Analysis:
In the Stead of Hope
The cosmos contains an unimaginable, infinite, and ever-growing set of data. This data is, in and of itself, nothing to us.
But in that data are the patterns, forms, and structures that we as conscious beings crave, the very things that define our consciousness as orderings from mere perceptions. These curious threads within data are information, that which we distill from the eternal, chaotic flow of data that fills all things in all times, before us and after us.
Information is constructable: parts fit together, sometimes easily and obviously, sometimes with much training or long experience required. In these cumulative and usable fashions, the information can become a structure called knowledge, which is a body that can grow within an individual person and within a culture.
It is truly difficult to know when or how it happens, but a large body of knowledge can become applicable to circumstances of the past and the present in such a way that data will be more efficiently transformed into information, which will then feed the knowledge in such a way that subtle and meaningful new patterns emerge about the world and its ways. This high level of consciousness is called insight. It is very important.
But finally, insight might find its way to something even more powerful: the ability to see, without resorting to prophecy or fantasy, what lies in the instant and the era after the here and now. This final and most important ability is called wisdom. It is both desirable and rare.
Below, and without further commentary, is a graphic showing the budget deficits that have occasioned the United States Presidencies over the past 28 years.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
Published 1/02/2005 01:58:32 AM
<< 43 Comments Total
Even though the elephant is staring us down in the living room, too many people still treat monetary issues as events beyond our control that will magically "correct themselves" over time. Therefore, according to that sort of reasoning, fiscal responsibility is beyond our control, as well.
The Administration is taking a flying quantum leap into the abyss, and no one seems to be paying any attention because they assume Fate will deliver us in the nick of time, like it always does. It wouldn't surprise me if the President pulled the "imminent threat" card in 2008 to keep himself in power.
But that's getting into conspiracy theory.
wiseguy
And the Dark Wraith does love a good conspiracy theory.
The crazy part is, I remember those years, and whether or not the public chose to hold those in power accountable was forever subject to the prevailing winds of "conventional wisdom", whatever that was at the time. The stagflation of Jimmy Carter's presidency was seen as unrefutable evidence of his incompetance; the Reagan recession of 1981-82 was "not Reagan's fault; the President can't control everything." The alleged robust economy of the latter part of that decade demonstrated the triumph of "Reaganomics". But the economic boom of the 1990's had nothing to do with Clinton- "he didn't need to do anything- the economy was just humming along because of Republican-led fixes from the eighties". Go figure.
Good evening, LindiBee.
Yes, and I've always wondered where the Right-wingers ever got the idea of a "liberal" media. I swear, every blesséd time Reagan farted, the press declared him the Great Communicator. This despite his record that ran from wildly unimpressive on the domestic economy to utterly shocking on human rights around the world.
But God forbid that some intern of Clinton's should play Hail to the Chief! on his flute made of beef. By gawd, "that there's grounds fer impeachment," the press bawled.
I shouldn't be that way. Bitterness, crassness, lack of objectivity: those traits are so... so...
neo-Republican.
The Dark Wraith seeks redemption.
School marm time: isn't "data" a plural term? I had a grad. school professor who was a terror about that.
- oddjob
I also have a skeptic's question (not because I'm skeptical of your blog entry, but seeing the graph made me think of this). At the risk of getting flamed by a wrathful wraith, are those figures in inflation adjusted dollars?
Oh, one other thing - while I agree that the Clinton years were by far the best times I have ever experienced (including the 60's when I was too young to be conscious of it all), don't you think the Congressional Repulican hostility towards the man and his Dem. agenda might have had something to do with all that? Do you really imagine a Dem. Congress would have produced budgetary surpluses with a Dem. in the White House?
- oodjob
The Dark Wraith seeks redemption.
Job 19:25 "For I know that my redeemer liveth..."
You call this living?
Good morning Mr. Wraith, I trust you're not too hung over and bloated from imbibing in your holiday Spamfest.
Here is a curious bit of information. Notice the red tie for the deficit leader and the blue tie for the surplus leader? A coincidence?
I've notice many recent pictures of bush, where he is either wearing a red tie or a blue tie. Now, if we correlate these bits of information with say, the topic of his discourse at the time of each photo op, perhaps we can gain some knowledge regarding the financial impact of his particular dealing. Now if bush wears enough ties througout the year, we may be able to develop our insight to a much higher degree than prophesying based on the thickness of Greenspan's briefcase a few time a year.
