My understanding of British legal and political systems is notably weak. My general sense – however – is that if David Cameron woke up tomorrow convinced of the virtues of economic stimulus he could apply enough pressure to push through the following:
- A suspension/rebate of both the VAT and the National Insurance Contribution.
- A change in the mandate of the Bank of England to maintain the real international price of British labor at rates consistent with its marginal product, to be “unofficially” interpreted as buying German Bunds until the Pound fell .8 Euros.
- A temporary subsidy on energy that cut the price of petrol, heating oil, electricity etc in half.
Such a program would cause an immediate and hard reversal of the following trend
Given that Britain is currently suffering through an economic crisis that is now worse than the Great Depression, its hard to imagine that Cameron would not be hailed as a folk hero.
Statues would be erected in his honor. Choirs would sing hymnals about him. Kindergartners would memorize the details of his childhood. The conservative party would win reelection in a landslide. He could implement whatever neoliberal reforms he wanted and launch a torrid, all-too-public love affair with Pippa Middleton without the man in the street speaking ill of him.
Supposing that this analysis of the situation is correct, there is to my eye no theory of gridlock, limited attention, vested interest, special interest, or mendacity that explains the behavior of David Cameron.
The behavior of David Cameron as far as see can only be explained by suggesting that he disagrees with my interpretation of the facts.
This is part and parcel of a larger theory that in practice virtually all of our major policy disagreements are disagreements over facts. There are potential moral and aesthetic dilemmas, which by my lights folks don’t take seriously enough.
Yet, these are not what divide policy makers. What divides them are beliefs about the facts of the world.
This makes the spread of the type epistemic closure that Justin Fox reports on all the more confusing. Its easy to see why this would occur among political observers. They have little to gain and essentially nothing to lose from being wrong. Not so, with policy makers. Especially in times like this they have everything to gain from being right.
Yet, they seem unwilling to give up on tribal beliefs. What accounts for this? I have a few theories but none of them too serious. My favorite is that pragmatic people tend to be social misfits and this makes it hard for them to get elected.
Modeled Behavior 
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Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 8:40 am
David Cook
My knowledge of the British economy or political system is pretty slim, but the next time you argue that the UK is going through a crisis “worse than the Great Depression” you might want to cut off the part of the graph that shows unemployment was a lot worse in the 1990’s than it is today. Just a suggestion.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
NickT
@ David Cook
Without being unkind, you apparently haven’t worked out how to read the graph correctly. There are two measures – unemployment and productivity. If you look at the key, you will discover that the blue line measures productivity, the red line measures unemployment. I grant you that the graph is rather small and not easy to read, but I managed it by dint of being careful. Karl is absolutely on point – and unemployment in the UK has not miraculously hit a touch about 5%. If it had, believe me, the coalition would be calling a general election tomorrow!
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
David Cook
With all due respect, NickT, you need to be a bit more careful. The red llne (unemployment) is obviously a lot higher on the left side of the graph (the 90’s) than on the right side (today). In fact, checking the FRED data, the AVERAGE unemployment in UK in the 80’s was 9.7%, the average in the 90’s was 7.84% and the average 2009-now was 7.80%. Unemployment in the Great Depression would be off that chart.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
NickT
I hate to point this out, David, but your initial claim was that Karl had somehow undercut his own thesis by showing the whole graph. This is clearly not the case. Moreover, you are mistaken when you lump the nineties together and assert that things were worse then than they are today. The second part of the nineties, from roughly ’96 on was either comparable or better in terms of unemployment. As the graph shows.
Tuesday ~ May 8th, 2012 at 5:50 am
David Cook
NickT. I am sure if you put your thinking cap on you can understand the author’s claim that the UK is going through a economic crisis of unique historic proportions is clearly undercut by posting a graph that shows that, in fact, economic conditions were substantially worse in very recent memory. Glad to be of help explaining this.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Max
Be careful what you wish for. Nixon was the ultimate pragmatist, and that didn’t work out.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 9:39 am
curtd59
@Karl
RE: “Yet, they seem unwilling to give up on tribal beliefs. What accounts for this?”
And, speaking of facts, what evidence do you have that people ever, under any conditions, cease to act according to their tribal sentiments?
I know you can’t either grasp or accept this, but you’re argument is unscientific.
