the whole plan. And in Congressional hearings, the Fairtax leaders won't get away with the BS tricks the use on their fans at some rally (which they never have anymore anyway)

Plus -- Fairtax bases their BS on cutting the wages of 100 million American workers -- so prices will fall. Riiiiight. Sure - Im sure everyone will want to rush out, take 30% cut in pay, then pay the world's highest sales tax. Wait till "details" like this come out -- as they would in any congressional hearing.

There are no leaders pushing it. IN fact they are hiding from it. Its a farce. People would hate it.

So you tell me -- can it pass?

Fairtax leaders would never actually show up at a Congressional hearing -- or even allow a Congressional hearing -- and answer questions about it.

So no -- it can't pass.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

X-Phi book review

Review - Experimental Philosophy
by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (Editors)
Oxford University Press, 2008
Review by Neil Levy, Ph.D.
Aug 12th 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 33)

This anthology mixes together previously published and new work in experimental philosophy, by many of its leading figures (among whom the editors feature prominently). Experimental philosophy is a burgeoning movement that urges philosophers to leave their armchairs and test their philosophical claims empirically. It builds upon but goes further than the movement that Jesse Prinz, in his contribution, calls empirical philosophy; philosophy that turns to existing scientific literature to find evidence for philosophical claim. Experimental philosophy involves philosophers actually getting their hands dirty by conducting experiments.

Part of the motivation for going experimental is that scientists have different concerns to most philosophers, and therefore do not always test the hypotheses in which philosophers are interested. In particular, experimental philosophers are concerned with testing the intuitions of ordinary people. An intuition is, roughly, a disposition to take a claim to be true. Experimental philosophers are interested in intuitions for several different reasons. One is because traditional philosophers have sometimes advanced burden of proof arguments: claiming that some view has the burden of proof because ordinary people find the opposing view intuitive. For instance, some philosophers who hold that incompatibilism is true -- that is, that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism -- argue that the burden of proof is on compatibilists, because ordinary people are incompatibilists. There is now a growing literature testing ordinary people's intuitions on these topics, some of which is reprinted here. The evidence suggests a more complicated pattern than was thought: ordinary people do tend toward incompatibilism, but only under certain conditions. When cases are presented abstractly, so the question is essentially 'can an agent be responsible in a determined world?', subjects lean towards a negative answer, but when the case is presented more concretely, with the details of moral wrongdoing described, subjects tend toward compatibilism. This pattern at least complicates burden of proof arguments.

Other experimental philosophers aim to probe intuitions for a different reason: because it may be that unexpected features of the intuitions of ordinary subjects play a role in the intuitions of professional philosophers as well. The most famous example of experimental philosophy in this mould -- perhaps the most famous example of experimental philosophy at all -- is Joshua Knobe's work on causation, a sample of which is republished here. Knobe found that subjects were more likely to judge a harmful than a helpful action to be intentional, even with all the other details of the situation unchanged. This is surprising, because whether an act is harmful or not seems irrelevant to whether it is intentional. Another famous experiment along these lines, also reprinted here, tested the intuitions of subjects regarding Gettier cases; cases in which a person has a true justified belief, but in which the belief is true only accidentally. The existence of such cases has been taken to be a serious challenge to accounts of knowledge, but Weinberg, Nichols and Stich suggest that they should never have been taken seriously. Their evidence consists in the fact that East Asian subjects are more likely to agree that the agents featured in Gettier cases have knowledge than are Western subjects, as well as more likely than not to attribute knowledge. This suggests, they claim, that when philosophers engage in epistemology, they are not probing the nature of knowledge per se; instead, they are probing the psychologies of a particular group of human beings (Western, white, highly educated and male). Intuition mongering is simply a way of exploring a culturally and geographically specific psychology, and cannot be expected to give us insight into the nature of reality.

Since so much of traditional philosophy turns on the appeal to intuitions, the claim that they are likely to be unreliable as guides to the traditional concerns of philosophers has been very controversial. In their experimental philosophy 'manifesto' which opens this collection, Knobe and Nichols attempt to hose down the fire, by claiming that experimental philosophy does not aim to be imperialistic. Instead, they argue for methodological pluralism. To my mind, this greatly underestimates the threat from experimental philosophy. If the claim that in investigating our intuitions we are doing a kind of ethno-psychology is true, then much of traditional philosophy is in trouble: after reading Weinberg, Nichols and Stich one can't simply go back to doing traditional epistemology.