Of course we will never develop our wisdom from this knowledge and insight, for we already have it. We know what lies in the instant and the era after the here and now, if we have bush for four more years.
My Pet Goat p lays T om to Wraith's L ear.
(It's cheating, but it's the best I could do on short notice.)
- oddjob
HMMPH!
I thought I had that spacing thing all figured out!
-oddjob :(
I disagree, but I'm sure that DW will elaborate further. Clinton was a product of the Democratic Leadership Council, which has always represented the moderate/conservative wing of the party (think- Joe Liberman). The Dems have been trying to reframe themselves as fiscal moderates since Reagan, and it appears to me to have been the intent of the DNC to capitalize on balancing the budget that Reagan/Bush I had shot to bits, to leave as their legacy. I believe that this was precisely why the Repubs never attacked Clinton on his policies (GATT, NAFTA, support of WTO, etc) and had to go after absurdities like Monica, Whitewater, and tin-foil hat conspiracies like "the murder of Vince Fister".
BTW, although Reagan carved the idea of "tax and spend Democrats" in stone in the public mind, I recall that I originally supported Paul Tsongas in the 1992 run- the Democrat that founded the Concord coalition, whose aim was to balance the budget. Contrast this with Mr. "Didn't Reagan show that budget deficits don't mean anything" Dick Cheney.
Just to clarify- I was responding to oddjob's assertion, "Do you really imagine a Dem. Congress would have produced budgetary surpluses with a Dem. in the White House?"
But to place all of those deficits at Reagan's feet alone is to completely ignore that his administration sent the Democratic Congress budgets that it routinely discarded out of hand (remember "dead on arrival"?) Those debt-laden messes were the handiwork of Dems. who fiercely disagreed with Reagan's priorities, and a Repub. administration that held the Dem's. priorities in utter contempt.
- oddjob
Good afternoon, OddJob.
First, a point of semantics and the transitions from one language to another.
English picked up most of it Latinates during the Norman Occupation period, which lasted from A.D. 1066 until about the middle of the 15th Century. The French were quite obsessed with Latin, their own language being a derivative of it, unlike English, which came from a collection of Low German dialects brought to the British Isles by the Angles; the Saxons; and to a lesser extent, the Jutes. We call English words appropriated from Latin during the Norman Occupation "insular borrowings," as opposed to the much less common "loan words" that came to the Lowland Germans before they migrated to Britain, which we call "continental borrowings."
Although the enforcement of proper Latin usage and pronunciations was rigid and comprehensive upon the learnéd among the English during the Occupation, it wasn't complete, nor was it entirely enduring. During the period when the French were imposing their language upon the English, the latter tongue did something quite amazing, although by no means unique. It made a full transition—in fewer than two centuries!—from a synthetic language to an analytic language. Inlinguistics terms, then, English became a "creole."
"Synthetic" languages are characterized by the rigorous use of word morphology to indicate meaning and function within a sentence. A word—be it a noun, a verb, or some modifier—must have "inflection": some change in the ending, beginning, and/or the root vowel, to serve within the context of a sentence. Latin and all of its derivative languages, like French and Spanish, are synthetic languages. Latin is so synthetic that word order within a sentence isn't particularly important: the spellings and pronunciations of the words are what gives them meaning in the context of one another within a sentence.
"Analytic" languages do not use word morphology to convey the meanings of words in a given sentence; instead, they use word order! This means that in analytic language, syntax dominates; and any morphological rules are purely artifactual. A great example of this is third person singular verbs in English: have you ever noticed that they always have an "s" on them, which is completely anomalous in comparison to any other verb conjugation?
Okay, we have a synthetic language from which we have borrowed words, understanding as we do that the language from which we got those words has a set of very complicated rules by which those words must be shaped for usage. And we try to recognize this and stick to those rules, but it doesn't always work out.
• We would certainly be willing to pluralize memorandum as memoranda.
• We would try on our better days to pluralize formula as formulæ.
• We would not even imagine that the singular of agenda is agendum.
• Most people would be entirely clueless that the singular of opera is opus.
• And by gawd!, finding one example of a medium within the plethora of media would be just about as tricky as teasing out one datum in a pile of data.
Now, what the heck else was I going to talk about? I can't remember, now.