Your approach redistributes status, power and identity along with money.
The people who care most about losing that status, power and identity are those who are invested in status, power, and identity rather than money.
You are stifled because your VIEW OF MAN IS SUBECT TO THE REDUCTIO ERROR.
So the question is not how you and your SUBSET OF FACTS prevail in order to support your reductio ideology, but given the TOTALITY of facts, how we can implement a coordinated set of policy provisions.
The reason you argue against this is that you, like Krugman and DeLong, are not as interested in prosperity as you are in creating a class of political managers that are the sole possessors of status, power and identity, and the citizens are subjects. That might work in a small state. But it will not work in the american empire.
In other words, you’re proof of the theory. 🙂
But at least you’re honest about the subset of facts, even if you’re dishonest because you ignore the more salient facts: that money is a route to status, power and identity, and that humans desire to consume those three things above all others.
Selective chose of FACTS is not scientific. It’s ideological.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 10:30 am
Paul
What do you mean when you say “Reductio Error?” This is a genuine question, as the only circumstance in which I have seen the word reductio used is in logic or mathematics, in reference to a reductio ad absurdum proof. I have suspicion that you are using it in a different way, but I can’t quite suss out from your post what you are attempting to communicate using that language. I like your broader points about humans being more concerned with status and identity than about money or prosperity per se. We are social primates.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 10:44 am
curtd59
Paul,
I mean, allegorically, just what you assume. That is: constraining the set of properties in an argument to those which support the argument rather than including all possible properties in an argument regardless of whether or not they undermine the argument.
Ideological arguments contain such subsets, ignore problematic properties, and actively deny contradictory properties. In economics and politics these distinctions tend to be subject to temporal categorization, because the different social classes operate on different time scales. But that is just one dimension commonly visible in such debates.
I’m critical of mainstream economics for adhering to the progressive denial of these differences in order to support their statist ideology, which in turn is an attempt to claim status and power for themselves. In particular, this ideological bent prevents mainstream (Keynesians and monetarists) from forging a policy alliance with the conservatives (classical and traditionalists) who will tolerate spending and monetary inflation if accompanied by industrial policy and education improvements that neutralize the concentration of political and economic power in the state.
Thanks for the question rather than an ad hominem. It’s refreshing. 🙂
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 8:25 pm
Benny Lava
I like this post because it reveals so much. The paranoid right is still out there with tinfoil hats on. Everyone who isn’t with them is out to get them. I mean this post is one step removed from violating Godwin’s law, and we are discussing British fiscal policy. Funny stuff.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 8:36 pm
curtd59
Benny, you do realize that you’ve levied an ad hominem without supporting claim or criticism, while I’m paraphrasing america’s first or second post prominent social scientist, right? I mean it’s Pinker and Haidt. And it’s not like they’re members of the right. I refer to Charles Murray, and he’s a libertarian. But data is data.
Our political beliefs have biological origins. Nothing is going to change that except how the middle reacts to strategic and economic threats and advantages.
Norwegians are liberal because they’re 5M people with oil wealth. Canadians are the same because they’re 30M with infinite resources and land, and no strategic liabilities, Russians and americans are conservative because of external pressures and military responsibilities (see Power and Weakness by Donal Kagan) Data is Data is Data. People are virtuous because they have the choice to be, not because they choose to be.
So please, if you want to conduct an argument, pick something of substance. I know that’s hard for the left. But you can try if you put your mind to it.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 9:50 am
Gepap
Not all incentives are external. People seek self-validation. Better to be voted out of office than shown to have been wrong for years on end. You can blame the first outcome on outsiders (dumb voters), but the second would be completely your fault.
Trully pragmatic people don’t get elected because they don’t earn trust. Trust is essential, and it is built by creating a template of values that people can use to judge what your future actions might be. A trully pragmatic person that is willing to change their actions based on the situation would act as chaotically as the universe does, which makes guessing their actions in the future almost impossible, and thus inapable of being used to build trust.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 10:58 am
curtd59
a) They aren’t ‘wrong’.
b) Pragmatic people don’t get elected because they can’t build up a coalition of people who will fund them and work for them.
c) The progressive economists are not pragmatic. They are SHORT TERM IDEOLOGISTS. Pragmatism is simply a self-congratulatory label for ignoring long term consequences.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
NickT
Pragmatists do build coalitions – it’s one of the things doctrinaire ideologues can’t do – witness the teabagger jihad and their self-destructive extremism and “purity”. The rest of your post is just name-calling without facts and not worth refuting.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 4:21 pm
curtd59
Nick,
Is there supposed to be an argument in there somewhere?