The choices facing philosophy, in the wake of the experimental philosophy movement, are these: give up reliance on intuition to the extent to which this is possible (either generally or with regard to those areas in which the experiments suggest that intuition-mongering is ethno-psychology, or otherwise suspect) or rebut the experimentalist attack on intuitions. In closing, let me sketch a possible avenue of exploration for those who wish to take this latter tack. In his contribution to this volume, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong notes that many of the experimental results reveal a pattern of conflicting intuitions, depending upon whether the case is described abstractly or concretely (we have seen this pattern in the responses of ordinary people with regard to the compatibility of determinism and moral responsibility). Sinnott-Armstrong suggests that this pattern might explain why philosophical puzzles endure. He suggests that the conflicting intuitions might be the product of different reasoning systems, one of which is keyed to abstract presentations and the other concrete. Since we all have both systems, we each feel the pull of both sides of the issue, making it intractable. But because one system is likely to be stronger than the other in each of us, we take sides.

As Sinnott-Armstrong notes, we could break the stalemate if we could adduce non-question-begging grounds for siding with one system or the other. But he sees little hope of that. If his speculation about the nature of the competing systems is correct, he is probably right (Sinnott-Armstrong models the systems on memory systems, one of which seems better at recalling concrete episodes while another seems better at recalling abstract semantic information). But another possibility, one that seems at least as likely to me, is that the competing systems are the systems familiar from dual process theories of the mind. On these theories, one system is fast, automatic, and unconscious, while the other is slow, effortful and conscious. More importantly, the systems have features that often make it rational to discount the output of one and not the other: system 1 is modular, which is to say that is insensitive to a broad range of considerations, inflexible and stereotyped, whereas system 2 is domain-general, flexible and responsive to personal-level beliefs and values. If, as I think is possible, intuitions on one side of some (though perhaps not all) of the debates upon which Sinnott-Armstrong focuses are produced by system 1, while conflicting intuitions are the product of system 2, then we do have good reason to side with one set and disregard the other. Of course, this is simply a hypothesis: assessing it requires both empirical work, to test whether we can assign intuitions in the suggested manner (cognitive load manipulations would be one way to see whether a set of intuitions are produced by system 1), and conceptual work, aimed at testing the claim that we ought rationally to prefer system 2 intuitions to system 1.

Regardless of how that issue turns out, the experimental philosophy movement is certainly one of the most exciting developments in contemporary philosophy, and this volume is the perfect introduction to its methods, concerns and key thinkers.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

John McCain's Health Care plan

Economist Brad Delong on John McCain's health care plan

The biggest economic bad news is that health care costs keep rising. The total bill charged by insurers for employer and employee averages $12,100 for a family of four--twice the level of seven years ago, and comfortably more than the full-time earnings of a minimum-wage worker. On top of this come the taxes for government health care programs. The American health care bill is over $7,600 per person per year.

This matters for American businesses. Businesses pay for health insurance coverage for 165 million non-elderly Americans, for the high-wage jobs that make use of the educations, skills, and high potential productivity of American workers come with benefits. This creates a direct link between rising health care costs and slower economic growth. When health costs rise, the costs of employing workers in high-wage high-benefit jobs rise as well. Businesses find that they cannot afford to expand employment as rapidly as they would otherwise: higher health care costs make maintaining their old workforce and expanding it via new hires very expensive. They economize. They hire fewer workers. They offer lower wages. Workers resist. The result is slow employment growth and higher unemployment until workers recognize that the scarcity of good jobs and the higher risk of unemployment teaches them they have little bargaining power--a process that takes years. Meanwhile workers who ought to be in high-skill high-wage high-productivity jobs with benefits find themselves in low-skill low-wage low-productivity jobs without benefits instead. This is a waste. Workers who could hold down high-productivity jobs don't, and so don't get the wages that they deserve. Firms who could employ high-skill workers don't, and so don't get the profits that they deserve.

Successful economic growth requires a more efficient, lower cost health care sector. John McCain and Barack Obama propose diametrically-opposed plans for trying to get the health care system to where we all want it to be.

