Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[Todd]

Got it, someone has to pay so it shouldn't happen. Or....are you just being a good citizen and reminding everyone that it costs more money to do worthwhile things than let the economy go in the toilet to "save dollars". Yeah I think we know that.

No, that's not it at all.  It's just that I see a (not yet qualified to be) pie in the sky policy, with a nice, big, politically motivated target, without costs yet outlined, and I see the wholly cynical nature of what she is doing, rather than swallowing whole the idea that installing that many solar panels will solve our woes. 

I get it, it's a big idea, so concerns like updating the electrical grid to deal with potential overflow of power at peak times (people won't want just free electricity, they will demand the right to sell it back to utilities) and sudden spikes in on-demand power needs when the unsolved intermittency issue arises are not important.  Concerns like how to structure taxes - both for raising revenue and for targeting tax expenditures - to pay for it are also not important.  Best to just do it.  Let's have the US focus on the technology of the future for the last forty years without considering other forms of energy (eg, wind, which has grown much faster over the last twenty years, and works day or night, though with its own significant intermittency issues), and at least as big an emphasis on efficiency gains.  Solar, that's where it's at baby.  Full speed ahead, and all that.

(I suspect if Hillary wins and actually pushes hard for this project, which of course is not certain, we will get to witness conservative groups funding lawsuits centered around animal rights and environmental impact.  It'll be great.)

[drogulus]

No, that's not it at all.  It's just that I see a (not yet qualified to be) pie in the sky policy, with a nice, big, politically motivated target, without costs yet outlined, and I see the wholly cynical nature of what she is doing, rather than swallowing whole the idea that installing that many solar panels will solve our woes. 

I don't care about the political cynical motivations. Opponents have those, too.

I get it, it's a big idea, so concerns like updating the electrical grid to deal with potential overflow of power at peak times (people won't want just free electricity, they will demand the right to sell it back to utilities) and sudden spikes in on-demand power needs when the unsolved intermittency issue arises are not important. 

They are important, but they are to be solved, not used to block progress towards solving them. As for the ultimate importance of solar versus other new energy systems, we won't know that in advance either. Uncertainty about the ultimate shape of the system can't be allowed to block developing it. Maybe there will be less solar and more something else. It wouldn't surprise me.

[Ken B]

Uncertainty about the ultimate shape of the system can't be allowed to block developing it.

That's why I say full speed ahead with caged-squirrel power!

[Karl Henning]

No! Free the squirrels!

[drogulus]

     For years we've heard about how wages have stagnated since the '70s. The chart shows the course of both productivity and wages from 1950 on. See the divergence? That's problem no. 1, but it manifests in a trillion dollars of infrastructure neglect. This is what caring about budgets more than what spending and taxing are actually for has given us.

     Let me correct a common error. A budget measures the net position of the public versus the private and foreign sectors. It is not therefore a goal in itself, it shows at the aggregate level how far we are from the goals we set, while at the program level we deal with goals specifically, military, health care, retirement, education, government operations, infrastructure. The budget is a tool to show where we are, that's all. The difference between annual budget balance and economic balance is something we always deal with, so this kind of balance shouldn't be expected to match any more than it has in the past. Deficits show how different they are, and atm the larger deficits we need for optimal balance show it better. The error is assuming that the zero sum point is a priori optimal, which it almost never is by anyone's measure except a priori "best of all possible worlds" budgeteers.

     Look at how simple it is to think like a budgeteer. The pants are too short, so cut off the legs above the ankle, problem solved. Never mind what pants, legs, feet are for, they're for the budget, the budget must balance no matter what. OK, we can't actually do that, even the budgeteers themselves are dimly aware of how disastrous it would be to liquidate the private sector to eliminate the national debt. Does this precipitate learning about the cause of depressions among them? Why no, not if they can help it, it doesn't.

[Todd]

They are important, but they are to be solved, not used to block progress towards solving them.

What a charming but unrealistic statement.  If overcoming intermittency on a national scale costs too much, then alternatives will be used.  That is rational policy making. 

[Todd]

A budget measures the net position of the public versus the private and foreign sectors.

No it doesn't.