Blogus Dark Wraith imperium.
[Or something like that.]
Good afternoon, Mr. Goat.
What if the tie were both red and blue?
Plaid ties loom!
The Dark Wraith yields to the tempatation.
Do you recall David Stockman's 1981 interview with Bill Greider, in which he acknowledged that Reagan's economic policies (which he himself had promoted, including introducing Reagan to the Laffer Curve during his campaign) were really "a Trojan horse to bring down the top tax rate." The strategy was to create a huge federal budget deficit in order to achieve the conservative goal of crippling government's capacity to regulate corporate America and conduct domestic social programs. Stockman wanted to "starve the beast" to shrink government.
The Dark Wraith yields to the tempatation.
oddjob, this is all on your back for starting this, or in other words, you pack the load.
I don't recall the details of the interview, although I remember that such an interview took place, and that Stockman was severely reprimanded in the White House for having the temerity to say all that out loud.
Since I don't recall the details you may well be correct. I can also imagine a scenario in which the Repubs. get the tax cuts enacted, and then successfully use the revenue shortfall to "starve the beast", without creating deficits (or not very big ones anyway), by paying as they went. My recollection of the submitted "dead on arrival" budgets suggests that was the approach they took. That would let them blame the deficits on the Dems. and also force them to shoulder the blame for fiscal sanity by raising taxes so that the $$$ could be spent on things Americans truly wanted (& still want).
On another matter, television is a medium within "the media"; newspapers are another. Egg tempera is a painting medium and is routinely referred to as such.
(Not so difficult as all that. Apologies for being a pain in the a**, and thanks for the extra info. I didn't know about systemic vs. analytic languages, and it had never occurred to me to call English a creole, although it certainly is precisely that. That bit about analytic languages helps explain why English verb conjugations can be ridiculously easy to learn, even though they don't always help much as you try to master the language. I am so pleased I learned this miserably difficult, powerful, sometimes truly beautiful language as my native tongue! I don't know if I could ever have mastered it otherwise!)
The Dark Wraith yields to the tempatation.
oddjob, this is all on your back for starting this, or in other words, you pack the load.
Because others (including yourself) yield to the temptation to engage in wordplay, this is all my fault??
- oddjob purses the lips
DW: the other question I asked was, are those deficit figures graphed in inflation adjusted dollars?
Good afternoon, OddJob.
Boy! this campus sure is dead. About the only thing here besides me is the Old School Spirit, which never was that lively as a ghost to begin with.
At some point within the next few days, I shall be putting up a series of graphs to show the data in various lights and perspectives. Concerning the matter of inflation-adjustment, I'll put up a graph that uses "constant dollars" with 1976 as the base year. Strange as it may sound, adjusting the surpluses and deficits for inflation has several downsides. One of them has to do with which index you use: the CPI, the GDP deflator, or some other measure of the effect of inflation. Another—and very serious, in my judgment—problem is that the ways by which changes in the aggregate price level (that is, deflation or inflation) are being calculated suffer from methodological flaws, in part, politically motivated. I have mentioned this matter before, but I must set forth some important microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts involving the so-called "substitution effect" and the "aggregate demand curve" before I can show what the government data jockeys are doing and why it's phony.
Another problem along the way is that some government debt is indexed to inflation, so to represent the trailing effect of deficits and the accumulating government debt by adjusting for inflation understates the liabilities.
On another point about the data, many conservative and neo-conservative commentators point out that we should not be looking at the absolute level of the deficit in any given year, but rather we should be considering the level of that deficit relative to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for that year. The argument goes that, as a nation becomes more prosperous, it can—just like a household—sustain a higher absolute debt burden, provided that, as a percentage of the national income, it is not rising.
That argument, although reasonable sounding on its face, is absolute hogwash for at least two reasons.
First, the nation is not 'just like a household' with regard to debt. If a household borrows itself silly, that excessive demand for lendable funds will have no impact whatsoever upon the amount of lendable funds available to everyone else. But when the government borrows billions and billions of dollars, you'd better believe that this demand for lendable funds is going to cause interest rates for everyone else to go up, thereby "crowding out" private investment.
Second, just because the citizens and businesses of the country are experiencing higher and higher GDP doesn't mean the government (the one incurring the debt) is, too. In fact, if the government is engaging in round after round of tax cuts, then by definition the government is partially excluding itself as a beneficiary from the rising national income.
