Paul Krugman: The Deficit is Too Small

[moda0306]

Unemployment is by its very nature unvoluntary.  Voluntary unemployment isn't even counted.  It's a measure of a structural misalignment in the economy, either real (people realize they want very different things than what the economy is producing, and people have to get trained to do something different), or monetary (people don't have enough confetti on their balance sheets to afford stuff, so they spend less, and people lose jobs... etc, etc).  Our curren predicament is probably a solid mix of both monetary and structural problems (another area I disagree with Krugman, who thinks we are in a demand-only mess).

It's a product of a monetized economy.  Recessions happen.  Malinvestment happens hugely as a result of private miscalculations of what everyone else is doing and what everyone else wants.  Let's not forget that business owners aren't Gods.  They are simply creatively trying to gauge what people around them value, and trying to produce it.  This can cause plenty of self-fulfilling malinvestment.  Trying to blame it all on government is a bit ridiculous.

You call it "artificial demand," but without the government jobs, how do you propose those 10,000 unemployed people get their money to buy the things that "smart" business owners are selling? The "smart" business owners aren't going to hire those people just to create their own demand.

Show me an example of an economy that was dominated by government supplied jobs and handouts that has been more productive than one where free markets ran things and people figured out their own path to work. These are not easy decisions, but when deciding between two equally bad options (10,000 unemployed vs. 10,000 government subsidized jobs), I'll take the less spending because it has fewer long-term consequences.

Stimulus spending just provides an academic smokescreen for politicians to point to so they can buy votes and protect their pet projects in their districts. It is not doing what many think it is doing and in the long-run it is quite damaging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... per_capita

I'd wager most, if not all the countries on this list with higher per-capita GDP numbers than the U.S. have national healthcare systems, and other social safety nets that by your logic should cause huge problems.  Most of them also have very government-run infrastructure compared to the U.S.

I'm not saying if we just do like they do we'll have a more productive AND fair economy, but your hard and fast rules about government being completely incompetent and a breeding ground for unproductivity, moral hazards, and misallcated resources are a bit over-stated, it would appear.

[Gumby]

So there's nothing that unemployed people can do to improve their situations? Their best hope is to sit around, waiting for the government to boost aggregate demand so optimistic businesses will hire more labor?

Pretty much. Yes, an individual can take out a loan and learn new skills or move to a place with better prospects. But, that can't really happen on a macro level. Private credit can't solve everything

"Welcome to Gumby's school of self-improvement! Lesson one: maybe you can pull yourself meagerly towards a better life, but the student sitting to your right probably can't, and the odds are against more than a few of you succeeding. Really, you'd better wait for the government to fix the economy."

You should write a spiritual successor to Browne's How I found Freedom In An Unfree World. Maybe something like How I Came To Realize That Macro Stacked The Deck Against Me And Found Peace Waiting For The Prevailing Conditions To Change.

Funny how you still haven't offered any good macro solutions yet. Oh well.

[craigr]

And you're ignoring the fact that the US government is the world's largest employer — employing 4.4 million people in 2011. The US Department of Defense alone employes roughly 1 in 10 US citizens. That massive government spending finds its way into corporate profits. The fact of the matter is that the private sector would be far less profitable without government spending (see previous chart).

The DHS is now trying to buy 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and armored personnel carriers. Yes I'm sure it's great work for the ammo producers, etc. But where is my benefit? Same thing for UAV spending. No doubt the UAV makers are happy to know they will be able to sell drones to patrol the skies of American cities in the future, but how does that help me? The NSA is building a massive data center in Utah (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/0 ... atacenter/). Great work for IT people and mass storage providers. But again long-term why does this benefit the average citizen to know the spying capability is being enhanced?

What is so damaging about giving people jobs if the jobs are needed? We don't need teachers? We don't need people building highways? I don't understand why you think it's productive for people to be unemployed.

See above. Government spending is frequently defended with the teachers and roads argument. But that's *not* what really happens. The money is used for very nefarious and counter-productive purposes. If they were only hiring teachers and building roads it's one thing. But even then there's a limit to how many teachers and roads you need. What you really end up with though is much different.

