PolicyMic

Ken Strote Your reasoning would hold true if there were no incentives for climatologists to find in favor of global warming. With billions of dollars of funding within their field at stake, human nature makes it very hard to not at least subconsciously have a ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote "Perhaps some non Wikipedia-based research into this question would lead you toward the scientific consensus" Which you have done, correct? You have examined all the complicated computer models, peer-reviewed papers, and arrived at your...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote I will take 16 actual scientists over one Al Gore any day. Trying to discredit scientists who don't hold your particular world view is not a way to win an argument. By the way, there are a lot more than 16 scientists who disagree with the &quo...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, I will admit that I didn't understand how the calculations worked initially, and built examples with incorrect calculations. That is fixed in the most recent example and still clearly illustrates the fatal problem with the methodology...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Assuming an elasticity of .50 does not make me feel that the analysis is any more accurate than before. At the very least you need to take into account the diminishing marginal returns of larger families. For example, at some point you would need t...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote "What if 5 of the 25 earn $40k each?" According to you, it shouldn't matter one bit, right? Certainly the CBO analysis does not take any of this into account. And I never said there are not economies of scale, I am saying that the c...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Still not buying it. Were you going to also weigh in on my most recent example?

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote So if you agree that the poorest are getting richer, then your previous comment that "After-tax incomes of the lowest quintiles of earners have decreased" is not accurate. I don't think anyone would disagree that the rich are getting ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Sorry, can you explain that a different way, I didn't understand any of it. My argument is that measuring income by household is wrong because the results are skewed, and the adjustment formula makes it look worse. Let's use another examp...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, your premise of the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is simply not correct. The rich may be getting richer, but the poor are getting richer too and the lowest quintile are being replaced by different people. Even if...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, I fully understand that the CBO measures household versus per capita income, you don't need to make that argument. My argument is the fact that they use household income instead of per capita, and that they adjust it in such a way to ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote For example, one household of 4 makes $20,000, and another makes $200,000. Using per capita measurements, the $20k household earns $5k per person, and the $200k household earns $50k per person, or a difference of $45k per person. However using ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, are you saying that your statistics listed earlier - Income grew by 275% for top 1%; and by 18% for bottom 20% - takes into account all transfer payments? As for the household adjustment, how does dividing size by the square root properl...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, please explain why household income is used versus per capita? Why is household income not simply divided by family size? Why do households include people who share dwellings but who might not file together as a household? But here is ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote So Benjamin, what should be the confiscatory rate for high income individuals in your opinion? You seem to believe "achieving a macroeconomically beneficial after-tax transfer--one that would have reduced the deficit and decreased income inequa...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, in case you didn't see this, I had posted it earlier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrtoSx-NbLQ Basically though, measuring changes in household income over time is simply an easy way to lie with statistics to serve someone'...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote You made it important by attacking me personally and saying I have revealed a bias. If you would like to retract your statement, I will accept your apology. To help you decide, here are some links to books found in the same manner that you did. By ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew, google "artificial demand" and you will get 36,000,000 results. That's a lot for a non-existent term, yes? I'm glad you are searching econ books. Amazing how fast you did that......

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew, I hate to be critical, but when you say things like "there's no such thing as 'artificial demand'. That's not an economic term, but does reveal your bias," I have no choice but to help teach you a little bit abou...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew, I specifically am addressing Keynesian thought regarding the need to create artificial demand. You should get Wikipedia corrected if you believe that no Keynesian thinks that you should stimulate demand artificially: "Keynes contende...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Well, if you don't count the surplus of Social Security revenue during the Clinton years, we didn't have a surplus for the budget then either. That being said, I do believe that we were irresponsible in not continuing to pay down the n...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew, now you have misread me. I never said anything about the tax cuts stimulating long term growth. We can have a separate debate about that if you'd like. My point is that growing the economy should be the desired outcome, not finding ways ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew you are correct I did misread it. As for why 18% is a magic number, it isn't in and of itself. However, when you look at the average over the past 50 years, that is roughly how much revenue as a % of GDP comes in. If you raise or lower...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew, I am intrigued. How do you believe that GDP would grow at a faster rate with higher taxes? If you can argue that one, I know a whole lot of politicians who will be knocking on your door for help explaining that something can occur that neve...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Gary, President Obama agrees with you! In almost every speech he gives these days he talks about how tragic it would be to revert back to the pre-Bush tax rates for the middle class. His problem is that he thinks that raising rates on one group of ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Andrew, you would be better to state that "many economists agree...." rather than saying "nearly every economist...." because that is simply false. There is very serious disagreement regarding the net effect of the Bush tax cuts,...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Lawrence, Gary does not "suggest" anything as you say in your reply, he has crunched the numbers and shown the facts. If you would like to dispute them, please show us your reasoning. Just saying that "income disparities in fact skyr...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Lawrence, your argument just makes no sense. How did they pay anything back when they simply moved an IOU from one pocket to another? Do they still carry as much debt as before? Check. Do they still have long-term profit issues? Check. Does the ...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Lawrence, please reserve your venting to the topic at hand. I simply pointed out that your insistence that the money was paid back with interest is disingenuous at best. If I have a high credit card balance, and I pay it back with interest by borro...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Lawrence, you do realize that GM only paid back their loan by taking money from TARP right? Here are two sources to help your education: http://seekingalpha.com/article/200384-did-gm-pay-back-its-loan-sort-of http://hotair.com/archives/2010/0...

