The Washington Post reports that Saddam Hussain was willing to go into exile just before the invasion for a mere $1 billion. Assume that Lawrence Lindsey's $100 billion estimate reflected the administration's optimistic best guess of the cost of war. What do you think the administration thought might have been worth more than the $99 billion difference?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/26/AR2007092602414.html?sub=AR
Doug Henwood tells me that Charles Komanoff and
the folks at the Carbon Tax Center report that
Rep. Dingell's carbon tax bill is both good and,
in their words, "terrific." Here is a link for the bill.
http://www.carbontax.org
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1997/merton-autobio.html
It isn't often that we can find examples of the economics profession behaving well, but the Wall Street Journal has chimed in reporting that economists as a whole agree that carbon taxes are the way to limit global warming, yet politicians are just as adamant in supporting the cap and trade. Nobody wants to get blamed for raising taxes. Rep. John Dingell (Dem, GM; i.e. General Motors) is still supposed to introduce a carbon just to prove how unpopular such a tax might be. Here is the link for the article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118955082446224332.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
His one-third figures seem a bit high to me, but he is right that 47 million substantially overestimates the magnitude of the problem. A serious estimate would take out both illegal immigrants and those who are eligible for Medicaid but have not applied. Those eligible for Medicaid can always enroll once they need significant medical care. In addition, I would exclude those who were offered employer-provided health insurance but declined coverage, and those that are healthy and making more than, say, $50,000 a year. These two groups are choosing to roll the dice. According to estimates I have seen, they make up more than a quarter of the uninsured.
Additionally, inflation fell from double digits in 1980 to 1.9 percent in 1986, federal revenues increased by nearly half a trillion dollars over their 1980 levels by the end of Reagan's second term, the federal budget deficit fell from 6.3 percent of GDP in 1983 to 2.9 percent in 1989, and unemployment dropped from 7.1 percent in 1980 to 5.3 percent in 1989.
McCloskey, Donald N. 1985. The Rhetoric of Economics (
140: "In seminars in economics it is common for the speaker to present a statistical result, apparently irrefutable by the rules of positive economics, yet to be met by choruses of "I can't believe it" or "It doesn't make sense." Milton Friedman's own Money Workshop at
And
Reder, Melvin W. 198
13: "Any apparent inconsistency of empirical findings with implications of the theory, or report of behavior not implied by the theory, is interpreted as anomalous and requiring one of the following actions: (i) re-examination of the data to reverse the anomalous finding; (ii) redefinition and/or augmentation of the variables in the model...; (iii) alteration of the theory to accommodate behavior inconsistent with the postulates of rationality... (iv) placing the finding on the research agenda as a researchability anomaly."
13: It is customary to confront theory with evidence. By contrast, "
18: The major objective is to convert non economists to their way of thinking.
19: "However imaginative, answers that violate any maintained hypothesis of the paradigm, are penalized as evincing failure to absorb training."
Let's try to write this so even a reporter can understand it. Oil is bought and sold in a huge market. The unit of account happens to be the dollar. This means that if the value of oil against all other commodities remains fixed, and the value of the dollar falls against other currencies, then the price of oil will be higher measured in dollars, and essentially unchanged in other currencies (there are some secondary effects - if oil is more expensive in dollars, people in the U.S. will buy less, which can make the price of oil somewhat cheaper measured in other currencies). The same would be true if oil were priced in euros, yen, bushels of corn, or gallons of peanut butter. There is no special importance to the fact that oil happens to be priced in dollars. So, let's get the story straight and stop confusing readers.Dean Baker’s point is that currency of denomination is not the issue. But let’s take a look at what Mr. Mufson wrote:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may have cooled off the credit crisis by cutting interest rates, but he may also have heated up oil prices this week. For seven consecutive business days, crude oil prices have hit new highs. Even after dropping slightly yesterday, crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange finished the week at $81.62 a barrel, up a third since Jan. 1 and not far short of the inflation-adjusted peak set in January 1981 … Lower interest rates have also undercut an already weakened dollar, which reached $1.41 against the euro. Since crude oil is priced in dollars, a weak dollar makes oil cheaper abroad and high prices in dollars more sustainable.
"In spite of the high [gasoline] prices, we have still seen growth in the United States," said Rob Routs, executive director of downstream at Royal Dutch Shell. He said that the United States has been importing about 1 million barrels a day of refined products
Okay, you want to raise taxes on the rich. I get that. But what do you want to do with the money? At different times, it seems, you want to: (1) Fund universal health care: (2) Give a tax cut to the middle class; (3) Reduce the long-term fiscal gap. Which is it? … No one really thinks you can achieve all three of the above goals in any significant degree and pay for them with only tax hikes on the rich. When it comes down to choosing among the three goals, which one would you pick?
But eliminating the AMT would be extremely expensive, costing $100 billion in 2010 alone. Giuliani told the 700-member audience of the Northern Virginia Technology Council that he wants to cap the tax, and perhaps eventually eliminate it altogether. "Over time we can figure out how to eliminate it. ... If we were going to eliminate it, though, we'd have to balance it with additional tax cuts," Giuliani said, leaving confused expressions on his audience. "That might be by making the Bush tax cuts permanent."
Kevin Drum calls Rudy a buffoon:
Even a local Democrat who heard the speech was willing to give Rudy the benefit of the doubt on this: "I do think he may have misspoke," said Gerry Connolly, the chairman of Fairfax County's Board of Supervisors. Please. Just for once, can we hold this guy responsible for what he says? Sure, he misspoke, but he misspoke because he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and blurted out the first thing that came to mind: namely that reducing taxes is the answer to every question. Nobody with even the vaguest idea of what it meant to eliminate the AMT would say that it had to be balanced by reducing other taxes.
Kevin is right. But he’s no less of a buffoon than Mitt Romney. It’s fine for Greg to ask his question to Democrats but when is he going to do the same to the candidate he seems to support?
If this were the total story, the US economy would have been moribund since the late 1990s when the deficit really took off. This fraction represents income that leaves the country rather than making purchases that would support domestic employment.