Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Was thinking about combining this into the previous, since I see this as a consequence of where that kind of thinking takes you. It is a subtle connection, but it does exist. Ultimately, I thought explaining the connection would be a more concise and better-worded exercise if I split things up.
Andy Kessler writes in the Wall Street Journal:
In his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., this month, President Obama said, “We believe that when a CEO pays his auto workers enough to buy the cars that they build, the whole company does better.”
:
Let’s go back. Henry Ford is popularly credited with inventing the middle class by doubling his workers’ salaries to $5 per day in 1914. A multiplier for the economy, right? Wrong.The year before, Ford revolutionized manufacturing with the moving assembly line, slashing automobile build times to just 90 minutes from 14 hours. That’s productivity. It allowed Ford to reduce the price over time of his Model T to $290 from $950. Demand took off because it was far cheaper than the cars made by his 88 competitors.
By 1927, 15 million Model Ts were sold to people (most of whom did not work for Ford) and businesses that retired their horses and used these new automobiles productively to lower their own costs, fueling a boom. Raising wages was a byproduct, not a cause. From Ford Motor’s corporate website about the wage increase: “While Henry’s primary objective was to reduce worker attrition—labor turnover from monotonous assembly line work was high—newspapers from all over the world reported the story as an extraordinary gesture of goodwill.”
But 98 years later, the Obama administration still doesn’t get it. According to an Aug. 15 article by Paul Tough in the New York Times Magazine, the administration’s economic team during the financial crisis—Lawrence Summers, Tim Geithner, Jason Furman—”was carrying around this list of multipliers” from Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics. A dollar spent to cut corporate taxes would grow the economy 30 cents; make the Bush tax cuts permanent, 29 cents; extend unemployment benefits, $1.64; food stamps, $1.73. “And food stamps was always at the top. That had the largest multiplier.” This is economic malpractice.
Food-stamps recipients are up 70% in four years, to 46.7 million. But, surprise, we haven’t seen that “virtuous cycle.” Jobs build the middle class, not handouts or pay diktats.
What is creepy and dangerous about this is that it is reality-immune. The “true believers” get things their way — stimulus is passed, unemployment benefits are extended, food stamps are distributed. The statistics show that this is not having the effect predicted. And so reality must be bludgeoned to fit the contours of theory, rather than the other way around.
Thought this comment was a good one:
They think money can be redistributed to groups with no direct involvement earning it to create more economic activity than the money they just gave away.
What is conveniently spun out from the argument is that ‘return’ follows either the product, or the effort…You earn AFTER you succeed creating something which represents more value to others than they give you for it. Not before.
There is solid math behind a $16 trillion debt and the $5 trillion of it during the last four years. We’ve been paying out for evaporative ideals.
The people in charge right now don’t seem to see money as any kind of an effect. There is a sort of ideological split here. The ones on the left, representing consumers, see money as a causative agent: We have to get money so we can buy X. The ones on the right, representing the producers, “the ones who sign the front of the check instead of the back of it” as the saying goes, see money as wealth, and the wealth is a consequence: It has been produced by an effort.
The leftists decry the unfair/uneven distribution of the money…which is needed to buy X…but since it is primarily an effect and not a cause, it is being “distributed” the way any other effective residue is distributed. Light is an effect of the lamp. The light in the room will be unequally clustered about the source of it, which is the bulb in the lamp. Heat is an effect of a running engine. The heat in the car will be unequally gathered about & within the engine block. This is only natural.
Since they view money as a cause and not as an effect, they are reality-immune to points like Kessler’s “raising wages was a byproduct, not a cause.” It isn’t that they’re too dumb to see it or even that they refuse to consider it; their mindset won’t allow them to seriously entertain it. The “workers” were paid twice as much — why? Kessler has explained it, linked it to productivity, which makes sense and he’s discussed each step, logically and well. In the progressive narrative, the “why” is: Henry Ford said it should be so. See, we’re not agreeing on the strategy because we’re not seeing money the same way. Conservatives see it as merely an indicator, a telltale signature of something more complex going on underneath the surface. Much like the dorsal fin of a shark. Or, the heat signature of a plane. The money follows an energy that cannot be seen, and the energy is flowing as people produce things.
The progressives, representing the consumers, see the money as the real thing. It is, in their world, more like the water that irrigates the plants, and they’re constantly dreaming up creative new ways to seed the clouds.
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