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• 4 months ago

Ken Strote Jon, if you agree with Mr. Milliken, then you must absolutely hate Mr. Obama, who has spent so much he makes Bush look like Scrooge McDuck.

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• 5 months ago

Ken Strote Aaron, help me understand how "the GOP has been increasingly dominated by a radical wing." Perhaps you can start by defining what you mean by "radical" as we may have differing views of the term. When I think of a radical I thin...

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• 5 months ago

Ken Strote To be fair, I believe Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and John Huntsman also are very genuine. I would welcome any of them as our new president, but Ron Paul's foreign policy is just a little too isolationist for me to buy into.

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• 5 months ago

Ken Strote Sal, I believe Newt actually has tremendous crossover appeal. With Romney you listen to him for an hour and are still not sure what he believes in. With Gingrich, you get the sense that he not only knows what he's talking about, but believes i...

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• 5 months ago

Ken Strote I wouldn't go so far as to say that Romney is toast....yet. That being said, he sure hasn't done himself any favors the past week or so. And if he decides to go all negative against Newt, there is a high probability of him hurting himself...

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• 5 months ago

Ken Strote If affirmative action is indeed so important and beneficial, where are the statistics that show better outcomes for minorities because of it? Let's do our best to be objective to determine the best course moving forward based on the merits. We ...

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• 5 months ago

Ken Strote I wonder how many of these students have ever been taught economics from anything other than a liberal point of view? Maybe they were shocked that a professor just might be teaching from a different angle, or perhaps are so close-minded that they re...

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• 6 months ago

Ken Strote I hadn't seen that story yet, thanks for sharing. I should write an article that articulates how prices work, and maybe even explain that there is no such thing as price gouging.

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote James, thank goodness I am not the only one arguing this point. It seems so few people can seem to understand that borrowing more money to intervene in the market does nothing but prolong the clearing of said market and thereby causing more long ter...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote I agree that supermajorities should be used sparingly. I was only giving an example of a small change that could at least allow an up or down vote given the current system, instead of the nominee lanquishing indefinitely.

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote Although I dislike how the system works, the use of the filibuster also prevents a president (with a complicit senate majority) from nominating extreme candidates. The prospect of not getting your candidate through forces a president to be more care...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 1) <cont'd>If for example you were to fall down a 20 foot hill, then climb back up 5 feet, you could say you have climbed 25%. If however you fell 10 feet and climb back 2, you are higher than in the first scenario, but behind as a percen...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 1) To clarify, I am not trying to be a Bush defender. I was (and am) against many of his policies, including the Iraq war, Medicare part D, and some of his tax cuts. However, the reason the cuts didn't dramatically increase job growth is becau...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 4) You say that as if focusing on equipment, software, and productivity is a bad thing. The opposite is true. Businesses should always focus on whatever works best to enhance shareholder value long-term. 5) This makes me think of an unemployed per...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 1) There was indeed slow job growth initially, but that was because the recession (or near-recession really) was very mild and unemployment did not skyrocket (unlike the cycle we are currently in). This calls your numbers into question as they are no...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 4) Define barely. There is not only lots of private spending (trillions/year actually), but the only reason the prospects of increased spending seem meager is because the market has yet to clear due to government interference. I prefer private spen...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 1) Under Clinton, there was this big dot com bubble (1995-2000) that eventually burst. This made revenues a lot higher than they would have been without the bubble. Under Bush, tax rates were lower than under Clinton and unemployment was not an iss...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote 4) Spending on all the things you mentioned sound great, and sometimes can have a marginal impact, but they don't create long term meaningful net employment increases. That money you spend is money not spent elsewhere. And the government is no...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, it's bad policy on many levels. 1) Unless the increased revenues (read: new taxes) are from a complete tax system overhaul, there will be higher taxes on those who are job creators, thereby stifling employment opportunities. 2) Con...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote George, I do not believe I argued that new jobs were the only benefit of the stimulus. My argument is that it was inefficient and not worth the price we paid for it. As for your other point regarding deficit hawks filling the debt hole with the...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote So by your argument of needing expansionary fiscal policy, does that mean if the economic downturn continues for the next two years you would consider more deficit spending? How about 5 years? 10 years? At what point is the debt too much and you will...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote We will just have to disagree here. I think it's illogical to say that one is bad and the other is not bad just because the federal government can just borrow more. If debt load is bad, it's bad. More people need to understand that Greec...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote This is where I get the most puzzled. On one hand you call debt overhang "much more dire now" for households, yet you seem to not be worried by government debt overhang. Increasing national, state, and local debt in order to alleviate hou...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote Benjamin, the problem with your argument is that is the same argument made 3 years ago, before we added $4 trillion to the national debt. You can't keep doing that by saying that we'll deal with the problem later, because that is exactly w...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote <cont'd> Just think if we didn't have the crushing interest payments that we currently must pay to service our national debt. For this past fiscal year, that amount was $454,393,000,000. The amount we pay in interest is larger than ...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote Hi Benjamin, although I am conservative I am not one of those that like to portray the stimulus as an abject failure. I believe the stimulus was helpful to a point, but I also believe that it was so inefficient that the long term outlook for our cou...

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• 7 months ago

Ken Strote I believe most economists will stipulate that the stimulus had a certain amount of stimulative effect. The argument is how much stimulus did we actually get, and was it worth the money we spent. The package added approximately $6900 of new long ter...

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• 7 months ago