The left leaning keyensian bloggers have never proposed a compromise solution. The right proposes any variety of them.
Pragmatism would argue for making compromises. Ideology does not.
The reason is quite simple: ideological motivation.
It is what it is.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
NickT
At some point, curtd, you will discover that repeating tired attack lines and defending the intellectual bankruptcy of the GOP impresses no-one who can research facts. The right has proposed no compromise in the last 10 years – and is busily trying to get out of the very few commitments they have made. Remember the agreed fiscal plan from last year? Which party is trying to wreck it, curtd? Ah yes, the GOP! Try living in reality, reading outside your comfort zone and thinking about the facts for a change.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 4:57 pm
curtd59
That’s simply false. The right wants to kill three federal departments. That’s their fee for spending. They’re clear about it. They’re consistent about it. The conservatives want industrial and monetary policy to encourage industry, and the hard right wants education repaired. The libertarians want a plan to reduce our bases and international presence. (I hardly defend the GOP. I’m a libertarian.)
I know. I track these things. I’ve been doing it since 1978. 🙂
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 5:23 pm
NickT
I note that you aren’t even attempting to claim that the GOP is offering a compromise on anything. As for the idea that wrecking government is a “fee for spending”, that’s so pathetically preposterous that even Santorum, Bachmann or Perry haven’t presented it as a trade-off. But then, facts clearly aren’t of much interest to you, CurtD.
“The conservatives want industrial and monetary policy to encourage industry”
No, they want tax breaks for billionaires and poverty for workers. As usual.
“… and the hard right wants education repaired”
Anything but. What they want is to wreck the public school system through deliberate under-funding and then hand America’s children over to the latest round of right wing scams disguised as academies or distance learning, even as they demand that science classes teach creationist nonsense. It’s all about making a profit at the expense of our children. Fat cats first – the libertarian battle-cry down the ages.
“I hardly defend the GOP. I’m a libertarian.”
There’s no significant gap between libertarians and the GOP on any economic, social or domestic issue you care to name. It’s all goldbuggery, the right to possess enough arms to equip a panzer division and pop-eyed lunacy about making masturbation into an assault on life, with a good deal of misogyny, racism and sheer, toxic ignorance thrown in. Call yourself a libertarian all you like – at the end of the day, whatever dreck the GP serves up, you’ll wolf down and ask for more.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
curtd59
The conservative strategy since Jimmy Carter has been to bankrupt the state before it bankrupts the entrepreneurs, traditional society and the nuclear family. This strategy involves using the financial, business and particularly oil sectors as competitors to the state. In large part this strategy has worked. There is nothing that the conservatives do that is inconsistent with this strategy. But through breeding, education and immigration the left is accomplishing what was not possible to accomplish via legislation or the courts.
As for the pragmatic policy, the conservatives have offered compromises repeatedly. It’s in the literature. It’s in the campaign platforms of the candidates.
So, sorry Nick but I cant have a grownup conversation with you. It’s important to me to preserve my reputation as the guy who never gives up, but one has to avoid wasting one’s time on the passionate but ignorant. Cheers.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 7:33 pm
NickT
And with that, curtd scurried off to a kinder, happier place where no-one laughed at Ayn Rand, where facts were irrelevant, and games of libertarian fantasy word-salad received tremendous deference. It was a small, quiet, select gathering of one – but beggars can’t be choosers.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 9:39 pm
curtd59
Like I said, You’ve got nothing to bring to the table. No argument nothing. So lets go ahead and pick away at your amateurish tirade. Hmmm… Lets pick just one topic so we can get to something specific.
EDUCATION
Since 2000 this has been the ask:
– The country is diverse, and education should be locally administered.
– Principles will do the right thing if allowed: Eliminate teacher tenure. (See “Waiting For Superman”)
– Libertarians want privatization, Conservatives want school choice (Milton Freidman 1955, Gingrich 1993, 2000, 2011 ). Both solutions would have the market force changes in schools.