John McCain proposes a root-canal surgery approach. The problem, he and his health-care advisors believe, is that good jobs are linked to health-care benefits. Break that link--remove the expectation that good high-productivity jobs come with benefits--and the health care sector will no longer be a major drag on the American economy as it goes its own way, whatever that way might be. Hence John McCain proposes, relative to the current system, to penalize employers that offer high-value employer-sponsored coverage and subsidize individuals who get health insurance outside the employment relationship.

We see two problems with McCain's approach: the journey and the destination. The journey: The McCain plan works in the long-run by making employer-sponsored coverage more expensive in the short- and the medium-run. It thus attempts a cure by giving American business a worse case of the rapidly-rising health-cost disease from which it currently suffers. Rapidly rising health costs are a drag on high-wage high-profit high-productivity employment now, and they will be a much worse drag on high-wage high-profit high-productivity employment under the McCain plan--at least until we come out the other side and enter a world in which it is no longer expected that high-productivity jobs come with benefits.

The destination: The biggest problem in health care today is that insurers are rewarded not for keeping their customers healthy but for figuring out which customers are likely to get sick first--and then dumping them onto other insurers or onto the government. At present, this problem is restrained by the institution of employer-sponsored insurance: bid for an employer's contract and ERISA requires that you take any of their workers who want to purchase your plan. The destination of McCain's plan is a place where insurers have much more freedom to spend money, administrators' time, and computer power separating the healthy sheep from the costly and sick goats--but the profits to doing this for one insurer are not savings for the system because the sick and uncovered do show up at the emergency room eventually and are more expensive to treat when they get there. We believe that when the McCain plan does move us to a world in which the expectational link between high-productivity jobs and benefits is broken we will then have a system that works even less well than our current one.

Barack Obama, by contrast, offers a much more conservative approach to the problem of health care reform. Instead of using tax penalties and incentives to break the existing system and create a whole new set of untried health care financing institutions, Barack Obama proposes to build on those components of our current system that do work--and to make them work better.

But I've talked for More than Long Enough

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Monday, August 25, 2008

off to school... via 285 to marta... to five pionts station...

To school I go... school to school me. Its 12:03... i'm hungry... I'm not done with my readings...

get some, get some, get some, get some--go again..

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security redux

Social Security zombies

No matter how many times you try to kill the mythical Social Security crisis, it just keeps coming back.

David Ignatius:
Pelosi describes with relish her strategy for trouncing Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security — which was to blast it mercilessly, without offering an alternative. The implicit message is that negotiation and compromise are for losers. The reality that Social Security is facing bankruptcy seems not to interest either Pelosi or Reid.
The Congressional Budget Office:
CBO’s projections indicate that future Social Security beneficiaries will receive larger benefits in retirement—and will have paid higher payroll taxes—than current beneficiaries do, even after adjustments have been made for inflation and even if the scheduled payments are reduced because the trust funds are exhausted.
Oh, and CBO projects that the trust funds will last until 2049.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Brad Delong... reading list for Jim

History of Political Economy: A New Course I Am Not Going to Teach This Year--or the Year After
By Brad DeLong

Sigh:

Classics:

Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests
David Hume, "On the Balance of Trade"
Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Paul Krugman, Ricardo's Difficult Idea http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm
David Ricardo, On Foreign Trade (chapter 7 of Principles of Political Economy and Taxation)
David Ricardo, An Essay on the Influence of a Low Price of Corn on the Profits of Stock
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (selections)
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Wage Labor and Capital
Karl Marx, Capital (selections)
Late Classics:

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Political Economy (selections)
Max Weber, The National State and Economic Policy
Norman Angell, The Great Illusion
Neoclassics:

Polanyi, The Great Transformation (selections)
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace
John Maynard Keynes, A Tract on Monetary Reform
John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Friedman
James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent
Moderns (Africa):

Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty
Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa
James Scott, Seeing Like a State
Rene Dumont, False Start in Africa
Margaret Macmillan et al., When Economic Reform Goes Wrong: Cashews in Mozambique
Daron Acemoglu et al., An African Success Story: Botswana

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security

Part of the reason the public is misinformed about social security... "its not going to be around when we need it..." is the media does not do its job.

Outsource to Dean Baker:
The Washington Post War On Social Security Continues

The Post yet again is complaining that politicians who are unwilling to deal with a Social Security shortfall that is first projected to hit in 2049, when John McCain will be 113 years old. To try to makes it case sound more compelling it refers to the date 2018 when the Social Security trustees project that tax revenues will first be inadequate to meet benefit payments.