And for every job the government gives in spending, they are likely taking away a private sector job through increased taxes or regulatory side effects. In fact, it's probably taking away more than one job each. Because government spending is very inefficient, it likely is costing at least 1.X jobs for each 1 job they created.

Governement doesn't create jobs because they don't really have a product to sell that people want. They have to take a dollar from someone to give it to someone else (minus the handling fee). Of course we could say they are creating the dollar out of thin air and it has no effect. But I'd just say that because of how that dollar is spent in aggregate it most definitely is having an effect, and it's not a good one long-term.

[Kshartle]

Or it borrows the savings of others (Asians and non-fed bondholders) and spends it on bombs and welfare. Man we could sure use some more of those! Leave it to the government to figure out what we need instead of businessmen. And those teachers.....just awesome the product they are pumping out. Way better than a market driven education system could do. Bravo government! Bravo. It's a wonder the Soviet Union isn't still going strong with the government supplying all those great jobs.

Jobs are useless. They are the neccessary evil to get production. We don't need more jobs. We need productivity. Money is useless without production. You say where will people get money without jobs? Well......Ben could drop it from helicoptors. It's obvious that it wouldn't help though. More money doesn't help. Only credit borne of real savings helps. Work sucks. Jobs suck. We want the stuff from the jobs. The private sector is motivated by profit. That means there's a very good chance that actual production will come from the "jobs". With the government....productivity is more like an accident.

[Pointedstick]

Funny how you still haven't offered any good macro solutions yet. Oh well.

Like I said earlier, I actually would approve of the government paying people to build legitimately useful infrastructure.

I'm just not optimistic about that actually happening in the real world. There are lots of things the government could do really really well in theory. In the real world, it usually cocks them up, often with disastrous consequences to financial stability, freedom, and even life and limb.

[Gumby]

Funny how you still haven't offered any good macro solutions yet. Oh well.

Like I said earlier, I actually would approve of the government paying people to build legitimately useful infrastructure.

I'm just not optimistic about that actually happening in the real world. There are lots of things the government could do really really well in theory. In the real world, it usually cocks them up, often with disastrous consequences to financial stability, freedom, and even life and limb.

Agreed. But, I don't think we all need to make all-or-none arguments. I mean, if we can agree that some government spending is good (i.e. teachers and roads) then I think it makes sense to support that kind of spending.

[craigr]

I'm not saying if we just do like they do we'll have a more productive AND fair economy, but your hard and fast rules about government being completely incompetent and a breeding ground for unproductivity, moral hazards, and misallcated resources are a bit over-stated, it would appear.

Comparing across countries is impossible because of cultural differences and population sizes. The culture of a country like Sweden is *vastly* different than the culture of a place like Mexico (or even modern day U.S.), etc. What is going to work in Sweden is not going to work in many other places. But even in Sweden when I was visiting in 2011 you hear a lot of people discussing government problems there with the health care system, etc. Plus, the taxing system is different in how the money is collected and distributed. It's not like the U.S. at all.

With that said, there is a reason why government is the butt of so many jokes. You don't hear people making fun of Coca Cola, Cisco and Nike simply because successful companies rarely do very dumb things. Because when they do, they lose money and go bust and nobody has to worry about them any more. With the government, they just ask for more money to continue doing dumb things and nobody wants to cut them off.

[Pointedstick]

I think we can come to an agreement.

Side A says: "Government could employ people productively to boost aggregate demand and often does in many other countries."

Side B says "In this country, arguments that government could employ people productively to boost aggregate demand are usually the justification for buying really scary things that I think you and I both agree are bad."

I feel like these arguments are reconcilable. Side A needs to admit that in reality, most government spending does *not* wind up building infrastructure and has to figure out why. Side B needs to acknowledge Side A's argument that if it were possible, it could work, and in other places, it often does work better.

So why is the government able to productively build stuff in other countries? Why in the United States do they mainly stockpile military technology to use against foreigners or domestic citizens?

Are we electing the wrong kinds of leaders?

Are we the problem?

