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Personal Wonderfulness Is Bad for America
To my lefty friends:
You tout your noble “anti-racist” sentiments while endorsing ideological nonsense that has stoked racial divisions and fostered separatism unlike anything seen since the 1950s. Cities burn, crime is soaring, inner-city education is cratering and race hucksters are buying mansions but your Personal Wonderfulness is out front for all to see.
You keep cheering “green” policies but you don’t do the math. Huge hits to the American energy supply will reduce future temperatures by an amount so small it can barely be measured even if that reduction were to actually accrue. Horrible costs, especially to lower-income people around the world for no measurable benefit is an unacceptable price to pay solely to affirm your Deep Concern and, thus also, your Personal Wonderfulness.
You literally made up “The Science” on COVID when the existing science expressly said that lockdowns, closures, and mask mandates would have minuscule effects but would incur significant costs. The data has continued to affirm the real science for two years. You endorsed harming kids when the science and the nation’s pediatricians told you that kids were not at unusual risk and not to close schools. But none of that mattered because you were Doing Something About It and showing us your Personal Wonderfulness.
You voted for a fictitious economics in which massive unprecedented government spending would somehow magically not cause unprecedented inflation. You cheer plans to make the rich “pay their fair share” with measures that you have to know will punish only the middle class and small businesses. But it’s all about “fairness,” “equity,” or whatever other verbiage inflates your Personal Wonderfulness in the moment.
Your Personal Wonderfulness is not conscience nor adherence to substantive principles. You are degenerating onto a living bumper sticker. Stop asking what your country can do for your Personal Wonderfulness. Just stop.
And the more you rant about the evils of Donald Trump, keep in mind that even if everything in your rant were true, the consequences of your pursuit of Personal Wonderfulness are forcing sane, normal people to vote for him regardless. Just stop. Please.
Published in General
Left wing beliefs aren’t about consequentialist morality. It’s about a pursuit of an entirely theoretical perfectionism.
Well done. The simplicity, clarity, and truth of this is why I think we will ultimately prevail. A lot of people will pay a terrible price until we do.
I agree totally with this, my concern is do we have the wherewithal to penetrate the indoctrinated and invoke their innate reasoning capacity so they can reach a more workable conclusion.
Good post, OB. I have one quibble.
I’m not convinced that government spending is necessarily inflationary. I think that it depends on other factors, especially monetary policy.
Great post, OB. It makes me think of a toddler who has one of those toys with squares and circles cut out of it. Only he doesn’t realize that the cylindrical object must go in the round hole and the rectangular ones go in the others. But by gosh, he just keeps trying to make them fit. Some toddlers just enjoy the process, not caring whether anything fits anywhere; others may start to get frustrated, knowing that everything should fit in its proper place, but it doesn’t. And the next thing you know, the little guy starts screaming at the top of his lungs–this should work!
Ah, me. . . .
Cogent but way too technical a take here. Shooting money out of a cannon aimed at government employees, connected contractors with a residue for consumer spending is a recipe for inflationless economic growth only on planet Krugman.
Since you @arizonapatriot seem to recognize that we do have some people who are aware and some who are not, let’s also recognize that when government spending is covered by taxation the more aware (taxpayers) pay and when government borrows and prints money to cover the government spending and thus creates inflation like now, then the less aware (the poor non-taxpayers and the lower income taxpayers) are hit hard in the marketplace and the upper-income taxpayers experience less hardship from inflation (but they already pay the taxes).
Everything about Old Batho’s post is correct but I would appeal to the much exalted leftist compassion for the underdog.
For example, Ayan Hirsi Ali and Ying Ma both became more conservative as consequence of their experiences being marginalized. Ying Ma was victimized by crime in an American ghetto and saw parents not discipline their children and the results that came from such anti-social behaviour. Ayan Hirsi Ali was raised without her dad and she focuses in on the problem of single motherhood because of her experiences.
They have a strong appeal to non-conventional conservatives because of their life stories.
I would tell leftists that the Covid lockdowns disproportionately hurt black, brown and poor people. That people in tough neighbourhoods need strong police to thrive. That rising gasoline prices are fine for people who can afford Tesla’s but really stink for folks who can only afford one car. Almost everything the Left does makes it harder for those with a rougher go of it to thrive. Consequentialist morality dictates either moderate or conservative policies.
Henry, I am more than a little concerned that I once again find myself in agreement with you.
Along the same lines: I’ve had the greatest success talking to climate alarmists when I emphasized the plight of the energy-poor developing world, and the hundreds of millions desperate for affordable fossil fuel to lift them out of their poverty.
