indeed in Friedman's 8th grade essay, the lion shall lay with the lamb- in the adult reality, u get a fat lion

..."The Mustache" is also known for the "Friedman Unit" (see http://www.ginandtacos.com/forums/finalfugl2.jpg )

I noticed the decline in the WSJ a long time ago. Although, it is disappointing when it's difficult to tell the difference between the New York Post and New York Times. I tend to prefer the Christian Science Monitor for what it's worth.

A very high percentage of Germans work under Collective Bargaining Agreements (I think as high as 60%). Now that's togetherness!

Friedman *could* be considered right - if you consider an executive order declaring every pol who'd signed the Norquist suicide pact a traitor "little". After all, they were willing to breach the 14th Amendment (in violation of their oath of OFFICE) in order to avoid breaking a promise to him...

Kinda stands the old Bircher anti-Catholic argument on its head, now that I think about it.

Hmmm, izzatzo,

You must have missed this:

"In another column he explained that the Germans were going to bailout the Greeks, but that they would insist that the Greeks work German hours and take German vacations. Apparently Mr. Friedman did not realize that German workers on average work fewer hours than Greek workers and get longer vacations."

You're not the kind too pay too much attention to details are you, or to even read before you comment.

Stupid whatever you are.

How could you get my hopes up with that title?

Columnist for Life seems the NYTimes way. More a buddy-buddy system than anything.

Hard to imagine that changing.

"...Social Security is actually fully funded for the next quarter century..."

I believe we are already steering money from the general fund to handle the SS shortfall. They are cashing in IOU's at this point. Hence we have obligations, but not actual solvency.

Unless employment improves we are going nowhere with entitlements.

Entitlements and defense spending are a tax on the economy. Paying out money for people to sit on their ass does NOTHING for our competitiveness in the world. It's the sick mindset where people are thought of as "Consumers" like it's a job.
While giving out money temporarily stimulates demand most of the money flows right out of the country since we don't have jobs. We need to get jobs back in the worst possible way.

How?

We need to examine tax and regulator structure, not specifically rates, to attract business and capital back into the US. Perhaps lowering corporate taxes, reducing federal regulatory codes... I dunno, help me out here. Personal income taxes are not as much of a factor vs corporate taxes.

We should also consider, my proposal here, some major incentives to reduce oil consumption because that is money that goes out of the country.

My energy independence initiative...
1) Tax credit for purchase of fuel efficient vehicle... able to deduct price of the car. Fuel efficient is >38MPG highway
2) Two tiered fuel tax, everyone gets first 300 gallons tax free. After that tax goes to 1$ per gallon. You can make it revenue neutral if you like.
3) Invest some more in light rail projects in high traffic locations
4) Tax credit for relocation closer to your work and allow deduction of moving expenses
5) tax credit to people/companies that use mass transit by allowing extra 1/2 paid commute.
6) tax credit for companies that allow work from home situations.
7) Tax credit for switching homes from Oil to natural gas or electric heating
8) Additional funding for electric vehicle technology research


The other thing we need to examine is the "free trade" agreements. Personally I'm all for living wage legislation and audit legislation. If the companies want to import good to the USA, they need to pay minimum wage. If they want access to our markets, they have to actually pay for software and not violate patents.

Good luck...

I got really excited when I saw your headline ... another disappointment ...

One of my personal delights in reading Dean Baker's blogs and the comments has been reading izzatzo's Stephen Colbert-like satires. I wish I could write intelligent parody as well as izzatzo.

Just to let newcomers understand….

James, I do not think we can compete with other countries based on price. There are countries with free or highly subsidized education that have engineers and doctors that get paid less than public school teachers.

Our failure to tax appropriately is a major problem. How can a company circumvent US taxation but rely upon the US economic-political system for stability, legal relief, or bailout?

We have a small number of individuals with a disproportionate share of income and concentration of wealth that has shown no interest in creating jobs. Things will get even worse as they accumulate capital with record low interest rates and low asset valuations in a poor economic situation. Rich people do not even like to pay for things that they can afford, so to expect altruistic behavior with more money in their pockets is naive.

