Cable News Ratings for Monday, February 18, 2013

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(163) Comments - Add Yours!

1. Cathy

   Posted February 21, 2013 at 9:08 AM

   Coffee, So you work out as you teach right?

2. Matthew

   Posted February 21, 2013 at 9:14 AM

   @d.d.

   Don’t forget Wilson instituted the first federal income tax since the Civil War, & he still had a deficit.

   Bit misleading, this. His pre-WW1 budgets averaged deficits of 0.72% of GDP. His final two budgets in office were surpluses. Harding (probably the most corrupt president in our history) simply inherited what was an already on-going budget trend. Wilson WAS terrible, but his actual budgets don’t fit the overall pro-Supply Side theme of your post.

   Remember the Roaring 20’s . This was the Harding & Coolidge era.

   Yes, the roaring 20s, AKA the Bull Market Bubble; lack of government intervention does deserve credit for that period of prodigious economic growth. Lack of government intervention also deserves credit for the catastrophic economic collapse once the inevitable ‘the Emperor has no clothes’ moment came for that bubble.

   After the Cold War ended, overall federal spending fell to 18% of GDP in 2000 from 22% in 1991. But again the economy boomed.

   And again, a big part of that was a bubble. We could go so far as to call the era of Big Liberalism (lets call it, roughly, 1932 – 1980) a government-driven bubble as well, that eventually burst with stagflation, but it was also a remarkably stable and long-lasting bubble, relative to the ups and downs of the last two decades, or the instability of the 19th Century.
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   More broadly, I think it’s hard to really say “Coolidge did this, maybe we can replicate that,” when we’re in a 21st Century economy, and trying to navigate 21st Century geopolitical problems. For example, we no longer have the luxury of total isolation, which has consequences for both our economy, and our federal budgets.

   It’s fair to say that the government has grown in all of the wrong ways, but my philosophical conclusions about this differ from proponents of austerity; the austere look at this situation and say “this is bad, because it’s the nature of sovereign borrowing and spending to be bad.” I say “this is bad, because the people in charge of appropriating the funds are bad.”

   In other words, if I could do 2008 – 2012 all over again, I wouldn’t spend less (well…), I’d spend different. I’ve made this example before, and I’ll make it again: to me, it’s the difference between a bank extending someone credit, and that person using that credit to build a successful business, which eventually balloons into something enduring for both the borrower and the lender (e.g. WW2 manufacturing infrastructure, Manhattan Project, Apollo), vs. extending someone credit and them using the money to buy a bunch of crap for themselves and their friends (Recovery Act).

3. Matthew

   Posted February 21, 2013 at 9:51 AM

   This is family income. So, if you are married, over 50, have been with the same company for 10 years, you are likely in the top 10%

   This seems overly optimistic. I accept that I could be wrong, as I don’t have time right now to look up age-to-income demographics, but just as a matter of language and mathematics, how can we describe an event with 10% probability (making $113k+) as more likely than an event with 90% probability? Maybe if you further filter that to – People over 50, at the same company for 10 years, with a college degree/in a union/working for the government (where you can easily go up the food chain, regardless of skill, just by virtue of longevity).