We Need a Free and Open Economy

I use facebook almost exclusively for political conversation.  The other day a conservative fb friend of mine linked the following picture:

Here was my comment:

Which is why we need to be much more concerned with unemployment than with debt/inflation - knowing that there is some overlap of these issues, but not a perfect overlap.

This coincides with and is inspired by a lot of commentary out there that unemployment should be our top priority.  This resonates with me because of my Dad's perpetual unemployment (and underemployment) problems has been a dibilitation that he passed on to me.  Not that I have had my own direct problems with this, but the fear of it has definitely kept me from taking bigger career risks (or any career risk) and has limited from really putting myself out there for far too long.

I'll spare you his response to my comment, but let me give you my out of context follow up to his response:

The overall economy consists of overall buying/selling, consuming/producing. It doesn't matter whose doing it. We're all people afterall whether our paycheck is coming from a gov't entity or a private company, work is work.

You can make the argument that accumulating a bunch of debt forces us to pay interest on that debt, which is why I think there is some overlap between jobs & debt, just not a perfect overlap.

And certainly, if gov't stopped borrowing completely, a bunch of people get laid off in the short term - and there's simply not enough jobs in the private sector, again in the short term, to absorb that.

So, if your priority is debt, you are willing to live with higher unemployment. If your priority is jobs, you are still concerned about debt as it relates to jobs, but you may be more willing to borrow in the short term. Similar to if say, I lose my job, I'm willing to borrow to put food on the table until I can bridge the gap until I find my next job. Food is higher priority for me than debt.

So, Reagan's point, a job is the best social program is something I 100% agree with, which is one reason I think unemployment has more urgency than our debt in the short run.

This is the part of my comment I want to highlight:

 And certainly, if gov't stopped borrowing completely, a bunch of people get laid off in the short term - and there's simply not enough jobs in the private sector, again in the short term, to absorb that.

Ok, this argument makes sense, but then Obama went ahead and issued an executive order to allow young illegal immigrants to stay in the US without fear of deportation.



In his press conference, he gets heckled by some conservative hack complaining that allowing these immigrants legal access to our economy would affect jobs at a time when there are none.  He basically makes the exact same argument as mine, but in this context my impulse is to disagree.

AAAARGGG, a contradiction inspired by my allegiance to team Democrat.  So, what do I do with this insight.  Do I shift on immigration or on government size?  Well, sorry, given those alternatives, I will never shift on immigration.  All things being equal, I want more freedom, less government and less restriction.  I would rather error on the side of the people.

What am I getting at exactly?  Well, even in times of high unemployment, we need to find ways to cut the waste of the government and allow local communities and neighborhoods find ways to solve their problems.  I think there are some problems that demand federal, state, and local government involvement, but where private and non-profit institutions step in, the government should step away.

Laying off people in government jobs that are providing marginal benefit to society can only help our economy, forcing, allowing that person to find a way to make a more positive contribution to the economy elsewhere.  There's not such a thing as too many people.  Our economy is big enough, diverse enough, and vibrant enough to absorb influxes of new people.

I strongly support the Dream Act, and I cannot relate to people who don't.

Immigration and the DREAM Act (and some general snarkiness)

Just wanted to share this link with anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog. I found it profound.


"It's worth noting that the southwestern portion of the United States just was Mexico, once upon a time. There is an undeniable economic and cultural continuity between Mexico and the United States. The border distorts and disrupts it, but it cannot and will never put an end to it. The pattern of traffic between these two countries is not something to choke off, but something sensibly to regulate and rationalise."


and


"The DREAM Act sends the message that although American immigration law in effect tries to make water run uphill, we are not monsters. It says that we will not hobble the prospects of young people raised and schooled in America just because we were so perverse to demand that their parents wait in a line before a door that never opens. It signals that we were once a nation of immigrants, and even if we have become too fearful and small to properly honour that noble legacy, America in some small way remains a land of opportunity."


Ok, what follows is a rant, a vent. I have really smart, reasonable friends that may disagree with the some of the points I make in the second half of this post. Also, there are reasonable disagreements on the issues I bring up. What I see right now, almost systemically, however, is something really wrong in the Republican party. I think it comes from some combination of corruption from being in power for too long and this crazy Obama is a socialist, power over country sentiment, and FOX news/AM talk radio that's brought them where they are today.

So, I just need to do it :-). Feel free to ignore all of it. No offense if any of these issues feel targeted at you. I'm venting :-).

How many issues have the Republican party demogogued over the last 10 years or so, to the point of unreasonableness, let's just count a few off the top of my head:

• Immigration: Hard working Mexicans drain our society's resources! Let's stop every single Mexican from entering our country despite unrelenting market forces!


• Banking: The great recession was caused by Barack Obama who took office after it began! By the way, it had nothing to do with unregulated bankers who took advantage of lax regulation to gamble the world's reserves making record profits on both the downside and the upside! But hey, regulating banks is always a bad idea - resist!


• War: Preemptive invasion on the cheap - but don't worry we'll be welcomed as liberators and Democracy will flourish wherever we decree it.


• Nuclear Proliferation - Its not enough to fight the war on terror, Russia is and will always be our enemy. Just say no to START - let's keep the Cold War going! By the way, Europe sucks too!


• Health Care: There is a market solution to elderly - kick them off of medicare, give them a voucher (that will not rise with medicare inflation, and I'm sure some for-profit insurance company won't mind giving them insurance with that voucher despite the fact that an elderly person will likely cost much more than any voucher will cover.


• Health Care Part II: Same thing for anyone with a chronic condition. But there's a free market solution for every problem!


• Tax Cuts: Tax cuts always increase revenue! (Need I say more - well for some people I do :-)


• Education cuts improve education quality - no need for reform, its magic! Teachers work harder when you pay them less money - and they will surely pay for their supplies out of pocket.


• Tax cuts for the wealthy: The wealthy are the only drivers for our economy -despite the fact they make up 1% of our economy, but they control something like 20% of our wealth - so they must know what they're doing right? So, if you want to boost the economy, put more money in their pockets and they will magically guide our economy into the next century.


• Global Warming: Its fiction because, well if its wasn't then we recognize their are no free market solutions for global warming and anything without a free market solution doesn't exist.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.