Really? Today I got to work on a subway that was built and maintained by the government. The alternative was to take a cab on a road that is built and maintained by the government - or walk down the sidewalk which is once again, maintained by the city. I'm sitting here at the office surrounded by people who went to public schools at some point. Nobody is robbing me in my office because there is a government sponsored police force deterring such. At lunch I will go eat food, and likely not get e.coli poisoning, due in part ot government safety regulations. I don't know, they seemed pretty effective at the things I needed them to do today, and there are substantial inherent economic barriers - given that most of the benefits I am using are the product of positive externalities - to non-governement being able to accomplish the same thing.
Typical Progressive spin. Taking the accomplishment of government in providing classical functions of government (infrastructure and protection), and assuming that they'd do just as good a job at non-required functions despite tremendous evidence to the contrary.
the incredibly shallow pretense of economic understanding that is emblematic of typical Libertarian spin never ceases to amaze me - pretend that all markets are perfectly efficient always no matter what despite the fact that they never have been and never will be - because many markets are structurally impossible to be made so.
Actually it does - even the most devoted libertarian scholar at U of C knows and recognizes the problems of externalities - something that appears to be beyond the conception of the average Ron Paul yokel.
I think I've stated that I'm not a real philosophical libertarian. I do understand that flawed people make flawed decisions. But in as heavily regulated state as we have currently, there are few markets where reducing government interference (unless it has to do with honest accounting reporting, in which we have a long way to go) wouldn't create a significantly better long-term economic environment.
Fair enough - your issue seems to be more with the progressive/liberal model than anything specific to Obama. I think that's a whole seperate and reasonable debate. My biggest concern with Obama remains that he'll have a strongly Democratic Congress - I wish he could win but NOT have coattails and have only a slightly Dem Congress, but I don't see that really being possible at this point.
I think Obama would have a strongly supportive Senate. On the other hand, I think he's going to find the "Blue Dogs" in the House to be a particularly strong obstacle to a lot of his proposals. Democrats took back the House by running on fiscal responsibility and against corruption. Some of the freshman class of 2006 won by positioning themselves right of their Republican counterpart. The new House Democrats moved the House markedly to the right. While they'll be more complicit than, for example, the 1994 and 1996 Congresses were with Clinton, I don't think they'll stand for radical expansion of the Federal Government.
I think Sam is talking mainly about markets which involve externalities. There are certainly things that everyone needs that can best be delivered by the government. I'm curious what makes things like health care, unlike defense and transportation, "non-required" in your view. All are essential to everyday life, and the purchase of each by an individual benefits society as well. Markets are powerful things. People who are motivated by profit will work hard, will insist that those working for them do the same, and will only stay in business if they are particularly efficient in producing their particular product. However, there are markets where this just doesn't work because of externalities. Since people make decisions based on how they themselves will be affected, as opposed to society at large, markets involving a lot of externalities often end up with a less than optimal result. For instance, consider pollution generated when people consume fossil fuels. Suppose (1) that the impact on air quality and the climate that would be caused by everyone else in society reducing their use of fossil fuels would be as good for you as having $1,000; (2) that the smaller impact you yourself would have by reducing your use of fossil fuels would be worth $10 to you; and (3) that being able to consume as much fossil fuels as you like is worth $500 to you. Now, the best thing for you would be to let everyone else agree to cut back while you keep consuming energy at the same rate (worth $1,500 total to you). However, that's also the best thing for everyone else to do, so in the absence of an enforced agreement throughout society (law) to reduce consumption of fuels, noone (very few people, anyway) will choose to cut back on their own. Instead, people will continue consuming at the same rate (worth $500 to you). If, however, the government steps in and enforces limits on fossil fuel consumption, everyone in society will have to cut back (worth $1,010 to you). This is the most efficient solution in this example, and it can only come about through government regulation. The same principles apply in varying degrees to any market involving significant externalities.