[moda0306]

So there's nothing that unemployed people can do to improve their situations? Their best hope is to sit around, waiting for the government to boost aggregate demand so optimistic businesses will hire more labor?

Pretty much. Yes, an individual can take out a loan and learn new skills or move to a place with better prospects. But, that can't really happen on a macro level. Private credit can't solve everything

"Welcome to Gumby's school of self-improvement! Lesson one: maybe you can pull yourself meagerly towards a better life, but the student sitting to your right probably can't, and the odds are against more than a few of you succeeding. Really, you'd better wait for the government to fix the economy."

You should write a spiritual successor to Browne's How I found Freedom In An Unfree World. Maybe something like How I Came To Realize That Macro Stacked The Deck Against Me And Found Peace Waiting For The Prevailing Conditions To Change.

We're not arguing about what an unemployed citizen should try to do with their spare time, here... I'm sure both Gumby and I would agree that they should TRY to look for a job or make an income.

We're arguing about what the government should do with the knowledge that there is a monetary Mexican Standoff occuring in the private sector.

I promise I'll try not to make libertarians out to be cold-hearted monsters if you can refrain from making Gumby and I out to be welfare kings.

Oh, and one of the things I like best about HB and HIFFIAUW (catch that? ) is that for the most part he keeps his lamenting about government crimes at a minimum, and simply addresses what we as individuals should do to make ourselves more free.  You could be a communist and read that book and walk away in a great state of mind, though not have changed your opinions on the role of government.

[craigr]

Are we the problem?

Probably. But just like doing a drug intervention, you have to wait for the person to hit rock bottom before they figure it all out and want to change.

[moda0306]

I'm not saying if we just do like they do we'll have a more productive AND fair economy, but your hard and fast rules about government being completely incompetent and a breeding ground for unproductivity, moral hazards, and misallcated resources are a bit over-stated, it would appear.

Comparing across countries is impossible because of cultural differences and population sizes. The culture of a country like Sweden is *vastly* different than the culture of a place like Mexico (or even modern day U.S.). What is going to work in Sweden is not going to work in many other places. But even in Sweden when I was visiting in 2011 you hear a lot of people discussing government problems there with the health care system, etc. Plus, the taxing system is different in how the money is collected and distributed. It's not like the U.S. at all.

With that said, there is a reason why government is the butt of so many jokes. You don't hear people making fun of Coca Cola, Cisco and Nike simply because successful companies rarely do very dumb things. Because when they do, they lose money and go bust and nobody has to worry about them any more. With the government, they just ask for more money to continue doing dumb things and nobody wants to cut them off.

Craig,

You asked someone to essentially identify countries with "big government" that also were more productive than countries that were more capitalist in nature.

I think I did that.

Though I totally agree with your statement about culture.  However, a healthy respect for private property isn't the only cultural trait I think should be valued... especially when that has manifested itself in not only taking vast acreage as  your own property from nomadic cultures, but actually holding that human beings are property.

There are, of course, cultural factors.  But some countries have made their own bed in terms of not having a desirable cultural dynamic in some areas.  Of course when you have a country (or, more specifically, a system of states) that engaged in the organized enslavement of an entire race that makes up 40% of the population of a given region, and then get to a point where you free them, there are going to be HUGE cultural, crime, poverty, distrust, resentment, hatred, family, safety-net, and other issues that a country like Norway is NEVER going to see.

However, I don't think that's an excuse to say we should abandon principals of providing a floor of human dignity... in fact this is probably more of a reason to engage in those kinds of safety nets... or at least that's my take on it.  I'm not saying "we're not doing enough already" so much as saying that slashing spending in these areas will lead to some pretty crude adjustments for many families.

[Pointedstick]

If you want me to take off my libertarian anarcho-capitalist private society advocate hat and put on my Iron Fist Statist Central Planning Dictator hat here's my off-the-cuff plan:

* Offer a dollar-for-dollar government match for all private debt repayments of existing loans. You repay $500 and uncle sam chips in $500 as well.
* Eliminate all federal government lending activity.
* Eliminate all laws mandating behavior re: lending and borrowing. I.e. no telling banks they must or cannot lend to such-and-such person/group.
* Replace all federal taxes with a 10% flat tax with no deductions, period.
* Replace Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and all other transfer payment programs with a guaranteed government payment of $6,000 per person per year. Enough to live a spartan life, but not enough for any real luxury. $1000 extra for each under-18 dependent you claim.

