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Make up a nonsense word that is easily pronounceable, plug in a number, capitalize a letter or two - make sure it's at least nine characters - and you'll not be an easy mark.
Niall Ferguson writes excellent financial history, but he gets really dumb when it comes anywhere near to contemporary policy. The transition is stunning. One is reading a rich and thoughtful book, and suddenly, eye-deep in twaddle.
Deciding the truth or falsity of a scientific hypothesis by majority vote of the ignorant masses is about as ridiculous as it gets.
Strange, the way that unisex insurance clings to the palaeofeminist dogma that men and women are exactly the same, and thereby guaranteeing gender unfairness and inequality.
No doubt that the degradation of news to entertainment is much to blame.
It's hard. The big, bad old union movement was unquestionably one half of a conspiracy with management to fleece the rest of us - especially in Detroit. They were hostile to women and minorities, when they were the new and non-union workers who could have increased union membership. Certainly, they seemed much more interested in political power than in improving the lot of people not yet organized. There ought to be a way for employees to organize, perhaps company-by-company, that avoids or mitigates such problems. But maybe not.
Marginal income tax rates have been as high as 94%. The only way to control greed is to make it pointless. It is completely absurd that a successful professional pays the same top marginal rate as a hedge fund manager who makes a billion dollars.
Postponing Social Security is acceptable only to the extent that all means are now concentrated on health care.
If there were more than a handful of grownup Republicans, we could plan on increased taxes once the economy has recovered. Were we really overtaxed in 2000 ?
That economics is meaningfully separable from the rest of society is the economists' core delusion.
Somehow the name "Stephen King" is less than reassuring. Has he written us a horror story ?
doublehelix, here's what Emerson had to say about those who are *not* Independents:
"A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking."
For the life of me, I cannot see why anyone would want to identify with either party. I dislike the Republicans more now, but the Democrats had their turn below in the past, and I expect to live long enough to see them have another.
Arthur Burns did as Nixon told him to do. Stepping on the monetary accelerator while dropping gold and imposing wage and price controls - doesn't that take care of the inflation in the first half of the '70s ?
Well it is our fault. If we hadn't proved that a nation can survive and prosper with freedom, liberty and dignity, the notion would have remained as ridiculous as it was taken to be when we first tried it.
As a congenital Independent, I can be alternately amused or disgusted by all the loonies out there. It makes me doubt Democracy, but then I remember Churchill. Democracy sucks, but it doesn't reach the extremes of badness (or goodness) that other polities reach routinely. Being able to throw the bastards out on a regular schedule is certainly better than having to kill them off to get rid of them.
Anything will do to distract attention from Berlusconi and his tart.
Get rid of issuer-pays, and ratings will be more trustworthy. Or eliminate issuer shopping by establishing an intermediary to assign ratings jobs. Either or both will do.
It is likely that only simple, honest species can trust their leaders.
Hey, Gang, I'm not opposed in principle to commodifying what was a commons. I even think that enclosure was good for England. But there is clearly a tangle of moral and economic aspects to the process, and I wanted to point out why I think most people have a problem with it.
Good for Cameron. That the US does not use its leverage to halt Israeli settlements is a disaster, for Israel most of all. The Israeli Right has no interest in a comprehensive peace. Peace would be their political death.
Humbug is forever...
Do not trouble us with facts. We are the True Believers, steadfast in the One True Ideology. The blunders of 1937 in the US have nothing to teach us.