There is, of course, a way out of this bind: produce more without consuming more. For all practical purposes, that means grabbing a bigger share of global markets, either by exporting more goods and services, or replacing some of the stuff we import by producing it at home.
Which brings us back to the story of GM's Orion plant. There are lots of reasons why American companies like GM have lost market share (yes, I wrote about currency manipulation last week), but one is that in too many industries, our labor costs are now too high to be globally competitive. Reducing wages and benefits in those industries would not only help to create and save jobs, but would also force a further reduction in consumption and living standards that is necessary to bring the U.S. economy back into balance.
The question is not whether this is an ideal outcome - obviously it's not. But for the 1,550 auto workers who would be called back to work at GM's Orion plant, the real-world choice is to either accept a 20 percent wage cut or remain unemployed with little prospect of getting another job at the old union wage. For them, and for the economy as whole, the better choice is to take the jobs at the globally competitive, market-clearing wage and hope to build back up from there.
There's also the obvious prophylactic measure: States need to stop deferring so much of their employee's compensation. The current deal for most state employees is that they get worse wages than they would in the private sector and better benefits. Politicians like to cut that deal because it means they don't have to pay for anything right now. And when the market was making everyone rich, such deals even seemed affordable. But the faith that the market will continually hand you back 10 percent a year is now shattered, and so compensation schemes that relied on it have to be rethought.
Unions might not like that, but nor will taxpayers. There are two sides to deferred compensation: costs later, and savings now. We've been paying our public employees less than we would've needed to pay them in the absence of these pension promises. That means that going forward, we're going to have to pay wages closer to the true cost of our payroll.
Capeheart: One of the things you've put a spotlight on, and to veer sharply away from infrastructure, and that was on the rash of suicides of gay youth. You gave a speech to the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner, where you named the victims. You talked about the President's commitment to making a more inclusive, tolerant, accepting country. Why did you feel it was important to deliver that message, and deliver it there?
Jarrett: Well, I think what we've seen over the last few months are some very tragic deaths of young people, our children. And avoidable deaths. They were driven to commit suicide because they were being harassed in school, and driven to do something that no child should ever be driven to do. And in many cases, the parents are doing a good job. Their families are supportive. Before I spoke at the HRC dinner, I met backstage with Tammy Aarberg, her son Andrew. These are good people. They were aware that their son was gay. They embraced him. They loved him. They supported his lifestyle choice.
[emphasis Petrelis]
If a whiteboy GOP staffer made a comment like that, I'm thinking the gay community would be out for blood. Here's Petrelis:
What an outrage to claim that the 15-year-old Aarberg made a choice to be gay, and that sexual orientation is a lifestyle. Did she get her talking points from Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council? It's doubly offensive that Capehart makes no effort to point out how dangerous Jarrett's thinking is.
Now I don't know enough to judge his choice of character (I'm sure there are Redcoat re-enactors who don't wish the Yankees lost the Revolutionary War). But I do know enough to wonder "what the hell was he thinking?" How in the wide, wide world of sports can someone get to a position where they are running for Congress and not think "Hmmm. Maybe I need to do a statement explaining why there are all these pictures of me dressed up as a SS officer." Or that a political party is so clueless that they wouldn't have an intern spend an hour doing Google-fu to check out candidates they were touting.
So the next time someone from Washington adopts a superior attitude, and suggests you should listen to them because of their superior wisdom - think about this.
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Proposition 21 restores a vehicle tax that was cut some years ago, and sets the funds aside for parks and wildlife programs.
First, I've got an immense problem with these "special fees" that pay for things that our basic taxes are supposed to pay for. Beyond that, the financial structure that we've erected in California with special fees, setasides, and voter-enacted budget restrictions.
I'd support an initiative to clear all those away and simply let the Legislature and Governor budget and if we don't like their work - fire them. We make a difficult job impossible with these kinds of restrictions (think Robocop2 and the list of rules they put on him - "Don't walk through puddles", etc.), and we give our leadership excuses for failure.
Second, this is a clear example of the cynicism of our political class and the fungibility of cash - from the "No" statement a quote from State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D) - "Why would anyone vote for the park pass (Prop 21) if we've already fully funded the state parks?"
The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.
Burying our heads in the sand would leave future generations at the mercy of potentially dangerous changes in our climate. The only sure way to mitigate these threats is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions dramatically over the next few decades. But even if we don't reduce emissions, the reality of adapting to climate change will require responses from government at all levels.
Challenges to policy proposals for how to deal with this problem should be welcome -- indeed, a good-faith debate is essential for wise public policymaking.
But the attacks against the science must stop. They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science.
... a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind...simply to bring the subject into the open.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
Here's where I struggle with the whole AGW issue. I think it's certainly possible - maybe even likely that AGW is real. I'd support, unforced, a bunch of low-cost, high-impact policy changes that would have an impact on atmospheric carbon and (incidentally) the domestic economy and national security.