[moda0306]

If you want me to take off my libertarian hat and put on my Iron Fist Statist Central Planner hat here's my off-the-cuff plan:

* Offer 1 dollar-for-dollar government match for all private debt repayments of existing loans. You repay $500 and uncle sam chips in $500 as well.
* Eliminate all federal government lending activity.
* Eliminate all laws mandating behavior re: lending and borrowing. I.e. no telling banks they must or cannot lend to such-and-such person/group.
* Replace all federal taxes with a 10% flat tax with no deductions, period.
* Replace Medicare, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and all other transfer payment programs with a guaranteed government payment of $6,000 per person per year. Enough to live a spartan life, but not enough for any real luxury. $1000 extra for each under-18 dependent you claim.

Oh this is fun...

What if I take out a loan to pay off a gov't matched loan?  Who wouldn't empty out almost all of their wealth to pay off any loan with this deal?  Wouldn't this cause MASSIVE imbalances in the markets?  Wouldn't it quickly get schemed so people could maximize it? (I'm already trying in my head)

If someone's currently getting $20k per year in SS and that's their only income, how is a $6,000 check going to keep them out of poverty?  How is $6,000 going to help a family pay for healthcare bills if someone in their family is uninsurable?  How is $6,000 per year going to be anywhere close to what someone who's unemployed needs to keep them out of poverty?  How's $6,000 going to pay for health insurance when someone retires if they're uninsurable?

I like "citizens dividend" type of ideas, but in the end they don't really solve the problems you're trying to solve in terms of risks that might completely decimate some people's finances.

[Pointedstick]

Wow, turns out macro is harder than it looks, huh?

That's exactly why I don't trust the government to get it right. With something as complicated as a whole economy's worth of human reactions to account for, I don't think it can be gotten right.

[moda0306]

Wow, turns out macro is harder than it looks, huh?

That's exactly why I don't trust the government to get it right. With something as complicated as a whole economy's worth of human reactions to account for, I don't think it can be gotten right.

I really don't think it's that hard at this point in time:

- Payroll tax holiday until unemployment is under 5%
- Rail and infrastructure projects galore
- Expand home energy credits
- Allow people to pull from their 401(k) tax and penalty free to put their homes into a refinance to lower rates.  Create refi program where BANKS will match whatever payment the homeowner makes to get them to 90% LTV.  This way both sides pay and have motivation to come to the table... not just abandon homes.  I'm sure there's ways they'd get around this, too, but I think I could tweak this to work really well.
- Some kind of adjustment on student loans based on income potential... I think this is currently being done or pushed through.
- I'm not going to touch healthcare.  I personally think a single-payer program would probably work best but let's leave that for another day.  Obviously this is hugely important... I just don't think this is an easy discussion.

I'd add some more tax reform to this but to be honest this would get us 90% of the way to a solid recovery, IMO.

[Pointedstick]

I really don't think it's that hard at this point in time:

- Payroll tax holiday until unemployment is under 5%
- Rail and infrastructure projects galore
- Expand home energy credits
- Allow people to pull from their 401(k) tax and penalty free to put their homes into a refinance to lower rates.  Create refi program where BANKS will match whatever payment the homeowner makes to get them to 90% LTV.  This way both sides pay and have motivation to come to the table... not just abandon homes.  I'm sure there's ways they'd get around this, too, but I think I could tweak this to work really well.
- Some kind of adjustment on student loans based on income potential... I think this is currently being done or pushed through.
- I'm not going to touch healthcare.  I personally think a single-payer program would probably work best but let's leave that for another day.  Obviously this is hugely important... I just don't think this is an easy discussion.

I'd add some more tax reform to this but to be honest this would get us 90% of the way to a solid recovery, IMO.