I think this may be the best post I have read in the last month.
I agree with Hitler about how terrible modern art is and that German Shepherds are great dogs. We all have odd stuff we agree on.
Most left-wingers don’t realize that their policies hurt poor folks. Why I mention Ayan Hirsi Ali and Ying Ma is that they make it very clear what the cost is of not having a supportive and loving Dad and what that means when you aren’t a particularly privileged person. Most people just vote for what sounds good and Leftists vote for whatever sounds best for the downtrodden so it makes to talk about the interests of the downtrodden.
That’s a nice thought, but I don’t believe it’s the case that they’re even interested in consequences of their policies. There is a deep incuriosity that goes with leftism, which I think accounts for the few conversions to conservatism (few people are curious enough to figure it out). For example, “saving the planet” actually requires depopulation according to the watermelons. And who’s first on the list but poor folks (food shortages due to (oil-based) fertilizer cutbacks) and helpless babies (abortion).
Lefties exhibit the conceit that they’re for the underdog, but really it’s all about the ego-stroking and “personal wonderfulness.”
All of it good but the first paragraph to me the most astounding. If I were running for office in a racially mixed district would love to put up competing videos of Democrats in 1963 vs. 2022. 1963 would picture of George Wallace standing in front of a college building stating saying something like “segregation now, segregation forever.” Next would be Harvard professor in 2022 extolling the segregation on campus, safe spaces for blacks, nothing so see here re: small percentage of well qualified Asians excepted, etc. Democrats never change. They just moved from Alabama to Harvard.
Awesome post! Nail on the head! It’s easy to feel wonderful about ones beliefs if all objectivity is thrown aside. To never consider how your actions, or words can and will do great harm. To realize these things takes a level of self-awareness that a zealot never possesses.
Think of trying to tell a Raiders fan that they should just learn to enjoy the 49ers! Or trying to tell an Ohio State fan that Going Blue! is the way to go. ( it is). Trying to communicate in a rational fashion with irrational minded people….. Well……that was a mistake!
But they’re tied together. Interest rates impact how much the cost of capital is for the gov’t to continue to wildly spend. GDP includes gov’t spending. If you flood the zone with dollars chasing fewer goods, prices go up.
Money supply and its velocity are part of monetary policy. When prior stimuli were done, politicians scratched their delicate domes afterwards when the economy didn’t roar back to life. There are several reasons.
What seems to be lost is that if gov’t spending, on its own, increased economic activity and reduced the frequency or duration of recessions, and gov’t spending goes up every year, often at multiples of the inflation rate – why do we even have recessions?
That’s a million bucks, right there – it’s GOLD, Jerry!
And would take about 6-8 hours to put together, with time for coffee and danish. So, one wonders, why we don’t see it.
Pointing out that the left racist is racist.
OB, I think that this is a bad idea. As you appear to concede, government spending isn’t necessarily inflationary. Government spending isn’t “shooting money out of a cannon,” if it’s financed by borrowing. Such borrowing may have other negative effects, but inflation is not one of them. Money creation, by the Fed, is an important factor driving inflation.
I don’t think that we ought to be relying on arguments that are false.
There is an indirect way in which debt-financed government spending might contribute to future inflation, by crowding out private investment. Lower private investment could lead to lower future productivity, reducing output (Q) in the future. In the basic monetary equation PQ=MV, a decline in Q could cause a compensating increase in P, though this assumes that M and V remain unchanged.
V (velocity) seems to be outside of anyone’s control. The Fed controls M. The Fed generally adjusts M to maintain price stability. So we would expect that the “crowding out” effect of debt-financed government spending would be offset by future money creation (specifically, at a somewhat lower rate than it would otherwise have been).
Bob, the highlighted portion is the error. Inflation is not created when government borrows money, though this might cause other problems. Inflation will result, if all else remains equal, if government increases the money supply (i.e. “prints money”).
I don’t think that this is correct, either. It appears that you are making the same mistake, implicitly, that Bob made in the comment above, by disregarding the method of financing of such government spending.
If such spending is financed by monetary policy — that is, by “printing money” — then we would expect inflation. If such spending is financed by borrowing, then we would not. You can see this by focusing on your sentence: “If you flood the zone with dollars chasing fewer goods, prices go up.”
This statement actually makes two errors. First, it assumes that there are “fewer goods,” without a reason to believe that output (Q) would decline. This is a minor point, though, because inflation will result even if more money is chasing the same quantity of goods.