Geez, I thought I was just going to blog here for a minute, and already I've blogged myself silly.
Oh, and by the way, the "data" thing can become a reductio ad abbsurdum trap: if it's news media in the aggregate, and it's news medium for newspapers in general, then what is it for a single newspaper?
News medium-ocrity?
Works for me.
The Dark Wraith rises above the mundane.
News medium-ocrity?
That's about right, as he starts to paper the litterbox.
Wouldn't you agree oddjob?
Good evening, Mr. Goat.
I would certainly hope that you don't use leftist newspapers for the cat's reading pleasure. Otherwise, someone might say that your pet's too liberal; and if the cat became polemical about what it had read, someone might go so far as to say that the puss tells lies.
The Dark Wraith strikes a blow for posting truthful lectures.
[And so, once again, we descend into PTL Hell.]
No, my cat doesn't read, but purring tabby listens.
A question if you don't mind. Has bush or any of his minions announced the actual changes they intend to try and make during their attempt to privatize SS? Maybe I missed it some place. Right now it seems if the right and left know there is a bad stink in the room but don't know for sure whether it is a dead body, fecal matter, or some odor producing lunch tray.
If they have laid out their plan, could you direct me to a link for further reading?
BTW, Mr. Goat professes thanks late.
Good evening, Mr. Goat.
Perhaps the last place you'll hear about details of the partial-privatization plan is from the White House, itself. Right now, the trial balloons are floating all over Washington, but the Administration's people are not going to be stupid enough to stick their necks out when they can get Congress to do that for them.
You see, the entire plan will have to be submitted as a bill or a series of bills in the House of Representatives, which will dutifully hold hearings stacked in favor of the overhaul.
The fun part will come as such: whereas the Republican leadership in House of Representatives will do whatever the White House wants—up to and including crafting the actual restructuring plan—the Senate won't be so pliable. Senators have much less interest in politically risky ventures. (That's why the House of Representatives so easily, cavalierly, and ridiculously impeached Bill Clinton, but the Senate never even came close to doing anything to throw him out of office.)
So, when it comes time for what might amount to political suicide, the Republican House members will all line up and even volunteer to pay for the bullets; but when the whole mess gets to the Senate, the very wisdom of even giving bullets to zealous politicians will be brought into question.
And there, my friend, is where you'll see one more rather interesting, possibly open, and maybe even ugly rift begin to appear in the Republican wall of unity. And this will all be happening at about the same time that the mess in Iraq and the greater Middle East will begin to stink pretty badly for the old line of "closet Republican moderates" (and I'm not really talking about McCain here, although he'll howl, too, just to burnish his credentials as some sort of "maverick" who really isn't bought and paid for by some really nasty interests about which the conspiracy theorists have talked about quite a lot).
Any way they cut it, though, the Republicans wanted to be in absolute power so badly that they were willing to do anything—including a quiet revolution—to achieve that goal. Now, we'll get to watch that revolution consume its own.
The Dark Wraith looks forward to the prospects.
Granted, but how many, really, GOP "moderates" do you think there are in the Senate now, four, five?
- oddjob
Good morning, OddJob.
You will find that moderation and rectitude become quite popular when the gallows are being built for the zealots.
Also, a core of only a half-dozen or so is all that will be needed to keep the greater excesses of the House of Representatives from becoming the law of the land. Back channels in Washington are whispering about seething hatred because of some of the heavy-handed tactics the Bush Administration brought to bear during its first term; and this looks to me like it's shaping up to be a slow-motion version of the score-settling that convinced Johnson not to even try for a second term. The old myth that Johnson was "brought down" by the Vietnam War might be nice as folklore for our more liberal musings, but the conflict in Southeast Asia doesn't come even close to explaining why that huge reserve of Blue Dogs turned their backs on Johnson by '67. (It was about then that their arms were beginning to get untwisted from the rough-housing he'd given them a few years earlier.)
Yes, I'd say we're in for a dose of frightening moderation starting in the Spring. Keep an eye out for the early sign in the next few months: surprisingly reasonable statements coming out of the mouths of men not known for uttering surprisingly reasonable words.
