Clintonomics

Firstly I need to provide The Link to the story from the NY Times regarding John McCain's economic policies.  Lets hope I relearned the HTML properly as I went in and did it myself. (Who is blogspot to tell me how I should link anything.) 

Todays post is a continuation of economic policy reviews based upon NY Times policy summaries.  Todays subject:Hilary Clinton

Good Things: Hilary is a fiscal conservative.  It says it right in the middle of the article.  Thank goodness too.

Bad Things: Government more active role in economy correcting "excesses." "They add that reducing the deficit is no longer sufficient, because today's problems have less to do with the size of the economic pie than the way it is divided."  Her belief that she really has to manage the economy.  

Really Bad Things: Response to subprime lending mess.  

Why its really bad: If "the patient" is the US economy "the patient" is not dying.  "The patient" has a cold.  Maybe even the flu.  Even if the "patient" was seriously ill the best "doctor" would be the federal reserve system.  Ill abuse the metaphor one more time to equate intervention here to over prescription of drugs with dangerous side effects. 

Could go either way: Her response to executive pay.  Recognizing that laws on executive pay would probably not do much good.  It not really that big of a problem.  Its troubling to be sure but if you reduced executive pay to levels where they would not be as troubling every American might see an extra $100 a year.  Not really a huge structural problem.  

Allowing Bush tax cuts to expire.  Good if used to reduce deficit bad if used to "pay for other proposals" 

I guess my main line of criticism is that todays inequality problems are not all that serious and that the government may not be able to solve them without creating more serious problems.  We are currently lucky enough to live in one of the freest and most prosperous eras and areas in the world and in history.  Im not at all convinced that "we are in great need of a total overhaul."  Equal opportunity should be the goal.  Not total equality.

McCaininomics

Recently my friend David challenged my support of John McCain on the grounds that McCain would not handle the economy appropriately.  Here is a link from the New York Times and my critique.

Good Things: Mandates to address global warming and Medicare, cuts to programs that are ineffective, pursuing tax reforms suggested by a bipartisan commission, reference to Theodore Roosevelt, recognizes and honestly discusses the complexities of globalization, support for alternative energy and educational programs, commitments to reduce pork barrel spending.

Bad Things: Similar to other Republican candidates he advances the idea that we can increase revenue by cutting taxes.  

Unclear: As noted in the article it is unclear whether he will in actuality be able to balance the budget, however he is certainly paying more lip-service to it than other candidates.

His assertion that cutting government spending would stimulate the economy.  To me, this sounds like he was confusing short and long term.  It is fairly clear that in the short term cutting government spending would not stimulate the economy and would in fact slow it.  However if he is trying to say that cutting government spending would improve the economy in the long term that is certainly a more defensible position.  It is an opinion that could be argued either way rather than an almost indefensible misunderstanding.

Altogether I find McCain's policy more appealing than other candidates as do a great deal of more qualified economists.  Critiques of other Candidate's economic policy to follow.

Music/ Makes the people come together/ Music / Music makes the bourgeoisie and the rebel

A good weekend brings about an interesting discussion on music.  As the discussion progressed I found myself forced to give more and more ground conceding the point that some Music could be objectively better than other music.  I was all but convinced that music was an objective practice until I looked up the word objective in the dictionary and found that one definition is "not dependent on the mind for existence."  I have held and continue to hold that the purpose of music was to express and communicate.  Expression and communication are dependent on the mind for existence.  Music is not objective.