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This week on America’s Most Beloved Podcast®, we meditate on the idea that Millennials (including one who was recently elected to Congress) feel as though they have never experienced American prosperity. Really. Then, the great Victor Davis Hanson joins to discuss his new book, The Case For Trump, and gets on a certain podcast host’s case for not…well, just listen. Finally, we call on Electoral College expert Tara Ross to explain why Senator Elizabeth Warren has no idea what she is talking about (it’s a 10 second long segment — KIDDING). Finally, we predict what the Mueller Report contains. Please leave your predictions in the comments below.
Note: the Lileks column that Rob referenced in the podcast is here.
Music from this week’s podcast: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (from the soundtrack to The Last Waltz) by The Band
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“Pretty one sided” (snort) Ha! nice one
Yeti was a bit delayed and post it in comment #33
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/637482/posts
In Ukraine, which has no electoral college, the pro-Russia party was strong in the eastern provinces (partly because Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians there and replaced them with Russians). It was able to leverage its total control of the political system in the east to stuff ballot boxes and win the Presidency.
In the absence of an Electoral College, this is probably what the Democrats would have done in 1860 to keep Lincoln from being elected.
It sounded like Professor Hanson was talking through some sort of muted instrument. This made it very hard to hear him while driving (road sounds drowned out his words), though the rest of the gang were loud and clear, especially after cranking up the volume very high to hear VDH. Can you folks somehow work it so your guests who maybe are phoning it in or otherwise broadcasting from afar are louder?
I always have the option switching to earbuds when this happens. It also makes it easier to concentrate on what they’re saying.
Any particular reason why? I hate when sites do that, especially sites that I’m paying for, even if it is a pittance according to Rob Long.
My understanding is that CBO figures, which are bad to start with because they only rely on the numbers given to them by other people with every reason to lie, also only go out a few years. So even if proposers of legislation know that what they are proposing will be a disaster after X years, if the CBO is only allowed to ‘project” out to X-1 years, they can get away with it.
I meant to put it on a different thread. It actually wasn’t too confusing being here but I deleted it anyway.
I’m arguing with another fellow about this on another thread. All of this stuff is completely out of control, for a variety of reasons. No one ever does anything about it.
Every single government actuarial system should have forced actuarial stabilizers built in. Why don’t they?
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
The projections at 25 years were off by a factor of 3 even adjusting for unexpected (that word) inflation. I knew in 2009-10 that the ObamaCare estimates were similarly off.
Rob thinks Trump is icky. Many of us thought that Obama was icky, yet the chattering classes thought he was great. His campaign tried twice to shut down the Milt Rosenberg Show in 2008. The FISA and unmasking abuses were not surprising to people who lived in the Chicago area during O’s rise to power.
By the way, this is just an epic must listen on the intersection of politics, the Fed, global central banks, the financial system, populism, unfunded liabilities and socialism, debt and so forth. I can’t recommend it enough
https://mcalvanyweeklycommentary.com/bill-king-hedge-political-turmoil-central-banks-control-revolution/
I’m always posting videos and articles about this stuff, but if you want to hear it all in one place, this is it.
If you want to know why conservatism and libertarianism doesn’t sell, or if you are unhappy about the GOP not actually being conservative, this is why. I cannot recommend this enough.
Oh you misunderstood. I wasn’t referring to your post. I was referring to PODCAST #437. It’s gone.
What happened to podcast #437? It’s disappeared.
He was on his cell phone from his farm, which is actually better than his landline there (which does not even work most of the time).
We always struggle with audio with Victor as the technology at his farm in central California is, well, awful. Wish it wasn’t the case but it is what it is. Occasionally, we can grab him when he’s at Hoover (that’s where we do most of his Classicist podcasts), but that did not work out for this show.
We felt it was better to suffer through a mediocre connection than to wait a few weeks for a better line.
We were asked to take it down temporarily by one of the guests on that show (see if you can figure out why). It will return soon (we hope).