Second, and more importantly, I think that the error is in the formulation of “more money chasing” such goods. If government finances spending by borrowing, there is not “more money.” Rather, there is a shift from private spending, usually private investment, to public spending.
Well yes, if there are free elections, but that is not their intention. They have to win the next two, then it’s over. The question is how much do they have to cheat to win them. In November, just enough to sustain control of both houses. Then the Presidency will be in play and will be easier than sustaining democrat control of the legislatures. But how much are they going to be in control and how much is Soros, China, and the giant digital companies who may not understand anything about the country, its history or the future they’re heading it towards, but what the hell, they’re making billions how could that go wrong? The diversified Chinese economy won’t last long either, but they’ll be in charge until it all disintegrates under them. Then it all starts all over again. Even the US, or pieces of it, may eventually pull itself together. Are we talking about a 20 or 30 percent drop in income or far more? We better figure out how to overcome enough fraud to win the legislature back because the alternative is unknown and will be either very bloody civil war or a very gray Chinese dominated decline.
It’s easier to steal a Presidential election than to steal a whole bunch of Congressional elections. (Which isn’t to say that they actually did steal the Presidential election; I’m still on the fence about that.) I expect us to take the House, and I think there’s a good chance of taking the Senate. I think we will do very well in the states.
Well yes, but how do they carry out spending without printing, even if they wanted to reduce debt which they don’t. I suppose state governments would have to shrink drastically were interest rates real, which would be good and it would add more push back on Federal spending. It’s doable but very painful and will get worse very quickly as the debt increases, but I can’t see the entire Federal deficit paid for with high interest rates unless we shrink it. Neither party will do that, indeed both want to increase it.
Unambiguously they stole it. Collecting votes from nursing homes and folks that sell them for enough to buy a hit, or just from folks who don’t care one way or the other and tossing the wrong kind isn’t a fair election. Did non campaigning Biden from the basement stimulate such dedicated voting? You don’t need proof, just common sense and the next time it will be far easier. I don’t know many Democrats but they all insist it was totally honest and that Trump is dangerous and must be defeated, arrested, it doesn’t matter, just keep him out of the White House. They are beyond learning and they are going to destroy the country, turn it over to Soros and the Chinese and don’t have a clue. Most Americans have no idea how the Chinese have taken over all of South America except Brazil which they are infiltrating. massively rather than consolidating power in countries they already control Our struggle is terminal not just hard fought with a little above normal cheating. .
“Stole” is a big word that can mean a few things.
I’ve expressed my views on this before. I think it was an unfair election, and I think it was “stolen” in the sense that it was won via institutional dishonesty and censorship. I think that’s pretty obvious: if the press had not acted as an agent of the Democratic Party, had big tech not acted as an agent of the Democratic Party, had Pfizer not acted as an agent of the Democratic Party, had most of government at the state and federal level not acted as agents of the Democratic Party, I think Trump would have won.
What isn’t unambiguous is whether or not the election was literally stolen the old fashioned way through fraudulent voting. My own opinion is that Trump would likely have won if states had followed the constitutional guidelines and not modified their electoral processes through the courts. I think that’s very likely, and I think what they did was technically wrong but still not “stealing” it in the traditional sense of fraudulent voting, improper counting, etc.
I’m about 50/50 on it having been stolen the old fashioned way, through ballot stuffing, invalid voting, etc. Maybe 60/40. Depends on the day.
Yes, but what makes you think that the Left even listens to any kind of “reason”? They do not, they operate solely on emotion, and if we expect to be able to get through to them, we must find a way of hitting them in the guts, not the brain.
That’s honest hedge but Biden who was totally uncompetitive out side of his state got more votes than anyone in history? Not credible. The importance is they are going to double down in the next Presidential election. In November, they just have to make sure Democrats stay in charge.
2020 was strange for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the most polarizing president in modern history was running for reelection. I’m not surprised the turnout was huge.
I don’t know if it was literally stolen with fraudulent ballots. As I said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. I just don’t know. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about getting better electoral integrity. We should be able to know and it’s unacceptable that we don’t.
I fully expect us to take the house in November. That will stop the Democrats, though they don’t seem to be getting much done legislatively in any case.
Had to trim a bit above for space, and for clarity, I trimmed with callous disregard to continuity. Not on purpose.
M2 supply, Velocity, federal expenditures, and inflation. Notice the velocity dip right after the recession, even with the big injection of money. I think we’re all amateurs here but there’s a correlation, inclusive of fiscal and monetary policies.
2020 was rough on Tom Nichols and his “experts”