All of that sounds very hard to me. It has to be bipartisan enough to pass congress at all; it has to avoid being being twisted nonsensically or captured by special interests in the fight to get support for it; the bills comprising it have to be competently written so they can be interpreted sanely by the bureaucrats who implement the new policies; the bills all have to be passed together or else parts that rely on other parts become irrational and produce perverse results; and then the new policies written into law have to be implemented in a sensible manner without any turf wars between departments and agencies, all within the specified timeframe.

Your ideas aren't the problem. You're a very smart guy, and I think many of them could work well. The problem is the political process that has to turn those ideas into policy. IMHO that's the biggest weakness with MR-based policy discussions of what the government could do to help the economy. These carefully-tuned technocratic macro policies will be written and implemented by idiots beholden to voters, lobbying groups, corporations, and unions, not well-respected econ professors whose tenured full professorships give them total job security.

[Kshartle]

With the government, they just ask for more money to continue doing dumb things and nobody wants to cut them off.

People all over the world want their governments cut off, always have. And governments don't ask.

[Kshartle]

Here's a solution: Humans should trade instead of using violence to get what they want. When people around us use violence, call them out for what they are: violent crimminals. Stop calling them governments and pretending they are doing you a favor when they take a dollar and give you back ten cents.

[craigr]

You asked someone to essentially identify countries with "big government" that also were more productive than countries that were more capitalist in nature.

I think I did that.

You found countries that show a higher GDP per capita. That does not mean more productive (nor even better place to live). Qatar is high on the list, but that is almost entirely due to oil wealth, not how productive they are. Macau makes the list as well (not really a country), but that's due to casino wealth which is a cannibalistic enterprise. It produces nothing.

However, a healthy respect for private property isn't the only cultural trait I think should be valued... especially when that has manifested itself in not only taking vast acreage as  your own property from nomadic cultures, but actually holding that human beings are property.

What human society throughout history hasn't done those things? Even tribes in the U.S. held slaves of other tribe members they fought and conquered in combat (pacific NW tribes especially, they ran slave camps in some cases). Assuming of course they didn't just slaughter each other entirely. Asian cultures conquered and held slaves (and slaughtered). African cultures did as well  (and slaughtered). European cultures did  (and slaughtered). South Pacific cultures did  (and slaughtered). Middle Eastern cultures did (and slaughtered). It's not unique to anyone and no culture should have to bear this original sin forever.

However, I don't think that's an excuse to say we should abandon principals of providing a floor of human dignity... in fact this is probably more of a reason to engage in those kinds of safety nets... or at least that's my take on it.  I'm not saying "we're not doing enough already" so much as saying that slashing spending in these areas will lead to some pretty crude adjustments for many families.

Show me results of the social spending in these areas that over the last 50 years has decreased poverty, improved educational outcomes, reduced markers of future poverty likelihood (like single mother households) and has generally resulted in the originally intended outcome? Where are the results? There may be debatable results here and there, but overall the markers across the board in these areas are all almost entirely dismal and get worse each year. The floor of human dignity is lowered when you do things for people and they aren't enabled to do it for themselves.

And ultimately that's why this debate won't be resolved. Fundamentally we just won't agree on the solution. I think handouts and big government can only make things worse because that's always what it has done anywhere else it's been tried.

[Pointedstick]

Something else I'm noticing that we might be able to agree on is that it's bad when government micromanages the minutiae of people's affairs because it stifles innovation and lowers GDP, which are things we all want more of. If we're talking about macro, government should not try to mandate or restrain individuals' micro behaviors.

So how's this for points of agreement:

1. Government should not deficit-spend to wage aggressive wars
2. Government should not deficit-spend to oppress its own people
3. Government should not micro-manage the minutiae of people's affairs
4. If government could tax and spend counter-cyclically in a competant and agile manner, it could dampen the impact of downturns

[Gumby]

You found countries that show a higher GDP per capita. That does not mean more productive (nor even better place to live). Qatar is high on the list, but that is almost entirely due to oil wealth, not how productive they are. Macau makes the list as well (not really a country), but that's due to casino wealth which is a cannibalistic enterprise. It produces nothing.