WHY:
– The DOE and its layers waste costing 71 billion and achieving no net gains, and the US continues to lag behind the rest of the developed world. For us to argue that the school system is successful would require some empirical evidence. There isn’t any. Both per dollar and total dollar measures demonstrate that we’re failing. We start failing at grade 5. and accelerate from there. This is despite the fact that the Finns have redefined the educational model for the western world, and it has an established track record, and empirical support. Resisting it is irrational. Resisting it is ideological and political. And harmful to our people and our economy.
Furthermore,
We know the primary problem is teacher tenure which keeps bad teachers in the system. Principles trade ‘bad teachers’ in the hope that the next will simply be less bad. Teachers are from the lower 16%(I think last I looked) of their graduating classes yet we pay them as if they are professionals. This is despite the fact that experimental testing has shown zero difference between people with NO degree in education and degreed teachers — all that matters is passion.
We know the secondary problem is that we cannot create schools for different constituencies that have different needs.
We know that people essentially privatize schools by buying up housing in an area and controlling the school board.
We know that our school systems teach a narrative arc and basic skills for post agrarian labor forces, and that we need a new narrative arc and new basis of skills measure: (See Neil Postman – a leftist)
We know that the job of indoctrination is almost impossible because of the failure of the narrative arc. (We just disagree on the narrative arcs. I’ve posted an alternative to whig history. Postman has proposed a five point gia like narrative chain.)
GINGRICH: “You need to dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations. And the truth is, I believe we’d be far better off if most states adopted a program of the equivalent of Pell Grants for K-through-12, so that parents could choose where their child went to school, whether it was public, or private, or home-schooling, and parents could be involved. Florida has a virtual school program that is worth the entire country studying as an example”
The deal offered last year was the DOE for spending. That’s 71B right there. No takers on the left. Why? Ideology, not science. IDEOLOGY. WHy, because as I stated, and which you argued against, liberals have an INCORRECT assessment of human behavior driven by an exaggerated sensitivity to the false consensus bias. We can get into the medical research if you want but I bet you can’t actually pull up any data at all.
The Ryan crew, as far out as they are, even took a shot at it. But every administration, and every conservative congress has tried. It is the most popular conservative issue, followed by restoring the rule of law.
EXAMPLE FAILURE
“the problem is our programs and policies that make it impossible to reform the school system”
Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement — Jean Anyon, 2005
EXAMPLE SUCCESS:
http://www.economist.com/node/21548268 Florida under Jeb Bush.
The entire objective of conservatives is to take the money we currently spend on the DOE and give it as vouchers, or grants to parents who will use market pressure to drive the quality of schools. They believe also that such schools will adopt “Whig History” or the virtue of western civilization, or at least, they will choose schools that do adopt that narrative arc. And in doing so, reestablish the civic american culture.
NICKY: “No compromise” Ooops wrong on that one. May 2011.
NICKY: “Starve our system” Oops, Nicky’s wrong on that one too. The Gingrich sponsored offer was to drop the DOEd, and
WAIT
“Wait” NICKY says. “I meant HIGHER education.”
Well conservatives have stated that they want a) the schools not to be bastions of anti-americanism (the libertarians en toto). This is demonstrably true outside of one or two fields. Interestingly economics and engineering tend to tilt conservative mostly because they tilt male, and males tend to be more conservative. b) for us to educate people for the jobs that exist and are in demand — this is a mistake — they’re wrong. Education is purely signaling (per Caplan) c) to stop the redirection of undergraduate fees to research (Sowell). d) Stop the redirection of undergraduate fees to sports (populist). e) stop the redirection of undergraduate fees to endowments (Sowell?) f) separate research and teaching systems within universities so that research and teaching are independently run, so that good professors who want to teach are available for undergraduates. (Sowell). g) The summary here is that they want money for teaching to go to teaching, not create debt for students.
We know parents are essentially sacrificing their retirement savings in order to pay for college. When the college is purely signaling, and the students are not getting jobs in the fields that they choose. Students are overpaying for mediocre education by bad professors. And in the most expensive schools the money is being diverted away from the teaching professors to the research organizations, sports teams, buildings and endowments.
CHALLENGE
if you can find some example where conservatives want to gut education I”m happy to refute it. But you can’t. If you can find examples where the left has come to the conservatives with similar offers but they’ve been rejected, I’d like to see them. But you won’t find them.
