This is why Westboro Baptist Church is a joke

[kandrathe]

Seriously, the "majority of studies" are correct, but only within a limited scope. As I said, providing benefits increases the first two groups, those who are unemployed because they prefer unemployment, and those who are holding out for the perfect job. (See: Labour market, German.) But that's not what exists right now. It doesn't matter if equilibrium unemployment went up from 4% to 4.5%, because *actual* unemployment is at 9.2!

Or, more like 17% if you look at U6. I like to look at the participation rate rather than U3.

All sectors are down. I agree it would be nice to have a more educated population with awesomer jobs, but it's difficult to see how to change that in less than 30 years. It's not like someone sat down and said "Hey, how about we have Wal-Mart greeter jobs, rather than doctors! That would be great!" Those things are not substitutes.

Not all sectors are suffering. Construction and manufacturing are worst off.

It is a simile. Where the real event was "continued to fund unemployment insurance payments," you made the comparison of "kegger." So, um, yeah, I'm pretty much standing by what I said.

Because civil conversation is forwarded by pulling out figures of speech and deliberately misrepresenting what was said. I said the government blew the money on something that got us nothing in return. If I said someone was as stubborn as a mule, I'm not calling them an ass.

Not malinvestments. Quite the opposite. Future economic growth builds on the present economy. If resources lie idle, producing nothing (Oh, hello, 9.2% unemployment. Didn't see you come in!), they don't just produce nothing for today, but they also leave no useful residue (capital) for the future. These are people who could be building stuff that we need - bridges, houses, power plants, roads, steel, whatever. Instead, they're sitting on their butts. Criminal waste.

This is *exactly* the time when we want to pull resources from the future into the present. Why? Once again, idle resources. The choice is not between consuming now or consuming in the future. The choice is between making something, and making nothing. We can't save a slice of our nothing, we can't invest it. We'll never get those hours of labour back, that slack capacity that never went into use.

But, by your own words...

They didn't invest in construction or really promoting domestic manufacturing, but instead paid out billions for people to do nothing.

Well, yes, it is. If you own an asset, it's because you bought it. If you bought it, it's your responsibility. That's how the free market works. If you are demand, you can't complain that it's all supply's fault!

To be fair though, when Moody or S&P rate a derivative's risk as AAA, why would you necessarily question it?

Yes, exactly. Arrests only where crimes were committed. But did they show management the door? No. Did they come within a mile? No.

I really don't understand the mentality of rewarding failure... at all...

Saving the banks was the right thing to do. Painful, but necessary. What gets my goat is that it stopped there - once Wall Street had gotten theirs, the political momentum shifted quickly and irreversibly against anything further, aimed at helping anyone else. Further spending was derided as "malinvestment," to be compared with a "kegger," to use your preferred simile, and so nobody else was "bailed out." Only the banksters. Everyone else got salutary lectures on the value of belt-tightening, and sanctimonious heckling about how they must just be unemployed because their benefits are so generous, they'd rather stay on the couch.

Nice turnabout. Actually, I've always maintained that if government actually knew what they were doing, it would be beneficial to allow them to be the spender of last resort. But, what you get instead are debacles like Solyndra, OptiSolar, or potential ones like Tonopah Solar Energy, or Mesquite Solar, etc.

I'm not as convinced that repairing aged infrastructure is as beneficial (economically) as building something that increases market capability (e.g. new power plant, high voltage transmission lines, electric car plant, electric car charging station implementations, etc.). There are tremendous downside risks for bridges and/or tunnels collapsing, but for building an economy they are treading water. Do it if you have to, but they don't move us closer to our goals. Although, much better to do even this than to pay people to do nothing.

(Well, at least we seem to have correctly identified where the Tea Party lives, politically.)

I don't think they've ever been given any serious test of anything. It's very easy to "act to principles" when all you have to do is grandstanding, but governing requires compromise, and they've so far proven incapable of even getting elected, let alone governing.

They certainly are miles away from progressive. But, there are conservative democrats (blue dogs), and conservative libertarians (e.g. Ron Paul). I think the biggest difference is that the tea party hasn't hinged itself to the religious right, or big business, but rather have common cause in fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.