I am not the type to bash people. I think you have some good ideas, although, I feel most of them imply people have money to spend in the first place. It's just subsidizing purchases that would have probably been made anyway and assuming people would spend the savings. Also, there is no need to subsidize commuting and relocation if there are no jobs in the first place.

Government needs to increase revenue by targeting those that have so much money that they don't know what to do with themselves. Government also needs to spend money on creating short term demand until business feels demand is back.

To focus on entitlements when we have a lack of demand, growing wealth/income inequality, and anticompetitive business practices galore is not keeping us focused on the big picture. We can continue to punish the lowest common denominator because of desire to declare people undeserving and fight over the scraps handed to us. Or we can get real about how a small number of people have enough wealth to distort the public policy discussion for their personal gain.

We could strip away our laws and regulations then go back to the days when people worked endless hours in sweatshops for less than minimum wage. Business will more than gladly accept those terms but would eventually jump ship to find some way to reduce costs even more.

If satire doesn't comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable it's just bratty, grandious("look-how-witty-I-am")insults. There's too much injustice goin' on, too much criminal conduct being overlooked, too many people being harmed. Non of us should have anytime for narcisstic sarcasm. I too wish I could write like Izzatzo, but I also wish he would direct that sharp edge toward those who use their gifts to exploit others.

I still don't see how we can continue to run massive account imbalances while giving money away to deadbeats, spendthrifts and other losers.

My plan is to make a favorable environment for investment, and that would help attract capital or at least slow the bleeding.

It might seem to suck or seem callous or isn't fair but entitlements will strangle us otherwise.

The more printing that is done the more inflation eats at wages. The entitlement crowd will cry and ask for more money and everyone near the margin will become unemployed. It's a god dammed death spiral that is accelerating exponentially.

Big problems we have are negative account balances and lack of jobs.

The Energy Independence Plan pushes hard at cutting down on oil imports and would crash prices quickly. I'd sign on to the deal for at least 10yrs. People do have some money to spend and it would shift it from oil, an import, to domestic consumption in three ways. First we'd be using less and secondly it would squash speculation almost immediately. Finally the effect would be more money circulating in the American economy creating jobs.

It's also politically acceptable because it would be a tax cut.

The idea that we can target people with money is nice but you have to be concerned with velocity of money. If you attack income, then you can cause the rich to sit the money in hard assets or offshore money or sit in cash. That will cause falling velocity and deflation. Most of the income rich people have is in capital gains or tax free municipal and state bonds. So, raising income tax rates will only punish working class folks and middle class.

Increasing taxes and increasing handouts is not a positive direction for the country to go. Where does that end? Fall of the Roman Empire territory.

"Or we can get real about how a small number of people have enough wealth to distort the public policy discussion for their personal gain."...

Can't argue with this but this has already happened. Additionally the rich generally do what is in their best interests. So, not expecting them to push a return to a feudalistic society. However, it's best to use a carrot and stick approach instead of just a stick.

Being from NJ, where we had a strong democratic base, I got to see all the abuses of social policy. We had lots of state sponsored, aka tax payer supported, run by relatives of elected lawmakers. They always needed more money and provided very minimal care. Mom was an inspector, now retired. Always good to get the occasional death threats from politically connected insiders. Ah.. good times. Politicians dipping at the public trough...not those guys though... I'm sure they don't exist in liberal utopia.

I wish people would be more demanding of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They both play it too safe with the powerful. Colbert is too war-friendly and Stewart was more challenging to Bernie Sanders, than he was to Donald Rumsfeld. And that's saying a lot, since we know where many people -especially young adults- get their news and where their attitudes are formed. That's the only reason Rumsfeld would ever appear in any tv studio.

Geez, talk about dashing someone's hope...

@James
You clearly don't understand how money really works and what the government 'debt' really means. Government debt is private sector savings, they are opposite sides of the govt's balance sheet. There absolutely is no issue whatsoever with being able to 'afford' social security. It doesn't even make sense to ask the question.

Is izzatzo *really* attempting to write satire?

Then maybe he should consider changing his Internet name:

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:izzatzo/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change

http://www.freerepublic.com/~izzatzo/

Is izzatzo *really* attempting to write satire?

Then maybe he should consider changing his Internet name:

http://www.freerepublic.com/ta...=no-change

http://www.freerepublic.com/~izzatzo/