scott d. feldstein

What’s keeping unemployment high? It’s “uncertainty” with regard to government tax and economic policy. Business would like to hire people, really. It’s just that everyone’s worried about the fate of the estate tax and corporate tax rates and the fate of Bush’s tax cuts. (Which could expire on everyone! Have you seen legislation that preserves it even for the middle-class?) On top of that, “Obamacare” has businesses running scared and unwilling to hire the people they so desperately want to hire.

Or so the Right tells us.

Now, I’m not an economist. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But I know the distinctive aroma of bullshit when it wafts my way.

First off, the economy tanked well before any of the above items were factors. And actually, the economy has lost fewer and fewer jobs since they did appear.

Second, none of this BS alters the general rule: If a business can sell more widgets than it currently makes, it will expand and hire. If the demand isn’t there, it won’t. And right now the demand isn’t there because people are out of work or afraid that they might soon be. Feedback loop. The more people are unemployed, the less demand there is; the less demand there is, the more people are unemployed. The fed can lower interest rates and make sure capital is cheap for businesses who would like to expand, but if demand isn’t there it doesn’t matter if the interest rate is zero–they won’t expand.

How did the feedback loop start? It started when the housing market and the financial sector tanked. People woke up and realized that their nest eggs–their homes and their 401ks–had lost a hell of a lot of value. They responded by spending less money. Spending less money means businesses start letting people go–which of course causes people to spend even less money than before. Rinse, repeat.

Finally, our anemic stimulus spending has given us an anemic recovery.

They’re going to tell you that we’re in this fix because we have such a high deficit and debt. Or because businesses are scared of healthcare reform. But don’t you smell something? I do.

Whereas many Muslim-majority nations in the world are hopelessly and dangerously backward

Whereas it is highly desirable to facilitate such places in joining the modern world of democracy, religious freedom, women’s rights and.. not stoning people to death

Whereas singling out Muslim Americans from practicing their faith openly and freely as others do in America would kind of push the Muslim world away from the liberal west…

Therefore making a huge dickish deal about where they can and cannot put their Mosques is not helping us or them

I generally don’t think of Mitt Romney as a crazy person. (Unlike some Republicans I could name by the dozen.) But sane though he may be, he’s still wrong on the economy. The man seems to think that all we need to do is cut taxes–especially for the wealthiest among us–and everything will be peachy. Robert Reich nails him on it.

businesses have all the capital they need. They’re sitting on it or can borrow it more cheaply than ever. But they aren’t using it to create jobs.

Why not? Because there’s not enough demand for their products or services. Consumers aren’t buying.

Retail sales continue to slide. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Target report disappointing sales for July. Same with popular back-to-school retailers like Aeropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, and TJX. Housing sales are down. Appliances are down. (Cars sales are up a bit but that’s mainly because they fell to record lows in 2008 and 2009, and by now some people who have held back need another.)

Romney’s supply-side economics won’t create jobs. It’s pushing on a wet noodle. Businesses create jobs only if consumers are pulling the noodle from the other end.

You wanna know why that judge ruled against California’s Proposition 8? Evidence. The nay-sayers didn’t have any.

Last time I wrote about Ron Johnson it was to marvel at his belief in magical economic thinking. This time it’s because he apparently thinks he knows more about climate science than the world’s scientific community.

“I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” Johnson said. “It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination.”

Johnson, in an interview last month, described believers in manmade causes of climate change as “crazy” and the theory as “lunacy.”

“It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time,” he said.

Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “gets sucked down by trees and helps the trees grow,” said Johnson.

Average Earth temperatures were relatively warm during the Middle Ages, Johnson said, and “it’s not like there were tons of cars on the road.”

I guess the world’s scientists just never thought of those things!

Is this who you want in the United States senate?

File this under obvious. It’s disgusting me how many Americans and American politicians want to prevent other Americans from building a place of worship wherever they want to (pursuant to local building ordinances, etc.) If Muslim-Americans want to occupy the old Burlington Coat Factory two blocks away from where the World Trade Center stood, good for them.

Of course I personally think Islam is ridiculous. I think that about all supernatural beliefs. But I vehemently defend a person’s right to believe whatever they want–even if it’s ridiculous. After all, it is this very same toleration that allows me to say what I believe.

The most repulsive cherry on the tippy top of this whole shit sundae has got to be Newt Gingrich. He’s going to run for president, I guess. So he’s on television saying abfuckingsurd things about the issue: It “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust museum.” And suggesting that we in America should take our cue on religious liberty from Saudi Arabia, which doesn’t allow synagogues or churches within it’s borders.

This is what Republicans want to run on? Loudly demonizing their fellow Americans while simultaneously taking a whiz on the religious freedom our country was founded upon? Good luck with that.

On second thought, remembering how many of my friends and neighbors think the mosque should be prevented, maybe it’s winning issue for them.

Which brings me back to being disgusted.

When congress debated extending jobless benefits during the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, they did a lot of fretting and handwringing over whether it would add to the deficit. When congress is faced with extending Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy instead of letting them expire as written, however, the GOP had no such concerns–despite the fact that they add a whole lot more to the deficit than jobless benefits do.

Let us dispense with the notion that letting those tax cuts expire will increase taxes on small businesses, because they won’t. And let us also remember that some of the soberest–and Republicanest–minds in American economics have come out and admitted that extending them would be disastrous.

It’s hard not to wonder whether the GOP cares more about Donald Trump’s tax bill than it does about millions of unemployed Americans.

41% of Republicans believe president Obama was “probably not” or “definitely not” born in the United States.

Overall, 27% of all Americans are so-called “birthers.”

What does it mean when a quarter of the nation believes the sitting president is literally illegitimate and constitutionally prohibited from holding office? It scares me. How long before someone tries to shoot the man?

Of course in the event that happens, he will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

So I was trying to make what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial point on a conservative blog the other day, when people’s heads started exploding. I simply pointed out that throughout history there have been people who wanted to expand the circle of who was “in,” and people who resisted their inclusion. Some of the biggies I could easily think of was the freeing of slaves, the rights of women to vote, the civil rights act and gay marriage. With me so far? So the land mine I stepped on was to call the impulses of the group wanting to expand enfranchisement “liberal” and the impulses of the people resisting the expansion “conservative.”

Of course I quickly pointed out that I am by no means suggesting that modern Americans who call themselves conservatives secretly wish for a return to slavery and want to repeal the 19th amendment. I only meant that the resistance to inclusion can indeed be described as a conservative one.

My remarks were met with outrage, disbelief and derision. I was somewhat nonplussed by the whole thing. And the more I tried to explain and reason with them, the worse it got. At one point someone wrote:

You believe conservatives are inherently racist, sexist, bigots.

And I replied:

No I don’t. But I believe racism, sexism and bigotry are inherently conservative.

I was pretty pleased with myself until I realized that I was wrong. I amended my position thusly:

Upon reflection, I want to clarify and correct something. Someone asked if black people can be racist. Of course they can. I’m not sure this qualifies as conservative impulse, however. The conservative aspect of racism is derived from an impulse to keep historically disenfranchised people down; resisting the changes necessary for them to become fully enfranchised. Black racists in America lack this resisting-change aspect. Therefore, they are racists but their racism is not conservative.

Therefore [my statement that racism, sexism and bigotry are inherently conservative] was in error.

Still, my original point stands. The impulse to expand rights and social status is a liberal one. The urge to resist this expansion is conservative.

Am I wrong or am I right?

I wrote recently about Republican tax voodo: The idea that tax cuts magically pay for themselves. And then we all get ponies or something.

It seems that some folks do see reason. Alan Greenspan, for one.