Althouse: If we're all supposed to see that Obama is a socialist, and then he wins by a landslide...

October 28, 2008

If we're all supposed to see that Obama is a socialist, and then he wins by a landslide...

... does that mean there's a mandate for socialism?

229 comments:

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Freeman Hunt said...: That if you want people to buy more refrigerators you give more people the ability to buy them....or doesn't that compute.

Where do you think money comes from? Is there a magical river of it flowing somewhere? Do we need only to allocate from that? If you want more money to be around for more people to buy refrigerators with, you must provide incentive for people to create that money. Economics is not a zero sum game. There is not a set pie of money to be divided.

that when the republicans reallocated wealth upward to the few you didn't scream socialism

What are you talking about? If you're talking about corporate welfare, then you're wrong--I scream socialism as every instance of it. I despise it. If you're talking about cutting taxes across the board, allowing the rich to invest more and make more money, that's not reallocation.; 10/28/08, 11:28 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: Well that's based upon a rejection of Marxism. The fact you had to make the damn point to him tells you the side of the spectrum he's sitting on.

Too true.; 10/28/08, 11:29 AM
Freder Frederson said...: So in the interest of punishing the "trust fund brat," who you disdain, you will punish everyone who creates businesses and thus jobs and thus the entire economy?

I'm not suggesting we "punish" anyone, just that the trust fund brat pay the same taxes (actually less since he wouldn't have to pay FICA and Medicaire) as the doctor.; 10/28/08, 11:39 AM
Freder Frederson said...: Workers do not drive the economy, investment does.

A pile of money is never going to assemble a refrigerator. I doubt you would last a day on Maytag assembly line in Iowa.; 10/28/08, 11:42 AM
Peter Hoh said...: I think Althouse was trying to make the point that by spending the last weeks of the campaign trying to paint Obama as a socialist, the McCain campaign and its allies are going to de-fang the charge of socialism in our political discourse.; 10/28/08, 11:45 AM
Darcy said...: Obama isn't just increasing taxes on the wealthy, and anyone with capital gains, he is then taking this money and handing it over as a "tax credit" to individuals who haven't paid the tax in the first place. That is not a tax cut. That is a handout.

To those of you who agree that this is a good idea, directly transferring wealth, I wish you would just say so. Will you say so?; 10/28/08, 11:47 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: A pile of money is never going to assemble a refrigerator. I doubt you would last a day on Maytag assembly line in Iowa.

And that line of workers isn't going to build the assembly line without that pile of money. Workers are plentiful, risktakers aren't.

Oh and I worked five years at US Steel right out of college maintaining BOFs and I'll wager you wouldn't last ten minutes on the line.; 10/28/08, 11:48 AM
Peter Hoh said...: According to Palin, the "fundamentals of the economy" are the working people.; 10/28/08, 11:50 AM
PJ said...: If you're talking about cutting taxes across the board, allowing the rich to invest more and make more money, that's not reallocation.

Well you're obviously looking at this entirely backward. If today the rich pay X in taxes, and tomorrow they pay X minus Y, then the government has reallocated Y to the rich.

You seem to believe that people own their money. In fact, the state owns all the money, and whatever individuals get to keep for themselves is entirely a matter of legislative grace.

But (channelling Otto West) Don't call that socialism!; 10/28/08, 11:53 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: According to Palin, the "fundamentals of the economy" are the working people.

Well if she means fundamentals being the drivers of the economy then she's wrong.; 10/28/08, 12:01 PM
Freder Frederson said...: Well if she means fundamentals being the drivers of the economy then she's wrong.

Actually, consumer spending (not investment) is the biggest driver of the economy, so Palin is at least partially right. And Freeman oh so wrong when she disdains and diminishes the contribution of wages and working people to the economy.; 10/28/08, 12:09 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I doubt you would last a day on Maytag assembly line in Iowa.

That's a silly charge.

And Freeman oh so wrong when she disdains and diminishes the contribution of wages and working people to the economy.

