Poll finds more blame Bush than Obama for economy

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by 1337m4n

What control over the economy does the guy holding the Presidency have? Aside from the veto, I always figured the state of the economy was mostly Congress's responsibility.

A lot of policy-setting in the executive branch which directly effects the economy.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Trakar

I generally stick to the mainstream, well-evidenced and compellingly supported perspectives of history, life, and reality in general.¹

I congradulate your exploration of alternative perspectives, not something that is generally considered "conservative" (trends more neo-liberal, but hey, whatever flips your skirt up). If you are trying to argue that FDR's early actions and later timidity, turned Hoover's deep recession/depression into a double-dipper of unneccessarily extended and sluggish recovery,...I have no problem with that.² FDR is one of the few presidents that had some real opportunities to establish some good strong foundations to build the future upon, instead we got half-steps and cumbersome bureaucracies that are inefficient and only marginally functional, and those are the best things I could say about him. Rather like Obama ending up as a barely competent manager in chief, he only looks good in comparison to the bumbling boob³ he replaced (and the corrupt puppets running for his job). I still don't know how I'll vote the top of the ticket this November, I can't see myself giving either Mittens or Barry the nod.

1. I recommend FDR's Folly. It's abundantly footnoted with mainstream (American Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank, etc,) references.
2. At the time, socialism appeared to be the new thing. People did not understand that planning requires that the State override individual preferences.
3. In The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell suggested that socialism originates a hypertrophied sense of order, like those people who rearrange the socks in the underwear drawer ten times a day. Elsewhere ("Raffles and Mrs Blandish", "Inside the Whale") he suggested that the preference for authoritarian politics expresses vicarious sadism. After the 2004 election, CSPAN broadcast two panel discussions, one between campaign strategists and pollsters and one between reporters who had covered the campaigns of the major candidates. I was impressed how respectful of the other side both sides were on the strategist/pollster discussion. One pollster related that he had analyzed data on responses to opinion surveys and written an article for a professional magazine in which he predicted that gay marriage would become the next equivalent of the abortion issue, in that it would be for many voters a deal-breaker. He said that he received a lot of hate mail after the analysis was published. Someone else on the panel asked "From the right or the left?" and he said: "From the left". On the reporters' discussion, a writer for the NY Times said that she normally gets criticism from all sides, but this time around, the level of vituperation was extreme. Someone asked "From the right or the left?" and she replied "Oh, from the left."
Just look at the style of expression that people adopt in this forum: "whacktard", "teabagger", etc.
I'd say Orwell's second hypothesis explains more. Von Mises suggested that socialism expresses a primitive revenge fantasy. I believe it's more a power fantasy: "What a wonderful world it would be if I ran it". and when one expressed doubt, believers take doubt as a personal attack.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by BenBurch

Originally Posted by 1337m4n

What control over the economy does the guy holding the Presidency have? Aside from the veto, I always figured the state of the economy was mostly Congress's responsibility.

A lot of policy-setting in the executive branch which directly effects the economy.

In a market-oriented legal environment (individual title to resources and a slable system of contract law) "the economy" names the total of all individual resource allocation decisions. Neither Congress not the President controls "the economy". Beyond maintenance of the legal environment, there's not much that politicians can do except screw things up.

[BenBurch]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick

In a market-oriented legal environment (individual title to resources and a slable system of contract law) "the economy" names the total of all individual resource allocation decisions. Neither Congress not the President controls "the economy". Beyond maintenance of the legal environment, there's not much that politicians can do except screw things up.

Your reading comprehension seems to have gone on vacation.

[Trakar]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick

1. I recommend FDR's Folly. It's abundantly footnoted with mainstream (American Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank, etc,) references.
2. At the time, socialism appeared to be the new thing. People did not understand that planning requires that the State override individual preferences.
3. In The Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell suggested that socialism originates a hypertrophied sense of order, like those people who rearrange the socks in the underwear drawer ten times a day. Elsewhere ("Raffles and Mrs Blandish", "Inside the Whale") he suggested that the preference for authoritarian politics expresses vicarious sadism. After the 2004 election, CSPAN broadcast two panel discussions, one between campaign strategists and pollsters and one between reporters who had covered the campaigns of the major candidates. I was impressed how respectful of the other side both sides were on the strategist/pollster discussion. One pollster related that he had analyzed data on responses to opinion surveys and written an article for a professional magazine in which he predicted that gay marriage would become the next equivalent of the abortion issue, in that it would be for many voters a deal-breaker. He said that he received a lot of hate mail after the analysis was published. Someone else on the panel asked "From the right or the left?" and he said: "From the left". On the reporters' discussion, a writer for the NY Times said that she normally gets criticism from all sides, but this time around, the level of vituperation was extreme. Someone asked "From the right or the left?" and she replied "Oh, from the left."
Just look at the style of expression that people adopt in this forum: "whacktard", "teabagger", etc.
I'd say Orwell's second hypothesis explains more. Von Mises suggested that socialism expresses a primitive revenge fantasy. I believe it's more a power fantasy: "What a wonderful world it would be if I ran it". and when one expressed doubt, believers take doubt as a personal attack.

