ParticleGrl said:
Name one? Crack a micro-econ book, and see how many examples they give for real world supply curves.
Mattel? (just throwing out a random name). Mattel engages in marketing programs for Barbie, but I mean after a certain point, spending more money results in very few additional people learning about Barbie.
Lets avoid specifically discussing global warming (feel free to message me), but keep this in the context of science. Science works by reducing, testing and modeling. The idea is that, yes, things are really complex, so let's isolate the pieces, test them in a controlled environment, and generalize.
Lets turn to your inflation experiment
You didn't flesh out an actual experiment here. Put money on a table, and apples on a table and nothing happens. You left out the people.
Now, let's say we have 10 people and 10 apples, and everyone has $1, and everyone wants an apple. I imagine the apples will go for $1 each, though I haven't run the experiment.
Now, let's double the supply of money by giving every person $1 more. What is the price of the apples? Probably $2.
Now, let's double the supply of money by giving all $10 to the apple seller. What is the price of the apples? Probably $1
Now, this isn't a real experiment, its a thought experiment (also known as a model). But we did learn something from the model- doubling the supply of money can do different things depending on what you do. By adding a few more layers of complexity, you could probably get a lot of insight out of your apples and dollars game.
What is most interesting is that if you actually run these toy experiments in a lab by playing a game with people, MOST TOY ECONOMIES DON'T FOLLOW STANDARD ECONOMICS PREDICTIONS. See the work of psychologists like Kahneman. People are irrational in predictable ways.
That's what I am saying though, lab experiments for something like economics or the climate are not going to give accurate information about such complex systems.
Actually, it hasn't been massive stimulus, its been paralyzed inaction (which I fault them for, tremendously). Government has been shedding jobs throughout the crisis.
The government enacted a nearly trillion dollar stimulus bill, but that said, some prominent Democrats say the solution is that there hasn't been enough spending, and call for a lot more (such as Paul Krugman for example).
The "obamacare" bill (which has a striking resemblance to both Newt Gingrich's health care bill from the 90s and Nixon's health care bill) is NOT a single payer bill, nor is it government run.
A few points here:
1) The Republicans in the early-to-mid 1990s did have an alternative healthcare plan to Hillarycare that included a mandate to purchase health insurance. But this has never been an idea popular with conservatives or libertarians, it was a Republican party idea and a prime example of when Republican voters talk about how the Republican party leadership has too often deviated from what its principles are supposed to be. Quite a few Republicans were concerned about the existence of the mandate in the Republican plan at the time.
2) Richard Nixon was a member of the Republican party, but he is a man who created the EPA, was for universal healthcare, was for gun control, I mean he wasn't a standard conservative Republican.
3) The bill is not "officially" single-payer, but it is single-payer by proxy, because it puts the government in charge of the health insurance companies, so in a sense it is government-run. The health insurance companies gave up a lot of freedom in exchange for being subsidized. Also, Democrats have longed for a single-payer system for years, they only didn't try to outright nationalize the system because they saw doing so as too complex an operation. Barack Obama stated how he wanted to create a "Medicare for all" during the campaign.
There is no public option. Its a regulated public market.
There's a public option. People are required to either purchase health insurance, or else pay a fine (or tax). If they are too poor to do either, then they are subsidized.
You seem to be suggesting that the legislation that the democrats passed is somehow not their solution to healthcare?
No, the legislation they passed is their solution to healthcare.
Actually, Dodd-Frank requires large banks to make plans to unwind banks if they become illiquid. This is to avoid the "too-big too-fail" situation and reduce the need for massive bailouts. The idea being to remove the "big government" induced moral hazard.
That's the idea, but there are lots of regulations from the bill that thus far have yet to be written, and there are differing opinions on the bill (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/is-dodd-frank-overdue-or-overkill-2-dueling-views/")
Keep in mind that democratic presidents have seen just as much deregulation as republican presidents (Carter lifted the brewing regulations and touched off the microbrew growth in the US,
Yup, he also signed trucking and airlines deregulation. Some think that is partially what sank his presidency because of how the Democratic party saw it at the time.
Clinton massively deregulated finance and passed free trade agreements, etc).
He completed NAFTA (which had been started by Reagan) after being resistant to at first and signed the Financial Services Modernization Act, but this was with a Republican Congress, and the Democratic party did not like Clinton doing this from what I understand.
Cap and trade (which was the republican solution to global warming in the 90s, actually) is not massive government regulation- its market based. You set a cap, and let the private sector figure out how to come in under the cap. The idea is to avoid complicated micro-managed industry-by-industry regulations.
Yes, cap-and-trade is a market-based solution that was conjured up by Republicans, and one that worked fine from my understanding with regards to pollutants such as sulfure dioxide and carbon monoxide and so forth from coal plants. But that's because the technology exists to filter those pollutants out of the carbon emissions. But with regards to the carbon dioxide emissions themselves, there is no way to "filter" or capture those. The only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to burn less coal, which means raising the cost of energy or switching to alternatives. If legitimate alternative sources existed that could be implemented quickly, that might work, but they don't. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, etc...none are viable alternatives right now. So because of this, cap-and-trade would act as a tax on the economy.
Since the administration couldn't get cap-and-trade through the Congress though, they are seeking to regulate carbon directly through the EPA, which is going to be very difficult for industry.
I would argue the democrat position currently is that "there are sometimes problems that government can solve better than the private sector" and "market failures require the need for some regulations, but its usually best to construct those regulations in a market-oriented way." Its a very centrist party.
Well some Democrats, the kind I like, are like that, but much of the party is a lot more leftwing than that.
Its weird but true that 90s Gingrich would be a democrat today (thought 2011 Gingrich has pulled way right).
In some ways, he would've been.