The conservatives have been on this problem since the 1950’s. They have been working desperately against it since 1980. And it was one of the centerpieces of the 1993 congressional initiative. Bush had put the issue up for discussion and would have put it through but the single defection by Jeffords cost him the senate and They simply could not get it done. The could not get takers on it on the left. They have not been able to since then, DESPITE the evidence. Despite the TOTALITY of the evidence.
That’s because the ideology, the vehicle for ideology, and the defense of the ideological bureaucracy is more important than the children, and the future of our country, as an economically competitive nation.
So please go attach an antenna to your tinfoil hat and see if you can conduct some semblance of an argument. If that doesn’t work, I’d recommend you increase the voltage substantially. 🙂 lol
I mean. I’m pretty patient. For some reason, as I get older, I suffer fools more easily. 🙂
Cheers.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 2:05 pm
michelle
Does it affect the pocketbooks of the policymakers to be right or wrong? Perhaps Cameron’s accolades are sufficient coming from the Very Serious People, and either way he laughs all the way to the bank. So why would he care from a purely selfish perspective?
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 4:52 pm
curtd59
BTW: These ideas three ideas (subsidy on energy, buying Bunds, and suspension of the VAT) are exceptional means of getting cross party support. Karls arguments earlier in the crisis were also intelligent and capable of getting support. The argument that we should borrow cheaply now is correct. The problem is that no one will move on spending without a reduction in the scope of government. The right has hit its limits and nothing is going to move them without compromise.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
NickT
The right hasn’t offered a compromise in any fiscal or social area in decades, CurtD, despite the best efforts of Obama and Clinton. Nor is it remotely credible that a Cameron government wedded to the idea of butchering its way to prosperity would ever shelve VAT – and make the deficit worse. Let’s remember here that Cameron raised VAT to 20%, despite calling any increase in VAT unfair before the election. Why did he do so? To bring in another 13 billion pounds per annum to the UK treasury. As for what a subsidy on energy would do to Osborne’s budgets.. well, let’s just say that it would represent a colossal abandonment of everything he claims to stand for.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Morgan Warstler
NIck, rather than insist the right hasn’t offered compromise… let me show you the reverse… a policy progressives should support and could offer that would be supported from the right.
Offer: tax code changes that are revenue neutral but favor SMB owners over the Fortune 1000.
If you want a specific proposal, right now the 2% of SMB owners that generate 50% of SMB revenue pass profits through as income to the owners.
This creates a strong incentive to keep profits in the local SMB and keep trying to grow the company, even if it has come to a plateau.
Instead, tax policy should allow owners / partners in a SMB to pass the profits out as tax-free capital gains as long as they put the the profits into newcos.
If liberals offered this to the right, and paid for it with higher taxes on Fortune 1000, the Tea Party Main Street big-fish-in-little-ponds, would force even the Chamber of Commerce to support it.
Strategically, this is pitting the two factions of the commerce against one another, and is of course the smartest possible play for liberals.
The most powerful faction in America (the A power) is not the 1% (the B power) or the bottom 65% (the C power).
The most A power are the owners of Main Street – the 30%+ of folks who will spend a part of their earning lives in the 80-99%.
Correct strategy for a C power is to play A and B against each other.
BUT, this is not in the interest of left. The left PREFERS the 1%. They prefer the Fortune 1000. They don’t want SMB piranha in the river feasting on the old fat oxen. Oxen are easier to corral.
So, for the past 20 years you’ve seen the C power side exclusively with the B power and what happened?
The top 1% made big gains, but exclusively at the losses of the bottom 65% .
The A power didn’t lose a dime. The Fortune 1000 got stronger, the inequality grew,but the top 80-99% they played to a draw.
Imagine what happens if top 80-99% get the full support of the C power to go crush the 1%.
Inequality will decrease, BUT so will the power of the Blue State corporate elites, as the Red State SMB owners grows stronger.