LOL, what a pompous load! I'm half way tempted to consider that these are your actual beliefs and considerations, cartoonish caricaturizations and all.

1. Footnoted references do not a mainstream perspective make.

2. People were no more naive nor uneducated a century ago than they are today, in fact a rather compelling argument can be made that the opposite is more often true. It has never been as much about the particular title you use to describe an economic system as it is about how well you protect the system from the greed, corruption and incompetencies of the people you designate to manage the economic system.

3. Once you filter out all the confirmational bias and attempts to attack those who believe differently than yourself, there isn't much but anecdotal fairytales that you apparently want to represent reality in this section of your response.

Orwell, contextually, seems to disagree with your agenda. In "Why I Write" he affirms that - "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." Personally, I am much more progressive in my considerations and thinking, and view socialism more as one of many important persuasions of economic consideration rather than any underlying ideological label to support or oppose.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Trakar

1. Footnoted references do not a mainstream perspective make.

2. People were no more naive nor uneducated a century ago than they are today, in fact a rather compelling argument can be made that the opposite is more often true. It has never been as much about the particular title you use to describe an economic system as it is about how well you protect the system from the greed, corruption and incompetencies of the people you designate to manage the economic system.

1. "Mainstream" what? Mainstream historians are not mainstream economists. American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and and Federal Reserve bulletins are mainstream to academic economists. Here's the New York Times (2012-June-22) obituary of Anna Schwartz:...

Quote:

The Friedman-Schwartz collaboration “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960,” a book of nearly 900 pages published in 1963, is considered a classic. Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, called it “the leading and most persuasive explanation of the worst economic disaster in American history.”

The authors concluded that policy failures by the Fed, which largely controls the money supply, were one of the root causes of the Depression.

Mainstream enough for you?
2. Who is the "you" in this? In a market-oriented legal environment, no "you" designates anyone to "manage the economic system". In a market-oriented system, each individual is responsible for the resources to which s/he has title.

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Originally Posted by Trakar

Orwell, contextually, seems to disagree with your agenda. In "Why I Write" he affirms that - "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." Personally, I am much more progressive in my considerations and thinking, and view socialism more as one of many important persuasions of economic consideration rather than any underlying ideological label to support or oppose.

LOL, what a pompous load! I'm half way tempted to consider that these are your actual beliefs and considerations, cartoonish caricaturizations and all. Except that I can't call anything in that a "belief". "More progressive" than what? What is a "persuasion of economic consideration"?

[Trakar]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick

1. "Mainstream" what? Mainstream historians are not mainstream economists. American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and and Federal Reserve bulletins are mainstream to academic economists. Here's the New York Times (2012-June-22) obituary of Anna Schwartz:...Mainstream enough for you?

Quote:

Quote:
The Friedman-Schwartz collaboration “A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960,” a book of nearly 900 pages published in 1963, is considered a classic. Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, called it “the leading and most persuasive explanation of the worst economic disaster in American history.”

The authors concluded that policy failures by the Fed, which largely controls the money supply, were one of the root causes of the Depression.

I said that "FDR's Folly" did not represent a mainstream history(or economic) perspective of the period or occurrences (Powell's work looks like another schlock CATO waste of typeset, to me, but I haven't read it so I can't say too much about it one way or the other), to be honest, however, I'm not sure why we are talking about FDR. I'm certainly no fan of his and I even agreed earlier that his actions and inactions worsened and extended the economic situation he inherited from Hoover. Which is in agreement with the more mainstream perspective that you now flip to. "one of the root causes" sounds about right to me, especially if we are talking about policy steps that worsened a terrible situation and needlessly extended and drew out the recovery period.

now what of significance do you discern between this and what I stated earlier?

Originally Posted by Trakar

...If you are trying to argue that FDR's early actions and later timidity, turned Hoover's deep recession/depression into a double-dipper of unneccessarily extended and sluggish recovery,...I have no problem with that. FDR is one of the few presidents that had some real opportunities to establish some good strong foundations to build the future upon, instead we got half-steps and cumbersome bureaucracies that are inefficient and only marginally functional, and those are the best things I could say about him...

Or more importantly, what do you find inaccurate or incorrect in both of these assessments?

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick

2. Who is the "you" in this? In a market-oriented legal environment, no "you" designates anyone to "manage the economic system". In a market-oriented system, each individual is responsible for the resources to which s/he has title.

Even for an ideological soundbyte, that is, at the least, nonpragmatic.

As an ideal to guide one's considerations, there is more than a little utility to the concept of market systems, but when responsibilities, obligations and consequences of the individual are stripped from the system it is no longer a realistic "market."

[Trakar]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick

"More progressive" than what?

"Socialist"

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kirkpatrick

What is a "persuasion of economic consideration"?

These are the ideological models and economic tools that template, or at the least, flavor, most people's considerations and understandings of these issues.