I didn't disdain or diminish the contribution of working people to the economy. It does not disdain or diminish them to point out that their jobs don't spring ready-made out of the ether. The only people disdaining and diminishing are you and your ilk who characterize investors, the people who create those jobs for working people, as trust fund babies and members of the leisure class, characterizations which are as false as they are unfair.; 10/28/08, 12:15 PM
KCFleming said...: Actually, consumer spending (not investment) is the biggest driver of the economy...

Again, an economic moron.

Consumer demand was always higher than the available products in the USSR, where laborers pretended to work and their bosses pretended to pay them. Their cash was useless, however, because despite the desire to spend, there was nothing to spend it on.

Their vaunted system couldn't even produce a simple tampon or sanitary pad even through 1990. Imagine that. They became the only modern nation required to ration meat in peacetime.

If consumer spending drives the economy as you say, how could that possibly occur?

Please don't vote. You know too little.; 10/28/08, 12:22 PM
KCFleming said...: If only Freder and Biden and Obama were smart enough to read:

Economics in One Lesson
by Henry Hazlitt

All else is minor compared to that.; 10/28/08, 12:25 PM
Freder Frederson said...: If consumer spending drives the economy as you say, how could that possibly occur?

Because the USSR wasn't a market based economy?

Sheesh.; 10/28/08, 12:34 PM
KCFleming said...: "Because the USSR wasn't a market based economy?
Sheesh."

Like it or not, all economies are in some fashion market-based. Some nations try to constrain it, some even outlaw it, but that doesn't make its fundamental laws inoperative. The outcomes of screwing with the market cannot be avoided; the market will out.

In the USSR, this meant the official market was 'communist' (and an abject failure), but a huge percentage of trade was in the black market, as always occurs in these regimes.

Again, the market, like the truth, will out.

But you are wrong. The consumer AND the producer are the drivers. Not one or the other. But there is nothing to consume if the producer does not decide that his or her future happiness will be delayed while a risk is taken to produce.; 10/28/08, 12:59 PM
Freder Frederson said...: But you are wrong. The consumer AND the producer are the drivers.

I said consumer spending was the biggest driver (I didn't even claim it was the main driver of the economy), not the sole driver of the economy. This was in response to hoosier's boneheaded assertions that consumer spending (spending by working people) is not a fundamental driver of the economy and freeman's equally ridiculous implication that investment is more important than actual production.

Your nonsensical citing of the command economy of the U.S.S.R. to try to prove that consumer spending does not drive our economy was completely off-point and nonsensical too.; 10/28/08, 1:41 PM
Freder Frederson said...: They became the only modern nation required to ration meat in peacetime.

And you really should check your facts before you make such outrageous statements. Britain, and I presume numerous other European nations, rationed meat, bacon and other necessities until 1954.; 10/28/08, 1:45 PM
MadisonMan said...: I doubt you would last a day on Maytag assembly line in Iowa.

Maytags are no longer made in Iowa. I believe the plant closed down in '07.; 10/28/08, 2:04 PM
reader_iam said...: Alas, MM, you are right. And Maytag is now Whirlpool, even if the former name is being used on certain of the latter's brands.; 10/28/08, 2:09 PM
KCFleming said...: "Britain, and I presume numerous other European nations, rationed meat, bacon and other necessities until 1954."
They maintained war rationing for several years after WW2, yes (i.e. "postwar" economy, not quite "peacetime" yet). It's called socialism. Like its brother communism, it ALWAYS leads to shortages and rationing.

And your point is that Obama, a socialist, is similarly going to lead us into shortages and rationing, right?

Now you get it, Freder.

"consumer spending was the biggest driver "'
It can't be a bigger driver than production. A trade takes two. Always two.

With the recent use of bogus credit, fake easy money has lent the appearance of increased wealth and rtherfore has in fact 'driven' production. but tnow that lie has been revealed, and the crash has occurred, and the usual market law is brought back to the natural level.