There are many things that reduce inequality, that big government progressives simply find unacceptable.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 7:40 pm
NickT
Morgan, the right wing doesn’t do compromise. Hell, these days they don’t even do rational discussion. It’s all death panels and keep government out of our medicare. As for the idea that the right wing is going to force the Fortune 1000 or the Chamber of Commerce to do anything… please, haven’t you learned anything from the impact of Citizens United? The corporations own the GOP – and have for decades. Sure, they now own more of the Democrats than is a good idea – but let’s not pretend that the GOP will ever go along with anything that might upset their bosses. As for the idea that the “left” prefers the 1% – no, not even close. Don’t confuse the DNC and the Blue Dogs with the left. They simply are not the same thing. The left are the people fighting for workers’ rights, protesting against corporate corruption, trying to take back our democracy from Citizens United and the obstructionist teabagger/libertarian minority.
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Morgan Warstler
NickT, I am not stunned at your read of things.
I meanwhile am surrounded by SMB conservatives. And they are FAR MORE likely to go squeeze Wall Street… because they know THEY get to keep the juice.
Just who has been divesting themselves of the stock market?
Just who do you think was screaming NO! to the bailout of Wall Street?
The very same guys who don’t want to bail out the homeowners or the college debt crowd.
That’s what I keep saying here… you are stuck because you want the juice for the C power. And that’s not in the immediate cards.
BUT, if you give up getting the spoils, and let the SMB guys have them, you are GUARANTEED to see less inequality.
You won’t like this either, but think of it as a policy to create lots more up-scale consumers, for the bottom 65% to serve.
The crowd that identifies as the top 80-99%, they will chew up the the 1%, and take their new found money and go out to fancier restaurants, travel etc.
To get past this disagreement, let me ask you a fiat hypothetical:
If you KNEW that my frame is correct, and that proposal would actually work. A fight between the owners of Main Street and the owners of Wall Street would ensue, and the Main Street Tea Party would force the GOP to go along with it.
Would you actually SUPPORT the left offering such a deal?
Monday ~ May 7th, 2012 at 8:40 pm
NickT
Morgan, just how do you plan to get the teabaggers in Congress and the Senate to agree to this? Believe me, if the left proposes anything, short of execution for all liberals, the GOP will refuse, just because it was offered by the other side. They’ve done this consistently for the whole of Obama’s presidency – with the explicit aim of breaking him. You keep assuming that the right wing has any interest in facts or economic reality. They’ve proven repeatedly that they don’t. Remember the howls for austerity last year? Suddenly, this year, they’ve decided to renege on the deal and the spending cuts they agreed. Remember all those demands to keep the Government out of “their” Medicare? Obama’s negotiated with them ad nauseam. Results – nada. I lived in the red states for more time than I care to remember – and the people down there don’t give a damn about anything except their hatred of liberals. They’ve acquired this psychotic frame of mind over the decades – and they aren’t changing it for you or me. We could come up with any number of schemes to get them to realize their own interests – and it wouldn’t matter. They would just reject them because the left proposed them.
Tuesday ~ May 8th, 2012 at 12:42 am
Morgan Warstler
NickT, ANSWER THE QUESTION. I know your opinion, I want to know if your opinion was wrong, would you SUPPORT a trade where:
1. Main Street rightwing gets $$$
2. Wall Street elites get less screwed.
3. And your group just is happier there’s more distributed cash from the 1% tot he top 80-99%? More customers for your side to serve, wait tables, cut hair, etc?
Don’t care if you think I’m right, care what you will live with IF I’m right.
This is called a thought experiment, it isn’t a trick, it is to explore what your real motivations are.
Don’t be afraid to be honest. It can’t hurt you.
Tuesday ~ May 8th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Morgan Warstler
Still no answer…..
Tuesday ~ May 8th, 2012 at 12:49 am
curtd59
@Morgan
Do you have a web site or FB pg?
Tuesday ~ May 8th, 2012 at 1:27 am
Morgan Warstler
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=morgan+warstler
I don’t blog. Until drew b. passed away I posted policy solutions at the big sites. But I don’t have but 5-10 plans I care about. Tweaking liberal “economists” is my guilty pleasure.
Tuesday ~ May 8th, 2012 at 2:13 am
curtd59
Nice work. Just wanted to connect. -Curt
Wednesday ~ May 9th, 2012 at 9:25 am
bpabbott
Related commentary from NPR
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/05/09/152287372/partisan-psychology-why-are-people-partial-to-political-loyalties-over-facts?sc=fb&cc=fp
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