Of course 2018 is completely irrelevant to the finances of the program. At that point the program is projected to have accumulated more than $5 trillion in government bonds. But the Post wants to scare readers to advance their Social Security agenda so they trot out 2018 as though it is a date that anyone needs to worry about.

The positive side of this story is that Social Security's finances look much better than the Post's. If it keeps making up scare stories about Social Security, perhaps the date of its demise will be hastened.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

economics blogging...

If you haven't already read The Conservative Nanny State by Dean Baker you probably should.

In his new book, economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of “nanny state” policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It’s time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes – decent wages, good jobs and affordable health care.

Its creative commons so you can download the whole book for free...

I might try to do a chap. by chap analysis one of these days... I have a long list of one of these days... I doubt I shall get to all of them before i'm dead... sigh...

If Dean asks.. tell him Jim Nichols sent you.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Social Security...

Here is the Congressional Budget Offices report on Social Security.

Its not going to run out of money...
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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

wine blogging...

I'm on glass number two of Clos Du Bois 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon

It has a deep flavor to it. The bitterness doesn't hit till after you've swallowed it.

Talking wine is strange... its like post modern philosophy. You just make shit up... and all these intellectuals nod their head as if you've said something.

Good wine though...

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Social Security

Citizen Jay comments:

Citizen Jay said...
"I believe that when we Americans look deep into ourselves and ask us what we want our government--because it is our government: it is our agent to do what we want with our money..."

Why not eliminate a percentage of social security taxation, if not altogether? Why should the money go to government? Why can the money not be placed in a retirement account untouched by government? Why could the money not be placed into Roth IRA accounts, or a percentage of the amount currently taxed as social security?

That is a very sad statement. Social Security keeps millions of elderly people above the poverty line. If anyone made this country great... if anything about what we currently have is good. We can thank those who came before. To say that government should not protect those who have given so much to us... is just a view of government I find appalling.

If you stated it just for philosophical quandry... I once again see the pathology of philosophers who like to debate ideas for the sake of debate... yet ignore the fact that others are pertutating those ideas in an attempt to undermine government and our economy.

The idea that government shouldn't touch these peoples money speaks to two flaws. One the idea that its "peoples" money is wrong. The people would have no economy, no jobs, no money without that which the government provides. So the concept itself is incoherent.

Two: the idea that government is not in the business of protecting people is a very sad position. The conservative revolution has had a huge impact in promoting this view. Government is there to protect and empower people... without government we would have nothing. A Hobbesian all against all.

He goes on to state:

You and I will not see a dime of social security come retirement age. I want the people to have direct control over their money (and it's use towards the long-term future).

Factually not true. Its right wing propagandha... you've been watching too much fox news.

The Crisis that isn't

Barack Obama has been running for president full-time for nearly a year. While he has impressed millions of people across the country and managed to garner substantial support for his candidacy, he is still mired in second place in the polls. Second place does not win nominations, so with time running out, Obama is getting a bit desperate.

This is the only way to understand his attack on Hillary Clinton for not having a plan to close Social Security’s projected shortfall. As Senator Clinton rightly pointed out, the projected problems with Social Security are distant and relatively minor. There is no reason that she needs to develop a plan for plugging a hole that is not projected to arise until 2046, almost thirty years after the latest date that she can leave the White House.

Obama’s own plan called for raising the income cap on the payroll tax, which would be a modest tax increase on upper middle income workers, and a very substantial tax increase on the highest paid workers. Proposing tax increases is not generally a smart way to win elections, but Obama clearly hoped to be rewarded with positive news stories and editorials, and praise for his courage from the print and broadcast pundits. His plan did earn him some praise from these quarters, but not enough to raise him from his distant second place standing in the polls.

While Obama’s attack can be dismissed as simply bad political judgment, the deeper issue is that attacking Social Security has so much resonance with the media elite. This group has been blatantly ignoring and/or misrepresenting the facts in its attacks on Social Security for almost two decades. They have used their power over the news to force politicians to respond to their agenda, praising those who advance their Social Security crisis story and damning those who try to keep the projections in perspective.