Just curious, but how are we defining "productivity"? Like this?...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... our_worked

[RuralEngineer]

Craig,

You asked someone to essentially identify countries with "big government" that also were more productive than countries that were more capitalist in nature.

I think I did that.

Though I totally agree with your statement about culture.  However, a healthy respect for private property isn't the only cultural trait I think should be valued... especially when that has manifested itself in not only taking vast acreage as  your own property from nomadic cultures, but actually holding that human beings are property.

There are, of course, cultural factors.  But some countries have made their own bed in terms of not having a desirable cultural dynamic in some areas.  Of course when you have a country (or, more specifically, a system of states) that engaged in the organized enslavement of an entire race that makes up 40% of the population of a given region, and then get to a point where you free them, there are going to be HUGE cultural, crime, poverty, distrust, resentment, hatred, family, safety-net, and other issues that a country like Norway is NEVER going to see.

However, I don't think that's an excuse to say we should abandon principals of providing a floor of human dignity... in fact this is probably more of a reason to engage in those kinds of safety nets... or at least that's my take on it.  I'm not saying "we're not doing enough already" so much as saying that slashing spending in these areas will lead to some pretty crude adjustments for many families.

Have you noticed how ridiculously hung up on slavery you are?

Moda's law of the Gyroscopic Investing Forum:

If a thread reaches N Moda posts (N being an unknown but finite number of posts), Slavery WILL be mentioned, usually as a counter-argument for property or State's rights.

Just an observation.

[moda0306]

What human society throughout history hasn't done those things? Even tribes in the U.S. held slaves of other tribe members they fought and conquered in combat (pacific NW tribes especially, they ran slave camps in some cases). Assuming of course they didn't just slaughter each other entirely. Asian cultures conquered and held slaves (and slaughtered). African cultures did as well  (and slaughtered). European cultures did  (and slaughtered). South Pacific cultures did  (and slaughtered). Middle Eastern cultures did (and slaughtered). It's not unique to anyone and no culture should have to bear this original sin forever.

Many societies have.  I didn't ask anyone to feel bad about, but simply to acknowledge that it's going to have affects on the social structure of a society for centuries.  On a purely economic basis, massive, massive amounts of wealth were effectively stolen from millions of people and used to enrich the cauffers of Southern plutocracy, primarily, and the rest of the owners of the means of production, secondarily.  You don't need to cry for the victims or their children, but realizing that the cultural issues in the US are primarily a direct result of massive theft from certain groups of people might help us to realize that maybe these "cultural issues" that allow collectivism to work in Norway, but not in the U.S., are largely the fault and/or to the benefit of the owners of the means of production during that time, at the expense of the very people who would benefit from the safety nets being challenged.

Show me results of the social spending in these areas that over the last 50 years has decreased poverty, improved educational outcomes, reduced markers of future poverty likelihood (like single mother households) and has generally resulted in the originally intended outcome? Where are the results? There may be debatable results here and there, but overall the markers across the board in these areas are all almost entirely dismal and get worse each year. The floor of human dignity is lowered when you do things for people and they aren't enabled to do it for themselves.

The majority of the expansion of social spending has been in the area of caring for the health of the elderly (medicare and the vast majority of medicaid), which has been extremely successful in keeping them out of poverty.  Further, if the floor of human dignity is lowered when you do things for people that they can do for themselves, why do so many people who hold that opinion fight tooth and nail to give their kids a better life than they had, buy them their first car, send them to a private school, make damn sure they have health insurance coverage, buy a cabin to allow them to enjoy, pay for their wedding, and eventually try to give every dime they have accumulated in wealth to their kids?

And, respectfully, don't try to say "they earned that money and have the right to do with it as they please," because I agree.  This isn't an argument about rights, but about what kind of support of human dignity we find appropriate even though that person hasn't earned it on their own.  Having someone too sick to work and/or get health insurance slide into utter poverty and despair isn't dignity, and if helping them is lowering the floor of human dignity, I'd challenge you to visualize your mother or father sliding into that scenario and you struggling to hold the attitude that they made their own bed and should sleep in it.  My apologes for getting over-dramatic, but I think this is a valid way of looking at how we see government's role in maintaining human dignity: If it would disgust us to our core to let one of our family members fall into the scenario and do nothing, maybe it's not "lowering the floor of human dignity" for the government to try to provide a modest safety net in that arena... just mayble.