[Ken B]

Mark Steyn

Trump is full of it, too. But at least he's full of it in English rather than bullshit. Which is what you're speaking when you talk about "pathways to citizenship" and "comprehensive immigration reform". They're Democrat evasions, and the Republican base is entitled at the very minimum to demand Republican candidates who come up with some weaselly duplicitous evasions of their own. A significant section of the GOP base is sick of dialing Republican headquarters and hearing "Press 1 for Spanish, press 2 for consultant-approved claptrap, press 3 for artful straddle, press 4 for all disavowals of last year's positions, press 5 for endless looped replays of John McCain's amusing primary-season-only super-butch 'Build the danged fence!' commercial, press 6 for live audio feed of John McCain teaching Lindsey Graham how to say 'Danged!', press 7 if you know the Spanish for 'Danged!', press 8 to hear Jeb Bush say 'No amnesty, not on my watch, no sirree!', press 9 to hear Jeb Bush say 'Viva la danged amnistía!' If you wish someone to speak to you in non-forked-tongue English, please stay on the line and wait for an operator."

In the news

Another tech giant that says it must import foreign workers because there aren't enough skilled American workers in the industry is laying off thousands of workers.

Qualcomm — a major producer of smartphone chips — announced last week it's eliminating 15 percent of its workforce or about 4,500 employees, just weeks after fellow tech giant Microsoft announced a massive round of layoffs.

Both companies are top beneficiaries of the H-1b visa program, which backers say allows companies to temporarily hire foreign workers for jobs they can't find qualified Americans workers to fill.

[drogulus]

   

    The chart shows how the economy balances, with the government in the red most of the time. It shows as well how upward versus downward balance coincides with boom/bust. The question for informed policy makers is not balance versus unbalance, but where the balance is to be set. As a matter of accounting there is always balance, or someone made a mistake in math.

     

     I like this.

[Todd]

The chart shows how the economy balances, with the government in the red most of the time. It shows as well how upward versus downward balance coincides with boom/bust. The question for informed policy makers is not balance versus unbalance, but where the balance is to be set. As a matter of accounting there is always balance, or someone made a mistake in math.

I believe you have posted this graph before.  The problem is that when it comes to macroeconomics, not everyone agrees, so what you posit as truth, or something near to it, is not in fact truth.  It would be like me posting on the quantity theory of money (MV = PQ) and stating that it is true.  Like what you posted, it is self-contained, and grossly simplified, and therefore doesn't represent what its most ardent supporters wish.  You choose your side, complete with Nobel winners, and I can do the same.

[Karl Henning]

It's an opinion, of course:

. . . Trump is not an outlier at all – his hyperbolic, smash-mouthed style has become the Republican brand.

RTWT here.

[Todd]

It's an opinion, of course:

From a former chairman of the NH Democratic Party, not that he'd be overtly biased at all, or anything.

[Karl Henning]

From a former chairman of the NH Democratic Party, not that he'd be overtly biased at all, or anything.

I noted his background.  But, the piece is rich with example;  I know you noted that, as well 

[Karl Henning]

Reading a piece in the on-line Christian Sc Monitor, I came across the phase "almost certainly Hillary Clinton" (as to the eventual Democratic nominee).  I realize that the reasoning is sound.  But crikey, it's only August 2015 . . . .

[(poco) Sforzando]

I noted his background.  But, the piece is rich with example;  I know you noted that, as well 

Don't forget "calves the size of cantaloupes." Real classy, that.

[Karl Henning]

I missed that.  I don't know why, but I did miss that somehow.

[Todd]

But, the piece is rich with example;  I know you noted that, as well

Yes, there are examples, but I didn't see Bob Corker's name listed when covering Iran, for instance, and the names Bush, Rubio, and Kasich do not appear in his op-ed.  Now why might that be?

[Todd]

I realize that the reasoning is sound.  But crikey, it's only August 2015 . . . .

Well, there was speculation yesterday that Joe Biden might run again, potentially throwing a (small) wrench into the works. 

[Karl Henning]

Is there something about Bernie? Yes. Right now, he's losing.

RTWT here.

[Pat B]

A couple of minutes left in the debate and I am retracting my Cruz prediction.

I thought Kasich made a great impression.

ETA: watching the Republican reaction, maybe I should have stuck with Cruz (as a prediction, not as who I support).