The class of 2006 was generally progressive. That's a weird spin by the GOP. Furthermore, many of the Blue Dogs were chased out of the House by Rove and Delay who wanted good Repubs in those seats. Hence the redistricting in TX that sent a bunch of conservative Dems into retirement and the targeting of Dems in the South that did the same. One of the legacies of the Republican approach over the last 20 years is that there are significantly fewer elected officials comfortable in that middle range because they are either gone or the Repubs have shifted the line so far to the right that they can't in good conscience stay in the "middle." They are more solutions based than the Watergate class, but that doesn't mean they lean right... it just means they're not ideologues. For example, Heath Shuler, winner of a right-leaning district in NC is a member of the Blue Dog Caucus, which means he supports a balanced budget... not a radical position within the Dem Party though obviously one in the GOP. He's also for raising the minimum wage, worker's rights, the environment (including working to find global warming solutions), sustainable energy, and more funding for National Parks. He wants our troops home, supports SCHIP, wants a Patient's Bill of Rights, an expansion of Medicare, wants increased funding for Head Start, and doesn't think NCLB works. He's probably the most conservative member of the 2006 class, but also significantly to the left of who he replaced and with the exception of a possible New Englander or two, is to the left of every Repub currently in Congress. Again, it's a weird spin by the GOP... I guess they are so entrapped by the idea of "conservatism" that it's OK for Republicans to lose as long as "conservatism" does not, even if they have to pretend that the crushing defeat of "conservatism" didn't really happen.
and here's the source: http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/ [rquoter]Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007 By Brian Friel, Richard E. Cohen and Kirk Victor, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008 Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., the other front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, also shifted to the left last year. She ranked as the 16th-most-liberal senator in the 2007 ratings, a computer-assisted analysis that used 99 key Senate votes, selected by NJ reporters and editors, to place every senator on a liberal-to-conservative scale in each of three issue categories. In 2006, Clinton was the 32nd-most-liberal senator. In their yearlong race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton have had strikingly similar voting records. Of the 267 measures on which both senators cast votes in 2007, the two differed on only 10. "The policy differences between Clinton and Obama are so slight they are almost nonexistent to the average voter," said Richard Lau, a Rutgers University political scientist. How They Scored But differences define campaigns. The yeas and nays matter. And in a Senate in which party-line votes are the rule, the rare exceptions help to show how two senators who seemed like ideological twins in 2007 were not actually identical. Obama and Clinton were more like fraternal policy twins, NJ's vote ratings show. As the battles for the 2008 Democratic and Republican presidential nominations have raged, the candidates have blasted each other for taking positions that are out of line with party dogma. Obama has repeatedly challenged Clinton's 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war, labeling her foreign policy "Bush/Cheney-lite"; Clinton has pointed to Obama's "present" votes on the abortion issue in the Illinois Legislature to raise questions about his support for abortion rights. Meanwhile, Republicans have battled over the strength of their conservative credentials on taxes, immigration, and national security. When the campaign shifts into the general election, however, the two nominees may each seek to cast their opponent as a party extremist. During the 2004 presidential campaign, for instance, Republicans attacked Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as an extreme liberal, including by pointing to his ranking as the most liberal senator in NJ's 2003 vote ratings. Such lines of attack are already apparent in this year's race. At a January 16 Republican National Committee meeting, Karl Rove, President Bush's former campaign architect, called Obama "a straight-down-the-line United States Senate national Democrat." Rove pointedly added: "Nonpartisan ratings say that he has a more liberal and a more straight-party voting record than Senator Clinton does. Pretty hard to do." How the eventual nominee handles criticisms of his or her voting record could help determine the next president of the United States. Contacted on January 30 to respond to Obama's scores in NJ's vote ratings, his campaign said that the liberal ranking belies the public support he has been receiving. "As Senator Obama travels across the country, and as we've seen in the early contests, he's the one candidate who's shown the ability to appeal to Republicans and the ability to appeal to independents," said campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki. But she also said that it's important to note the differences between Obama and Clinton on key issues. "The Democratic Party