Already, I've seen spin that leaves me almost speechless. About a month ago, I believe it was one of the major print news magazines that had this glowing article about the leadership of the House, and the article described Dennis Hastert—Dennis Hastert!—as becoming much loved even by the Democrats because of his sensitivity to their needs, like when he ends House business on time so they can go home to their families.
Blah-hah-haw.
I also stand by my prediction that the backchannel bitching—irrelevant as it is, right now—presages drama at the level of "scandal" as we approach and pass the mid-term Elections in 2006.
We'll all just have to wait and see.
The Dark Wraith prepares some popcorn for the upcoming, blockbuster movie.
In doing my self imposed homework, I came across this article: Confusions about Social Security
Do you think that the author accurately hits some of the key points regarding pitfalls of the privatization of SS? Or is it also full of spin?
Good evening, Mr. Goat.
Paul Krugman is one of my favorites. I agree with his analyses far more often than I agree with any other fellow economist's. What he is saying about Social Security is just about as on-the-mark as you'll find.
The most important features of his article, if anything can stand out more than anything else, are the following:
• The claim that there's some "crisis" because, in the year 2018, the Social Security trust fund will have to draw from its surplus is just insane.
• Yes, in about 2018, the surplus will be tapped, and that's how we PLANNED it back in the 1980s, for God's sake! We set the cash flow structure up so that we would tax the workers of today at a high enough rate to build up a big surplus to cover the benefits we'd have to pay all of those Baby Boomers in their retirement years.
• The claim that there's some crisis looming in the year 2048, or 2052, or whenever is silly.
• The "tip-over" point when the surplus will be drained has been falling back further and further into the future as the time goes forward; and even if we ever really began to get within a couple of decades of it, we could easily do what we did in the 1980s: increase the tax modestly; and this time (as Peter of Lone Tree suggested here a couple of days ago), raise the tom-fool cap on income subject to the FICA tax.
Krugman lays it out well. He is, perhaps, not as articulate as I am (nor as artistically understated in blog design, if he even had a blog, which he doesn't), but that certainly shouldn't dissuade you from reading everything he has to say. Maybe down the road in a few months, he'll decide to stop writing for the New York Times and start writing guest columns here on The Dark Wraith Forums. I don't think he'd mind too much doing it for free, especially after I tell him what an interesting and engaging crowd we have over here.
Perhaps I should send him an e-mail message, tonight.
Yeah! That's a good idea. I'm sure he'll be flattered by my offer to let him have his own guest column here on the blog.
The Dark Wraith gets ready to transmit the invitation.
My initial read was that his overview was reasonable, based on other articles and street smarts, if you will. However, not being the professional economist makes it more difficult to filter out the counter spin.
Now if Krugman enjoys Spam perhaps you can bait him with a suppy. I seem to have acquired a sizable stash over that last few months.
Yes, and I seemed to have depleted my store of Spam at an anomalously high rate over the last few months.
Curious coicidence, is it not?
The Dark Wraith installs the Electro-Shock Spam Security Grid.
[I sure am glad that salesman talked me into the Gall Bladder Cinderizer Upgrade.]
No coicidence that...Ouch damnit!?! That hurt.
Note to self: Change teleportation coordinates for Wraith Spam Stash on return to bunker. Return later to implement SNACK software. High urgency. End note.
Now to get out of here without singeing the hair off the you know whats. Implementing backup escape routine on one. 10, 9, 8...
(I hope my GPS isn't on the fritz; I hate ending up in Hugh's mansion smelling like burned hair.)
It can't be any worse than ending up in Rush's studio sounding like a liberal.
Which reminds me: anyone want to join in on a hack to take command of what Ditto-Heads hear when they tune in to their favorite CrackPot radio station?
Just a thought. I would never actually do a hack like that: I might get cooties all over my server.
The Dark Wraith practices safe hacking.
Hmmm.... I wonder how many nerdy "environmentalist wacko feminazis" have already tried that over at EIB?
- oddjob
Good morning, OddJob.
I'm not sure how many have tried it before, but you must admit that it's a worthy project for an aspiring hacker.
Not that I recommend hacking under any circumstances. No siree. Bad stuff. Inappropriate.
The Dark Wraith frowns upon hacking.
Where's the emoticon with the tongue sticking out to add to the end of that last post?
- oddjob
whatever! -the payday loan online guy
So many blogs and only 10 numbers to rate them. I'll have to give you a 7 because you have good content but lack of quality posts.
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