And ultimately that's why this debate won't be resolved. Fundamentally we just won't agree on the solution. I think handouts and big government can only make things worse because that's always what it has done anywhere else it's been tried.

Well we might not agree on the solution, but to your last point, even if Macau and Qatar don't count, Norway, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland are on the list as being more productive than the US (per capita)... unless somehow GDP isn't an appropriate measure of exactly what it's designed to measure.  So it's been tried.  And in many cases, it's worked phenominally.

[moda0306]

Craig,

You asked someone to essentially identify countries with "big government" that also were more productive than countries that were more capitalist in nature.

I think I did that.

Though I totally agree with your statement about culture.  However, a healthy respect for private property isn't the only cultural trait I think should be valued... especially when that has manifested itself in not only taking vast acreage as  your own property from nomadic cultures, but actually holding that human beings are property.

There are, of course, cultural factors.  But some countries have made their own bed in terms of not having a desirable cultural dynamic in some areas.  Of course when you have a country (or, more specifically, a system of states) that engaged in the organized enslavement of an entire race that makes up 40% of the population of a given region, and then get to a point where you free them, there are going to be HUGE cultural, crime, poverty, distrust, resentment, hatred, family, safety-net, and other issues that a country like Norway is NEVER going to see.

However, I don't think that's an excuse to say we should abandon principals of providing a floor of human dignity... in fact this is probably more of a reason to engage in those kinds of safety nets... or at least that's my take on it.  I'm not saying "we're not doing enough already" so much as saying that slashing spending in these areas will lead to some pretty crude adjustments for many families.

Have you noticed how ridiculously hung up on slavery you are?

Moda's law of the Gyroscopic Investing Forum:

If a thread reaches N Moda posts (N being an unknown but finite number of posts), Slavery WILL be mentioned, usually as a counter-argument for property or State's rights.

Just an observation.

Have you noticed how certain conservatives or reactionaries try to make the current state of the world or US government out to be apocolyptic compared to the "good ol' days" when all the government did was force our young men to fight foreigners and record/enforce slavery as an institution?  And that they do this a lot.

It's perfectly valid.  I'm really not that hung up on it, just as you shouldn't be all that hung up that we're on some horrible spiral towards tyranny.  You're still far, far more free than millions of past human beings have been.  Could it be better?  Yes, much more... let's look forward and debate how to make it so and what the proper role of government is... if we should even have a government at all...

But please don't try to act like we're entering unseen new coercive, confiscatory territory because our elderly get Social Security income and there are pesky regulations of industry, or uninsured poor people get help to get coverage.  It's an assinine assertion, and is so common amongst far too many libertarians and/or nationalistic conservatives that it needs to be pointed out for how utterly ridiculous it is.  Far, far worse things have been done by governments of the past, including the U.S. government and states.  I'll easily leave slavery all but untouched as long as we can focus on the role of government without getting all teary-eyed about how great and pure we were in 1820.

And I've never used it as "a counterargument for property rights."  I believe in property rights, but just in a different way than some people, and it's not colored at all by slavery, except to point out that human beings can NOT be property, I suppose...

(Snarky Comment Deleted)

[moda0306]

Something else I'm noticing that we might be able to agree on is that it's bad when government micromanages the minutiae of people's affairs because it stifles innovation and lowers GDP, which are things we all want more of. If we're talking about macro, government should not try to mandate or restrain individuals' micro behaviors.

So how's this for points of agreement:

1. Government should not deficit-spend to wage aggressive wars
2. Government should not deficit-spend to oppress its own people
3. Government should not micro-manage the minutiae of people's affairs
4. If government could tax and spend counter-cyclically in a competant and agile manner, it could dampen the impact of downturns

Very fair.  At least to me.