Politicians who refuse to say what we should do with Social Security are not dodging a tough issue, they are simply being realistic. We don’t know what the world will look like in 2040, 2050, and 2060. Under very plausible assumptions, Social Security will remain fully solvent right through these decades with no changes whatsoever. However, even if the program needs to be changed to maintain solvency, none of us has great insight as to how those who have not yet entered the workforce will opt to divide their lives between work and retirement.

If it is necessary to make up a Social Security shortfall, will people in 2050 prefer to retire later, get lower benefits, or pay higher taxes? We don’t have any real basis for answering this question. Furthermore, the people alive in 2050 will not care how we did answer the question. The country will almost certainly reshape the Social Security program at least once before 2050 regardless of what we might choose to write into law in the next few years.

Social Security is an issue where good policy is also good politics. The best thing that progressive politicians can do for the program is to use their megaphone to counter the scare stories. After hearing a steady drum beat of stories about Social Security’s pending bankruptcy, tens of millions of people question whether they will ever see the benefits they have earned. These people must be assured that the program faces no major financial threats, only political threats from those who want to cut and/or privatize Social Security.

It is unfortunate that much of the elite media must be included on the list of Social Security’s opponents. This makes the necessary public education effort far harder than would otherwise be the case. On the other hand, the influence of the elite media is dwindling rapidly. Newspaper readership is plummeting, as is the audience of the network newscasts. People are increasingly turning to the Internet for their information and finding a much broader range of sources.

The Internet was crucial in defeating President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005 and it will undoubtedly play an extremely important role in combating any future efforts at privatization. As the importance of the Internet grows and the traditional media shrinks, time is clearly on the side of those who want to protect Social Security.

It is unfortunate that Senator Obama fell in with the bad guys on this one. If he wants to gain ground on Clinton he will have to find a more legitimate issue.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

moral realism

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Moral Foundations Theory

Moral Foundations Theory was created to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that five innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The foundations are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundaiton underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

Much of our present research involves applying the theory to political "cultures" such as those of liberals and conservatives. The current American culture war, we have found, can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality relying almost exclusively on the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. You can find out your own moral foundations profile at www.YourMorals.org.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

liberal/conservative

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Brad Delong: Draft: To Spend Is to Tax

We economists have a scenario that we call "current policy plus Bush tax cuts." It is made up of (i) the laws currently in force in the United States of America, plus (ii) the assumption that the defense, veterans, and other spending currently appropriated year-by-year by the congress remains the same as a share of GDP, plus (iii) the assumption that the tax breaks like the R&D credit and the regular pruning-back of the Alternative Minimum Tax that are voted for year by year by overwhelming congressional majorities continue to be enacted year-by-year, plus (iv) the assumption that the tax cuts George W. Bush proposed in 2001 and 2003 but made time-limited and set to expire early next decade are renewed. This "current policy plus Bush tax cuts" scenario has the federal government taxing about 20% of GDP over the next seventy-five years. It has the federal government forecast to spend 28% of GDP on average over the next seventy-five years. This is the fiscal gap.

A number of policies could be enacted to eliminate this fiscal gap. Simply doing nothing and letting the Bush tax cuts expire as current law requires them to do would reduce the fiscal gap from 8 percent to 6 percent of GDP. Raising Social Security taxes or cutting back future Social Security benefits by the about 1/7 needed to get the Social Security system back into projected 75-year balance would further reduce the fiscal gap from 6 percent of GDP to 5 percent of GDP. Returning military spending to its late-1990s share of GDP--not fighting wars in Iraq, et cetera--would reduce the fiscal gap from 5% to 3.5% of GDP. And eliminating "excess" cost growth in the government health care programs Medicare and Medicaid--allowing Medicare and Medicaid spending per eligible beneficiary to grow only as fast as the rate of growth of income in the economy as a whole--would bring the federal government into projected balance.