needs to nominate someone who shows a clear contrast with where Republicans are, on issues like the war in Iraq and the economy and the influence of lobbyists on Washington," Psaki said. "One of the reasons he's received such strong support is because he's drawn the starkest contrast on those issues." Asked whether the liberal ranking could be used against Obama in the campaign, Psaki said that voters appreciate that he is up front about his positions on issues, even if those positions don't line up with their own. "Part of the reason he's appealing to some Republicans and independents is, he has that authenticity," she said. "He's very clear from the beginning that we can't do this alone and we need to work across party lines and focus more on uniting than on dividing." Asked about Clinton's relatively moderate placement in NJ's rankings, one of her campaign advisers responded, "Her voting record as a whole shows she takes a comprehensive, balanced approach toward policy. Senator Clinton looks at the broader picture. She tries to see the challenges from not only the blue-collar worker's face, but also the white-collar worker's, not only Wall Street but also Main Street, and from that tries to put together a policy that's best for America as a whole." The Clinton adviser said that the Democratic candidates' shift to the left reflects the two parties' stark splits over Bush's policies. Asked how the differences between Obama's and Clinton's voting records have played on the campaign trail, the adviser emphasized that the two have not differed over the past year on the critical issue of the Iraq war. "The most interesting thing of this exercise is... it simply looks at the votes," the adviser said. "Did they vote yes? Did they vote no? What did they vote? For the most part, Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have identical voting records on Iraq." The Yeas And Nays Indeed, the similarities in Obama's and Clinton's voting records last year were extensive. Both supported most measures aimed at withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Both supported comprehensive immigration legislation including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Both voted to support most Democratic positions on health care, education, energy, and the budget, and both voted against most Republican positions on those topics. But NJ's vote ratings are designed to draw distinctions that illuminate the differences among lawmakers. The calculations ranked senators relative to each other based on the 99 key votes and assigned scores in three areas: economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy. (House members were scored in a separate set of rankings. The full results for both chambers will be published in our March 8 issue.) On foreign policy, for example, Obama's liberal score of 92 and conservative score of 7 indicate that he was more liberal in that issue area than 92 percent of the senators and more conservative than 7 percent. Clinton was more liberal than 83 percent of the senators on foreign policy and more conservative than 16 percent. The ratings do not mean that she voted with liberals 83 percent of the time, or that she was 83 percent "correct" from a liberal perspective. The ratings system -- devised in 1981 under the direction of William Schneider, a political analyst and commentator, and a contributing editor to National Journal -- also assigns "composite" scores, an average of the members' issue-based scores. In 2007, Obama's composite liberal score of 95.5 was the highest in the Senate. Rounding out the top five most liberal senators last year were Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., with a composite liberal score of 94.3; Joseph Biden, D-Del., with a 94.2; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with a 93.7; and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., with a 92.8. Clinton, meanwhile, tied as the 16th-most-liberal senator in 2007 with Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; both had a composite liberal score of 82.8. Clinton's home-state colleague, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was the 15th-most-liberal, with a composite score of 83. Members who missed more than half of the votes in any of the three issue categories did not receive a composite score in NJ's ratings. (This rule was imposed after Kerry was ranked the most liberal senator in our 2003 ratings despite having missed more than half of the votes in two categories.) Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the only other senator whose presidential candidacy survived the initial round of primaries and caucuses this year, did not vote frequently enough in 2007 to draw a composite score. He missed more than half of the votes in both the economic and foreign-policy categories. On social issues, which include immigration, McCain received a conservative score of 59. (McCain's composite scores from his prior years in the Senate, published in our March 2007 vote ratings issue, are available as a PDF.) Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the lone House member still in the presidential race, had a composite conservative score of 60.2, making him the 178th-most-conservative lawmaker in that chamber in 2007. His libertarian views placed him close to the center of the House in both the social issues and foreign-policy categories. He registered more conservative on economic issues. Overall in NJ's 2007 ratings, Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 key votes on which he voted; Clinton voted the liberal position 77 of 82 times. Obama garnered perfect liberal scores in both the economic and social categories. His score in the foreign-policy category was nearly perfect, pulled down a notch by the only conservative vote that he cast in the ratings, on a Republican-sponsored resolution expressing the sense of Congress that funding should not be cut off for U.S. troops in harm's way. The Senate passed the resolution 82-16 with the support of both Obama and Clinton. The 16 opponents included mostly liberals, such as Sens. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Sanders. Clinton took the conservative position four other times in NJ's 2007 ratings. (See how Obama and Clinton voted in the three issue categories in this PDF.) The one that registered the loudest on the campaign trail was a vote that she cast in favor of an amendment sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., that called on the Bush administration to reduce Iranian influence on Iraq and to designate the Iranian revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization. The "sense of the Senate" amendment was approved 76-22. Obama missed that vote, but said he would have voted no. In fact, on the campaign trail, he criticized Clinton for her position, arguing that the Bush administration could use the Senate vote to justify waging war on Iran. "I strongly differ with Senator Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment," Obama wrote in an opinion article in The Union Leader, published in Manchester, N.H. To combat that criticism, Clinton signed a letter to Bush urging him not to attack Iran and co-sponsored legislation requiring the president to seek congressional approval before an attack. [/rquoter]
The IRT Company and the BMT Corporation started as private ventures. A significant number of the tracks are still those that were built by the private companies. After the subways were built up, the city government decided to take them over. The same is true of the earlier pneumatic subway lines which were privately built as early as the 1870's. The city government entered the picture after the technology and model were proven and reaped the rewards in the 1940's. Without the private sector, market forces, and competition, there would be no subways. The same is true of the subway systems in Europe. They all were started and built up as private companies. This is a poor example of what you are trying to prove.
I think you might be alone calling Goolsbee an "f'ing idiotic clown". From his CV: EDUCATION: Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 1995 M.A., Economics, Yale University, May 1991 B.A., Economics, Yale University, summa c*m laude and with distinction, May 1991 HONORS AND AWARDS Fulbright Scholar, 2006-2007 Named one of the 40 Under 40, Crain's Chicago Business, 2006 PELS Lecture, Harvard University, 2006 Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism, Society of Professional Journalists/Chicago Headline Club, 2005 Selected one of the Financial Times' six Gurus of the Future/Best Under 40, September, 2005 Named one of the Young Global Leaders, World Economic Forum, Switzerland, 2005 Fathauer Distinguished Lecture, University of Arizona, 2003 Named one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow, World Economic Forum, Switzerland, 2002 Lumina Award for Pioneering Research in E-Commerce (with co-author Jeffrey Brown), Global Reinsurance, Monte Carlo, 2001 Ranked as one of the "Leading Academics in Technology," i-Street Magazine, 2001 Centel Foundation/Robert P. Reuss Scholar, 2000 Selected as one of the 30 Under 30 ("up-and-comers under 30 in Chicago area business"), Chicago Sun-Times, 1999 William M. Massee Prize (best academic grade record in economics), Yale 1991 De Forest Prize (best public speaker), Yale 1991.
Those ratings are done by Bill Schneider, CNN Commentator but also AEI Fellow. It's no coincidence that they came out after Obama was looking strong and it's no accident that Kerry was the "Most Liberal" Senator of 2003 even though his previous ranking had him well below that in all his other years.
lol yep looks like he meets BHU's criteria. Nice list of degrees - his idea is still stupid, though (and scary). I was calling BHU the idiotic clown, by the way
I'm not directly responding to SamFisher because he's throwing a red herring out, and knows it. Your example is certainly theoretically valid, but it's nearly impossible to find a real-world situation that matches it. Many of the "substantial inherent economic barriers" that he's talking about are products of various legislation. Some of them such as safety and/or environmental regulations are mostly positive in intent. Others, such as ethanol requirements and corn subsidies, are products of pure corporatism. The major exception to this is infrastructure, in which the largest barrier is personal property rights. And he's right. A fully functioning infrastructure is only achievable by a government of some sort or a public/private partnership.
The idea referenced in the article was Goolsbee's, though. I was just pointing out that he is a highly respected "young" economist at U of C. Sorry to get in the way of your frivolity.