That’s not the point. When a country’s elites tell a majority of the population they have no future, it’s not exactly a shock when large numbers come to believe it. And even if people intellectually know they should have the power to control their lives, there’s always that nagging fear that said elites will actively work to thwart them.
Of course not. This isn’t a game.
It is historically unusual for America to experience periods where large numbers of people can’t find a job for four or five years. It’s unprecedented for that to coincide with an extreme spike in the cost of living where what few jobs exist are. Not even the Great Depression saw that.
That article spends a lot of time on how cool recent technological developments are. I disagree. We wrung all the productivity gains from IT in the 90s and early 2000s; the advances since then haven’t been nearly as impressive in terms of economic performance.
I’m not talking about the Phillips Curve. Countries use inflation to engineer relative wage adjustments all the time; in fact it’s the primary way by which economies adjust to negative economic shocks. One of the reasons the U.S. recovered from the recession faster than Europe is that the Fed engineered a slightly-higher inflation rate (relative to Europe) and devalued the dollar, leading to years of falling real wages. Europe didn’t do that, it tried to physically cut wages instead. The result was people rioting in the streets and lots of violence.
The same thing happened in the 70s but at a much bigger scale (back then the Fed engineered quite a bit more than “a slightly-higher” inflation rate).
@josepheagar — Here’s an account of what was going on in the 1970s:
The 1970s were a period of both high inflation and high unemployment in the U.S. due to two massive oil supply shocks. The first oil shock was from the 1973 embargo by Middle East energy producers that caused crude oil prices to quadruple in about a year. The second oil shock occurred when the Shah of Iran was overthrown in a revolution and the loss of output from Iran caused crude oil prices to double between 1979 and 1980. This development led to both high unemployment and high inflation.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081515/how-inflation-and-unemployment-are-related.asp
In other words, the high inflation wasn’t planned, and it didn’t reduce unemployment.
As I recall, it contributed to it. For example, a business firm that was just breaking even, earning 10% when the inflation rate was 10%, would then have to pay taxes on that phantom 10% profit, putting it in the red. In the meantime, middle class taxpayers who received raises that were just keeping up with inflation found themselves pushed into ever higher tax brackets.
As you would expect, the Democrats loved those automatic tax increases; and Ronald Reagan had quite a fight on his hands to split off enough House Democrats to pass indexing of tax brackets.
Isn’t there supposed to be a promised link to some old James Lileks editorial that made Rob Long a fan in the show notes?
http://web.archive.org/web/20030416020456/http:/www.lileks.com/writings/screed/olivegarden.html
One little disagreement with VDH: Carter was not basically a decent man.
I am from Georgia and was there during his time in the state leg, the governorship, his presidential campaign, and his presidency.
Carter was a liar. He would say anything to get elected. His initial campaign for the leg was as a racist. Several of his most famous claims in his first presidential primary were complete fabrications (not just spin or exaggerations.)
And, as we have seen in his post-presidential career, he never met a ruthless dictator he didn’t slop sugar all over.
I’ve updated the show description with the link to the Lileks piece.
That is one fantastic rant. Thanks for the link.
We’ve had oils shocks since then that didn’t do more than cause a temporary blip in the inflation numbers. The U.S. experienced a wage-price spiral in the 70s; that’s why it took the 1980 recession to break the inflationary psychology. I’ll grant you that bracket creep was a big deal; at the time a bunch of congressional Democrats believed that fighting inflation with taxes worked better than using the Fed.
Except that did not happen. Everyone didn’t get employed. We had inflation and high unemployment. In 1973 the unemployment rate fell to 4.9 per cent. It wouldn’t be again that low until 1997. It topped out at 10.8% in 1983.
We got deal at 10.25% in 1978. And we only had 10% down, so we were high risk.
Something I think about is that when I was a young adult and moved away from home, I had to write letters, and make long distance phone calls to family. The ability to instantly contact others rather inexpensively is something I experience as a big improvement over the past.
Bought my first home in 1979 – 12.5% as I recall. Long distance calls had to be scheduled via letter to make sure everyone was home.