http://nplusonemag.com/full-
Hi uncle Jacques,
Did you ever read that article? I promise I'm not trying to ambush you with a liberal tirade. Excepting the rather abrupt thesis at the end (which I disown), it's not propaganda at all, just a thoughtful dissection of economics and economic theory.
Dear Max,
Yes, I did read Mr. Kunkel's interesting but meandering article concerning the concept of 'full employment'.
I thought that his overall knowledge of various economic theories and his ability to interrelate widely variant postulations were quite impressive.
As I am sure you noticed, however, he completely disregards the deleterious effects of governmental interference into what many people still believe is a 'free' enterprise system. That's like attempting to calculate E=mc2 while assigning "c" a value of zero!
I will grant that Mr. Kunkel did briefly complain about the recent pitiful attempts by Congress to encourage hiring via tax credits to business, and he certainly was not impressed with ARRA, the preposterous so-called "Stimulus Bill" that achieved absolutely nothing but to pay off many of Obama's political cronies and fawning unions. But that doesn't deter him from his unwavering belief that the ultimate solution to the employment problem still lies in governmental action, . . . . he just believes that it should be handled "correctly", i.e., in the manner that he believes it should be implemented. (This is evidenced by his admiration for the WPA's public projects in the late 1930's.) Obviously he completely disregards the deleterious net effect that this outrageous outlay of public funds had on this country's economy, and how current economists almost unanimously agree that about all that those programs accomplished was to unnaturally prolong the Great Depression.
Apparently the idea never occurs to Mr. Kunkel that interference by the government and its ham-handed fetters on the free enterprise capitalistic system could possibly always have a detrimental effect. Wow! Now that's a novel concept!
So, yes, I agree with you . . . the article was quite interesting and very thought provoking. I also agree with you that Mr. Kunkel's proposed remedy is dead wrong. He concludes with a pipedream, a crevasse into which many an idealistic ultra-liberal almost inevitably falls.
Dear Uncle Jacques,
I'm glad you found it interesting. What I took away from the article was an explanation of the world economy and its likely direction. His ideas fit in with some wordless thoughts of my own, which is maybe why I got so excited about it (the transient nature of our grasp on power, the fact that economic equilibrium will come with the rising of boats across the world rather than the downfall of the American standard of living barring peak oil, etc.).
I repeat that I did not mean to goad you about politics. However, it appears that willingly or not you were goaded just a bit. Frankly, I'm a little amused by your complaint which I mentally reduced to (I hope you don't mind) "this article all looks very interesting but the author conspicuously didn't shill for the foundational doctrine of my political ideology!"
If he could have said something interesting about a topic which has been so beaten to death, I would have been eager to hear it. The fact that he couldn't, however, is completely unsurprising. Like a typical theorist, it seems that when he encountered a subject so entirely dull he decided to ignore it completely, invoking the almighty implicit black box.
I say dull because it is so incredibly hard to quantify the benefits or costs of the inefficiency of bureaucracy, particularly when so many people (in error, I think) are so quick to cite as a benefit the fact that it "creates jobs". Frankly, the ambiguity of the proposed "answers" to that query has been a major factor in my gradual drift towards the right of American politics, or at least the middle.
The problem with the left is that they assume programs come with a tolerable level of inefficiency. The right, in turn, assumes zero benefits, such that any calculation of the inefficiency yields the conclusion that it is at an unacceptable level. I'll explain why I believe that there is in fact an optimal level of government regulation and spending, not that I propose to know what that level is.
The derivation is similar to that of the Laffer Curve (a theory which I've since grown fond of like a pet zombie). Zero government regulation and spending on social programs doesn't make sense. Massive control and spending on social programs (a la USSR) doesn't make sense either. Never mind the human rights implications, government cannot possibly be efficiently applied to managing the details of people's lives, nor is it possible that the unique position of government cannot be applied effectively to certain circumstances where a "blunt instrument" works, like the post office until the advent of email, food labeling, interstate freeways and public education.
Ultimately, I've settled on a case-by-case basis, which is problematic for different reasons. How can you know whether or not a given program will be effective without extraordinary knowledge of policy-making or extraordinary trust in someone with extraordinary knowledge of policy-making and so forth? Unfortunately, that is where my line of reasoning has come to rest.
You and my dad seem to think that even a layperson can gain extraordinary knowledge of policy-making, but I'm not so convinced. I prefer the latter solution, the one built on trust, because I have no illusions about my limitations for becoming an expert in everything (and this coming from someone who is considerably closer to achieving that than the average person).
And yes, his conclusion was a pipedream. I'm afraid that doesn't excite me the way it does you.
Cheers
Max
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