Noted Economist, David Letterman

OK, I couldn’t resist, so I’m back for another post… J

 

Read the article below about a point Letterman made on his show the other night, along with some more in-depth follow-up by the author.  Don’t these points seem obvious?  If we don’t manufacture anything here, if we outsource everything to China and India, how do we become an economic powerhouse again?  It’s not a “global economy” – it’s a Chinese/Indian economy, with the U.S. being the largest funder of it.

 

-Ryan

 

'Late Show' Economics 101

Scott Paul Scott Paul Thu Feb 26, 1:05 pm ET

Leave it to David Letterman to make the most critical economic point this year in one of his Top Ten lists. Maybe he should be the next Secretary of Commerce. Why? Because the late show host simply gets it in a way that most policymakers and pundits on the left and right don't.

Here's Letterman from the Top Ten list on his February 17 show:

I'm going to tell you something you already know. I go every now and then to a toy store because I have a 5 year old son. And I think maybe a toy would hit the spot. You start looking around and it's a long time before you find something made in the United States. And I think that's the problem. You wonder where the hell did the money go. Well, we're not making anything here in this country. I don't know what to do about it...

You don't see this line of thinking from Davos, the Fed, editorial boards, or Washington think thanks. But Letterman is right. Our trade policy is a Madoff scheme. We buy cheap goods from China, run up debt; China buys the debt, and sells us more cheap goods. Rinse and repeat.

Well now the music has stopped, a chair has been removed, and America's over-consuming fanny has nowhere to sit.

And here's my point: unless we fundamentally shift our economic point of view from consumption to production, we'll end up back in this same spot, even if housing and credit stabilize in the near future.

We need to start making things in America again. We have tremendous human capital and innovative potential, but it's being squandered on get-rich-quick schemes that leave us all worse off. Until our society and policies value production -- actually making stuff like steel, fuel-efficient autos, high-tech widgets, and lead-free toys -- we'll be poorer and weaker as a nation. Our manufacturing base is highly productive, but it is shrinking every day. Wal-Mart established the "China Price" for its sourcing that drove thousands of factories overseas. Other policies, like our lack of trade enforcement to combat foreign subsidies and intellectual property theft, high health care costs, and a tax system that promotes offshoring, have simply heaped it on.

The White House had a budget summit this week. It will have a health care summit next week. In the near future -- before it's too late -- we urgently need a manufacturing summit to chart the course for economic renewal. Maybe invite Letterman?

Good Bye

This blog is done. I've got nothing else to say here. Even when I do have plenty to say, what I don't have is plenty of time in which to say it. I've decided to strip down to one blog, and that I'd rather keep up my personal blog instead of this political one. For the 2.4 of you that have bothered to keep dropping by and actually read my material, thanks.

Best wishes to all.

-Ryan

Hope for the "Lost Generation"

Beware of Socialism!

From salon.com: 

Feb. 6, 2009 | Brave souls named Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh have raised the alarm: Socialism will soon be loosed upon the land. What is this "socialism" of which they -- and Malkin, McCain and Morris -- warn? Socialism is apparently what is created when a president you do not like spends money on things of which you do not approve.

Since the collapse of the economy and the election of Barack Obama, the American right has been engaged in a two-front ideological battle. Conservatives are fighting to prevent Democrats from spending America out of the current economic predicament, because it has long been a conservative article of faith that massive government investment in jobs and infrastructure does not work. But pressing that argument about the present also means looking backward, and trying to rewrite the history of the 1930s, when nearly everyone except conservative ideologues agrees that a huge Keynesian jolt to the economy did work.

Rather than publish another essay, though there have been some fine ones lately, about just what really happened during America's last episode of so-called socialism, we've opted to go to the visual record. As Marshall Auerback noted, in the process of modernizing the rural South and upgrading the infrastructure of America's largest cities, President Roosevelt's New Deal left behind a durable, physical and very visible legacy of schools and hospitals -- even aircraft carriers. (We'll leave discussion of Social Security and unemployment insurance for another time.) The following slide show gives a small sampling of the bricks-and-mortar achievements of red, white and blue "socialism."

slideshow  http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/06/new_deal/slideshow.html

Good News for American Agnostics and Atheists

Godless watch, continued

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/02/godless_watch_continued.cfm

READERS are going to start thinking I'm obsessed, but I think the final proof that Barack Obama plans once and for all to elevate respect for Americans who don't practice a religion came at this morning's National Prayer Breakfast:

There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all...

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." In Islam, there is a hadith that reads "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule - the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

(Emphasis added.)

A notable repetition—not just once, rote, but twice, to let you know he means it. 

As for that second passage, did Mr Obama just endorse a name for the group struggling to name itself? Some don't like "atheist" or "nonbeliever" because they are definitionally negative. The coinage of "Brights" has failed to catch on for the obvious reasons. But "humanist" has a nice, positive feeling, and a history.

Mr Obama went on to announce a White House of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships. A Bushian thing to do?  No, he continued:

The goal of this office will not be to favor one religious group over another - or even religious groups over secular groups.  It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state.

Interesting. I'm not sure if Mr Obama isn't trying a little too hard to please everyone here, but the fact that he is trying to please everyone—and remember that a major presidential candidate said not long ago that "freedom requires religion"—is striking.

Now that he is not doing backflips for Rick Warren, citing his favourite Bible verse in a "faith debate" or dodging conspiracies that he is a Muslim, Mr Obama is also free to say things like

I was not raised in a particularly religious household.  I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I've ever known.  She was the one who taught me as a child to love, and to understand, and to do unto others as I would want done.

A few years ago, Daniel Dennett, an atheist philosopher, wrote

Politicians don't think they even have to pay us lip service, and leaders who wouldn't be caught dead making religious or ethnic slurs don't hesitate to disparage the "godless" among us. From the White House down, bright-bashing is seen as a low-risk vote-getter.

Not this White House.