Do You Know Michele Bachelet?

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world ... =2&_r=1&hp

[KeithE]

[ET]

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

[ET]

[ET]

[KeithE]

[ET]

I've heard of the Presimetrics book. Might pick it up one day if I run across it in the bargain section of Barnes & Noble or elsewhere. I have some skepticism as to the results that it shows because folks like Reagan had to largely work with a Democrat Congress....Clinton largely worked with a Republican one.

Interesting, Keith, on the ethanol issue, but the problem now is that now that the ethanol lobby/special interest/Big Corn has now gotten into the trough of public money, not it's going to be hard to kick them out. That's the trouble with so much of this stuff. Somebody does a sales job (con job?) on politicians and the public to get to the public trough and tell us how it is so good for us to subsidize them and then it's near impossible to ever get rid of them.

Yet I don't believe the Tea Party is the "no regulation" crowd. They probably want a LOT fewer things regulated - especially by the federal government - than other folks, but I doubt most of us except the most extreme libertarians want to seriously make a push to the "no regulation" route. As I've stated before, my belief in the sin nature of man makes me skeptical that such an idea would work.

However, that does not preclude me from believing that government over-regulates and costs us jobs and hidden taxes in the billions or even trillions, not to mention the Constitutional issue of what the federal government is allowed to regulate or should be regulating. (Example: the feds need to stay out of education...they've got no business in it, either setting standards or financing or guaranteeing school loans.)

[KeithE]

[ET]

I would say Government is a parasite. It produces nothing, only consumes. When products and services from the private sector fail, those businesses disappear or are replaced with one that does the job better, less expensively or both. People vote with their money.

When government programs fail, they simply get more money from their political benefactors. Or to use the quote from one of my favorite signature lines: ""Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase." One cannot sustain a failing business on rhetoric and political slogans, unless one can buy political favors from government politicians (bailouts, for instance). Government just throws more money at the problem and point the finger at anybody but themselves (mortgage/sub-prime mess, for instance).

Anyway, we've been down this road before, so I'll cut it short. I still didn't find any reference to Bachelet in the article and even searched for her name using my browser feature. Wierd.

[KeithE]

[ET]

Keith, I didn't realize you were asking any questions of me regarding regulations. Four posts ago you made mention of some things government does, but didn't phrase it in a manner in which I perceived you to be asking me to respond to those issues.

However, I still stand by my statement. Maybe I should rephrase slightly to say that government does not produce anything, but just redirects resources. Whatever money government spends is nothing but a reallocation of economic resources from private sector uses to use which those in power deem best or have been bought to redirect those resources to their reelection fund patrons. So I stand by that claim.

The pro-government crowd will often use as an example the intestate highway system as a "good" product of government, but there is no way to know if that money had been spent in the private sector if we would have gotten something more beneficial to society. It is merely presumed that since the results are now deemed arbitrarily to be "good" that it is proof of the goodness of government action. However, the same type of folks who call that a "good" use of government now don't like the consequences that has arisen from the use of that "product" and now make a silly claim of "addiction to foreign oil" to further additional efforts to control our lives. (That "addiction" claim is a bit of economic idiocy left for another time and place.)

It was those roadways that contributed to making Walmart and other such big box stores - so often villified by the left - possible as it made the movement of products to other areas of the country cheaper and faster. It led to the decline of the "mom-and-pop" stores for which so many folks seem to have a nostalgia. It led to the increased use of automobiles to go places as traveling by motor vehicle became more convenient. It led to so-called "urban sprawl" as many people could live a good distance away from their work and use that road system to get to work in a relatively easy and quick manner. Now they are promoting more government "goodness" (CAFE, ethanol, 'lectric cars) and want that same government to shove their solutions down our throats.

As for government being the only enterprise in the world that expands in size when its failures increase, I stand by that also. I didn't say that government programs NEVER are reduced (extremely, extremely rare, however), but that government is the only enterprise which can continue to expand when it largely fails at its goals. Private sector business cannot afford to expand if their goals are not being reached. That's why they either go out of business, get bought by someone else or draw back and rethink their business strategies.

As for your life in the world of government contracts, that's a whole other animal, so it doesn't fit in this argument because the politicians funding those contracts are more concerned with throwing money at them to keep their constituents in their home district happy or to trade favors. As an example, there's nothing more idiotic than for the military to have a product forced upon them that they don't want because some Congressman doesn't want jobs eliminated in his home district.

Lastly, I find it amusing that you accuse Thomas Sowell of generating propaganda for the "gullible voting public". The man has a a PhD in economics and writes some of the most thoughtful commentaries around, not to mention numerous books on economics and sociology. You talk about playbooks, but it seems no matter which conservative I bring into a conversation here, that person is eventually dismissed as a corporate mouthpiece, opportunist, propagandist or some other label that avoids any substantive discussion of whatever the issue is. Bummer.

[KeithE]

I am not so cynical to say government NEVER does anything right (via themselves or funding private industry and reviewing progress). But I'm also not so convinced that they always do good, so as to warrant not having ACCOUNTABILITY by independent agents.

And, I am not so cynical to say private industry NEVER does anything right despite their profit motive. But I'm also not so convinced that they always do good, so as to warrant not having ACCOUNTABILITY by independent agents.

I ask for ACCOUNTABILITY of both. Fallen people need it. What is your attitude about ACCOUNTABILITY, ET? You seem to bristle at any interference in ( or regulation of) business while being very suspicious/dismissive of government work.

I think we both see the unwarranted influence of lobbyists in buying votes (especially when they act against our biases). Right now, since the Supreme Court ruling permitting corporations to supply funding to candidates from their considerable coffers, that lobbyist ratio (progression/conservative; people-friendly/corporation-friendly ) is lower than ever which is an affront to democracy, imo. Votes are available to the highest bidder- industry.

Our disagreements come in the degree we trust government vs private industry. I trust government more (they usually have altruistic goals); you trust private enterprise more (they usually have a profit motive to the first order, that allows for a moderate amount of trickle down to keep their employees and occassional generosity).

One source of my distrust in private industry is that of the chief executives pay rates. The average CEO of a Standard and Poors 500 company is $9.25m/year in 2009 (often with $Ms in bonuses a year); while the lowest paid workers often make min wage ($7.25/hour = $15,080/year). (Ratio= 613:1 neglecting bonuses)


A government top pay for a Senior Executive Service (SES) Level 1 (tops) is $199,700/year while a GS1 Step 1 makes $17,803/year (Ratio is 11:1 with trivial bonuses if any).



I also have witnessed many a government SES and they work hard - they have to. The higher in private industry and the bigger the company, the more the execs sit around and philosophize about business which doesn't demand a whole lot of effort since they delegate the knotty issues (there are exceptions of course).

[ET]

I'll get back to this when I can....out of town tomorrow for a band competition and tied up all day Sunday, and I don't care to tackle it on a Friday night at 10:30.