I believe that when we Americans look deep into ourselves and ask us what we want our government--because it is our government: it is our agent to do what we want with our money just as the guy in Florida we hire to keep grandma's one bedroom condo in repair is our agent--to do, we conclude the following:

We want to let the Bush tax cuts expire.
We want to close the 75-year Social Security gap, half by raising the limit on earnings taxed by Social Security so that the upper middle class and the rich pay more for Social Security and half by reducing the rate of growth of benefits at retirement.
We want to stop sending our soldiers--the best-trained and best-equipped high tech armed forces in the world--abroad to be military police in countries riven by sectarian conflict where they do not speak the language--and so return defense spending to its late-1990s share of GDP.
We want to reduce but not eliminate the "excess" cost growth in Medicare and Medicaid: we believe our doctors, nurses, and druggists will learn how to do wonderful things over the next two generations, and we do not want those wonderful things in the way of medicine applied only to the rich but to the poor and old as well.
Whether or not we decide to do (1) through (4) above, we want to raise taxes to cover whatever of the long-run fiscal gap remains, and so bring the federal budget back into balance over the long run.
Note that (5) is not optional. As the late Milton Friedman liked to put it: to spend is to tax. If the government buys things, it must get the money to buy them from somewhere. It can get the money from three places. It can tax. It can borrow--but then the borrowing has to be repaid with interest, and the more is borrowed the higher the interest and the worse the value the taxpayers ultimately get for their money when they are taxed to repay the borrowing. Or it can print the money and so inflate the currency--but that too is a tax, and an especially unfair, painful, and destructive one, as lots and lots of people victimized by inflation find their wealth doesn't buy what it used to and what they expected.

We can argue over whether (1) through (4) is what we want to do--that is what politics is about. But whatever we decide to do with (1) through (4), (5) is not optional--not, that is, if we want to continue to have a rich country in the long run. And the politicians who have told you that (5) is optional from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush to Robert Dole to George W. Bush and now John McCain are not your friends, or America's friends.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

don't make McCain bitch slap you Obama...

So far McCain has accused Obama of treason... attacked him for inspiring people to participate in the process... and played the race card time and time again (how many more ad's will we see Obama next to a white women? How many more... "Obama is playing the race card" statements?)

So NOW he's going to throw down? Sigh... John McCain is a Gigolo according to Rush Limbaugh... and he spends more on servants than the value of the average Americans house...

Its a subtle "John McCain is tough as shit" which Republicans want to believe. But how tough is a man that doesn't want to protect those who need help... who need an economy that can empower them to rise up the economic ladder. How tough is it to scoff at the idea of getting kids health care? How tough are the Republicans that they will pass on the other side of the road when they see a man beaten and bloodied?

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

getting people truly innvolved in politics and policy...

Citizen Jay comments:

People tend to place greater priority upon entertainment than serious matters. If you wish to bestow a message upon the masses, you must teach in a way in which they will be receptive to your message. People will be not only listen to your message if presented in an accessible manner, they will seek additional information.

Thats very true.

I am not the greatest in making sure I frame things in a way where people will be receptive. I'm not always accessible--I lean on hyperbole and cynicism too much.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The McCain is rich as fuck and doesn't know a thing about your life angle...

via Paul Krugman A very good jeer

So the Obama campaign is going all out on the issue of McCain’s multiple houses. Isn’t that kind of stupid? Yes, it is — and it was also necessary.
Two key points.

First, Republicans always — always — campaign by portraying the Democratic candidate as an out-of-touch elitist, while their guy is a man of the people. Al Gore grew up in a penthouse apartment! (In a shabby residence hotel, but never mind.) John Kerry windsurfs! Meanwhile, George Bush vacations at his ranch (bought as a prop for the 2000 campaign — and he doesn’t ride horses — but somehow that never got brought up.)
Protesting that the candidate is really a wonderful guy doesn’t work. Stupid as it may seem, counterattack is the only option. If the Gore campaign had gone after the fakeness of the Bush ranch, or the cronyism that made Bush rich, the world would be a different place today.

Second, the Obama campaign needed to turn things around fast. Yes, the polls still show a tight race with maybe a slight edge. But a narrative was starting to emerge, of McCain as the comeback kid and Obama as the man who couldn’t live up to his own hype. And those narratives can be deadly.

So, McCain said something that the Obama campaign may be able to use to turn things around. It’s not the way things should be; we really should be talking about health care plans (and I wish Obama would.) But right now, this week, making fun of McCain’s houses (but they’re not his, they’re his wife’s!) was the only option.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Politics...

Everybody wants to participate in t-shirt politics and half-time trivia talking points.

Politics isn't supposed to be entertaining, politics isn't supposed to be entertainment.

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Jim Nichols
A Speculative Fiction
www.JimNichols4.com

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Monday, August 25, 2008

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Saturday, August 23, 2008

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