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Re: James Kunstler makes the point, and I paraphrasing here, that you have an oil based manufacture industry building alternate fuel (electric, fuel cell, etc.) devices.
Most of our electric power is NOT generated by the burning of oil so this is somewhat moot point.
Posted at February 3, 2006 4:30 AM in response to In Which My Ignorance Is Revealed
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It took a mere generation (c. 1905-1925) for the automobile to go from a rich man's toy to the basis for transportation in this country. I see no reason it should take significantly longer for us to transition to some new ways for doing things.
Posted at February 2, 2006 11:13 AM in response to Oil Confusion
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And if you don't provide people with some sort of safety net for retirement they will be so obsessed with saving money for their old age that they won't have anything at all left over for raising children and so will have even fewer children. Social Security is necessary to prevent the birth rate from collapsing entirely.
Posted at February 2, 2006 6:53 AM in response to reply to SOTU
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Re: In the real world, the economic collapse was brought about by the collapse of the dot-com bubble,
I disagree about the "dot-com bubble". This is vastly overrated. Most of the failed dot-coms were small firms employing no more than a few dozen people (or even less), concentrated in a few areas of the country. The layoffs and business failures were no way large enough to torpedo the entire economy. However, one IT world phenemonon that did play a big role in the recession was the Y2K hysteria. Every business (and other) concern in the world threw money by the bus-load at the problem-- to good effect to be sure (though probably the fixes could have been done more cheaply) so that when 2000 hit, there was a severe shortage of free capital left to fund any sort of new devlopment.
Posted at February 1, 2006 5:30 AM in response to All Bush Job Growth due to Government Spending
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I was not claiming any virtue for the Bush tax cuts, just pointing out that there's no way to link the policy (in a causal sense, one way or the other) to either 9-11 or the Iraq War. The tax cuts began before 9-11, and would have continued had there been no 9-11. Tax cutting (with a surplus initially in place!) is a juggernaut that politicians cannot resist once some pausible demagogue starts pushing it downhill.
Posted at January 31, 2006 4:58 PM in response to All Bush Job Growth due to Government Spending
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The Bush tax cuts passed BEFORE 9-11 and well before the Iraq War.
Posted at January 31, 2006 3:18 PM in response to All Bush Job Growth due to Government Spending
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This is hardly a first for for AARP. Back in 89-90 They were 100% behind Bush I's "catastrophic care" program for Medicare recipients until people realized it was a Potemkin Village of a plan (it did not previde nursing home coverage which is what really wanted) and the politicians were forced to repeal it.
Posted at January 31, 2006 12:53 PM in response to AARP's flip-flop?
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Can anyone really suggest that people in the blue areas of the country do not marry? Having grown up in a liberal area of Michigan I can attest that this is a red herring. However the fact that people's average age of marriage is lower in the red areas of the country does have something to do with their high divorce rates since people who marry too young are at much greater risk for divorce.
Posted at January 30, 2006 6:05 AM in response to Divorce and the Right
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I would dispute that it is "simple" to keep the rich from growing richer too fast. The progressive tax system may slow that increase down a little, but it doesn't prevent it. After all, we have a progressive tax system. So does most of Europe, but the rich are still getting richer there too, if a bit more slowly. Growing income inequality is a worldwide trend.
Posted at January 29, 2006 12:44 PM in response to The Very Top
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Your analysis doesn't quite hold water because wealth is not like energy: it isn't a conserved quantity. Over time it increases (probably because knowledge also increases with time, and wealth is to some extent based on knowledge). However it is certainly true that wealth does not increase infinitely fast and if the rich are getting richer faster than the entire society is getting richer then obviously the rich will be impoverishing others. Ideally (though I can conceive of no way to force this to happen) the rich should not become richer any faster than the whole society does.
Posted at January 28, 2006 5:56 PM in response to The Very Top