But every time I turn around, the folks promoting radical action in the face of climate change based on "incontrovertible" science can't show processes that actually support - you know, through open inquiry - an absolute consensus that would support remaking the world economy (coincidentally, remaking it in ways that those making the arguments are predisposed to support for ideological reasons...).
And, sadly, Professor Lewis will never get a platform to tell his story remotely comparable to Professor Mann.
But we can tilt the balance a little bit here in the blogs.
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Today's news is all about Crusty (the nickname that local commentators have given Brown) or one of his aides muttering that eMeg is a "whore" in an inadvertently recorded conversation.
My reaction is a little contrarian on this, for two reasons - I think it's nice to see politicians when they are human (and they're all human) - and I really, really dislike the "cloak of perfection" we expect our candidates to wrap around themselves.
With evident frustration, Brown discussed the pressure he was under to refuse to reduce public safety pensions or lose law enforcement endorsements to Whitman. Months earlier, Whitman had agreed to exempt public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan.
"Do we want to put an ad out? ... That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be ... that they'll go to Whitman, and that's where they'll go because they know Whitman will give 'em, will cut them a deal, but I won't," Brown said.
So for all the folks hammering on my endorsement of him in the comments below...how do you square that circle??
Here is Brown - doing the right thing and challenging the sacred cows - and here's Meg, milking them.
Brown is a much more complex figure than he is being credited as on the right. And from my point of view - when I make my vote - it's about the bet that Brown is more likely to take on the sacred cows effectively than eMeg, who has shown both that she's likely to be ineffective, and that she's scared of them.
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I went to freshman orientation at LG's high school last week, and in his opening statement, the principal mentioned that by the end of their sophomore year, 50% of the high school kids in the nation have tried marijuana. So - de facto - it's as legal as alcohol.
Let's be clear. When I was in college, I did inhale. And when I was in grad school, I has a roommate for a year who was unstoned for - maybe - a week in the whole time we lived together. He's since written a book about his life and addictions (My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life: An Anti-Memoir
); being stoned didn't appear to work out so well for him - although we've communicated recently and he seems to be doing more than OK. But I've used him as a cautionary tale for my sons, two of whom survived high school and college so far and all of whom seem to be doing just fine.
So I'm not exactly pro-chronic. But I am someone who thinks that the drug wars are wars we should withdraw from; I'd rather live with treating more addicts and fewer shot-up gang members, and the best way to deal with the various cartels in Mexico is simply to defund them. We're trying harder and harder and accomplishing less and less about drugs using the "ban them" approach. So it's time to try something different.
Proposition 19 isn't remotely a perfect law. But it's a good-enough law that's come at the right time.
It will doubtless trigger massive court battles, and a serious political conflict; at the end of it, if we're lucky and sober enough, we'll have drug policies that actually work. As a step in getting there, I encourage you to vote "YES" on Proposition 19.
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When Prop 11 passed a few years ago, moving legislative districting in California out of the hands of the legislators and into a cumbersome but probably neutral bureaucratic process, a deal was made whereby the legislators stripped reapportionment of Congressional districts out of it. Because God forbid that Congressmembers are chosen by the voters, as opposed to choosing the voters.
Prop 20, sponsored by Charles Munger, undoes that deal, and adds Congressional districts in California to the districts that will be apportioned by the Citizen's Commission.
It's an obvious "YES".
On the other hand, a bunch of Democratic politicians and their minions got together and added Prop 27 to the ballot, which undoes Prop 11 and places redistricting back in the hands of legislators.
Which is a horrible idea. So please vote "NO" on 27.
I don't think fixing gerrymandering will fix all, or even many, of our political problems here in California. But it's a good start.
Remember, people shouldn't fear their government - government should fear the people.
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George Soros, a major funder of progressive causes, criticized President Obama today for giving in to deficit hawks amid an economic recession. "To cut government spending at a time of large-scale unemployment would be to ignore the lessons of history," he said.
Wouldn't it be nice to know what his currency positions are today vis a vis the dollar??
He made an estimated $1.1 billion on the pound; it's not hard to imagine a scenario where he invests $50 million or so to drive US policies, and by the way, takes a strong position against the dollar and makes a billion or two.
Farfetched? You decide. But he ought to disclose.
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With all the million-dollar salaries being thrown around journalism circles these days, you'd hardly know we were in the depths of a media downturn.
While much of the journalism profession is idled, redundant, bought-out and collecting unemployment, a slim layer is suddenly pocketing supersalaries as the media landscape remakes itself around rags -- and riches.
Well, isn't that special...on one hand, you could argue it's the power law effect in place; on the other it could be that the last survivors in journalism leadership - like in music - are more concerned with feathering their nests before the deluge than in figuring out how to build boats.
); being stoned didn't appear to work out so well for him - although we've communicated recently and he seems to be doing more than OK. But I've used him as a cautionary tale for my sons, two of whom survived high school and college so far and all of whom seem to be doing just fine.