"Your nonsensical citing of the command economy of the U.S.S.R."

Which means you do not understand anything at all about a command economy. But at least you're consistently ignorant, Freder.; 10/28/08, 2:11 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: This was in response to hoosier's boneheaded assertions that consumer spending (spending by working people) is not a fundamental driver of the economy

I swear to God you are the stupidest person on this blog.

and freeman's equally ridiculous implication that investment is more important than actual production.

Yes because Freeman is an idiot for thinking production can occur without continuous investment. It just happens like the sun rising in the east. You're right, what a fool.; 10/28/08, 2:15 PM
Freder Frederson said...: Which means you do not understand anything at all about a command economy.

What I don't understand is how your citing the the failure of the economy of the U.S.S.R. to meet basic consumer needs disproves the basic fact that consumer spending is the biggest driver of our economy.; 10/28/08, 2:28 PM
KCFleming said...: Freder actually said "Actually, consumer spending (not investment) is the biggest driver of the economy"

I was respponding to that. He now tries to parse that into "consumer spending is the biggest driver in our economy.

These are not equivalent statements, differing by the critical element of the time period implied.

Up until the crash, too many fake dollars (easy credit) did in fact drive production. That ceased as of about two weeks ago. So you were correct, reagrding the last perhaps 10-15 years. I'm talking about the larger economy over time, and you are quite wrong if that's what you think always applies (i.e. to "the economy" as opposed to "our economy" which merely implies the current status right now), because it clearly does no such thing.

This makes me believe you understand very little about the subject, or you are obfuscating.; 10/28/08, 2:47 PM
Anonymous said...: No. It means far left Obama suckered a lot of people he was a moderate.; 10/28/08, 9:36 PM
Ritmo Re-Animated said...: I think that what's going to be funny, is that once Obama wins the election, and, having run on more competent and fairly run government (not more socialist government), and having received more endorsements from economists than that idiot McCain, if he has a successful term or two, Althouse's purposed reason for posting this - that calling Obama a "socialist" reduces the label to an absurdity - will come to pass.

I'm so glad that freeman and pogo can idealize the principles (McCain called them "the fundamentals") of economics to the point of abstraction - especially when pogo implies that what's known was frozen in time by Henry Hazlitt in 1946 (with a short update in 1978). I'll go with the choice the economists in 2008 are actually endorsing as more sensible, intelligent and competent and call it a day. The party that believes they understand to a degree of absolute certainty every picayune variable of economics, to the point that they turn the entire discipline into a belief system, had their chance, and they failed that and the public trust entirely. I've noticed they tend to have (R)s after their names.

Sorry, pretend-free market people. Unfortunately you'll have no choice but to work with the Socialists -- I mean, the Democrats. Just make sure that you're not as zealous as you were when that Republican with a PhD in economics, Phil Gramm (another idiot), convinced the House to go along with Senate Republicans and repeal Glass-Steagall.

Jamie:

"No. It means far left Obama suckered a lot of people he was a moderate."

It actually means that, after Bush, Republicans, whether they claim to be conservative or not, have no credibility. They can't govern. The government is not a freaking market.; 10/28/08, 9:51 PM
Hoosier Daddy said...: I think that what's going to be funny, is that once Obama wins the election, and, having run on more competent and fairly run government

Now that's funny!; 10/29/08, 6:39 AM
Ritmo Re-Animated said...: Gee Hoosier. I suppose it would have been funnier for Obama to have run on the banner of incompetent and cronyism-corrupted government, but no one believed that anyone could surpass the Bush administration in those measures.

And then McCain nominated the Empress of Corruption from the Welfare Queen of the 50 States: Sarah Palin of Alaska!

But by then it was too late.

Too bad.; 10/29/08, 8:16 AM
knowitall said...: We are not wanting socialism, and those supporting him aren't looking at what he is saying. No one would support a socialist illuminati politician if they paid attention to what they were trying to do. He uses eloquent words to change the subject.; 10/29/08, 1:53 PM