Republican Deficit Plan

    Republicans in the House have come up with a plan to reduce the deficit somewhat in the near future.  An opinion piece on it, written by the authors of the plan, can be found here.  The plan calls for eliminating the rest of the unspent money from the stimulus, $125 billion and then freezing spending levels to 2006 levels.  The rest of the money is going to come from various cuts to non-defense discretionary spending to add up to $2.5 trillion dollars by 2021.  The usual critique about this plan are as follows:  It does nothing to the defense budget where there is plenty of money to be saved by eliminating Cold War era programs.  It also leaves a great deal of things unspecified, namely what programs would be eliminated.  Is Medicare going to be touched?  (No, it isn't.)  Non-defense discretionary spending encompasses a variety of things that people like, like the FBI, Coast Guard, Pell Grants, Farm Subsidies, and other programs.

    What I dislike most about the nature of these kinds of proposals by Republicans, is that they are highly disingenuous and off-hand in their statements.  Of course you can identify programs to cut, I could cut through the budget and find a bunch of things that would add up to a lot of money eventually.  I could eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, Congress' Healthcare and Pensions, along with Farm Subsidies, any and all tax breaks, and the VA.  I could also have the Fed call in all the debts that the states owe to the Federal government.  Eventually things would start looking great for the deficit.  Key problem though, none of these things would pass.  Want to know why?  There's no political will to change any of these things.  It's easy to point out things that could be cut and say you have a plan.  The reality of the situation though is that all of the expensive programs that really contribute to the deficit, like Defense, Homeland Security, Medicare, and low taxes, have strong political support that will prevent them from being cut.  People point to the lack of needing an F-22 to fight militants in Afghanistan, but the plane has parts built in every state and Congressmen love bringing military money to their district.  Until we stop voting for Congressmen who engage in that kind of behavior, it's not going to be stop.  Besides, we like that kind of stuff too.  It does mean increased employment of typically higher paying jobs. 

    The reason I have my friend Admiral Akbar up top is to highlight a point I want to make to any and all individuals who think the deficit is a problem.  Yes it may be an issue, but right now the most important thing to take care of is the economy and unemployment.  The deficit has nothing to do with either of things being so severe.  Cutting a bunch of programs like the FBI, Pell grants, and aid to the states will eliminate jobs and increase the strain on the rest of the economy.  More unemployed people means lower wages, more strain on social services, and a more sluggish economy.  Any talk of deficit reduction by Republicans is aimed towards eliminating Progressive government, not actually fixing the deficit.  Far more money could be saved by eliminating subsidies to business, tax loopholes, and breaks, and cutting the outrageous spending on defense.  Besides, what happened the last time the budget was balanced?  Bush came in, cut a bunch of taxes, launched a huge wave of spending not only on the wars, but also on social programs like the Medicare Drug Plan.  What leads anyone to believe that it's going to be any different in the future?  Chris Christie is cutting spending left and right in New Jersey all so he can cut taxes too.  That's like me being in debt, cutting out beer, and then also taking a pay cut from my job.  Democrats and Liberals everywhere, any talk of deficit reduction is a trap!

Gold! Nuggets, Big as your Fist!

  There has been a lot of talk recently about going back on the gold standard for American currency.  The state of Georgia has introduced a law that would require all citizens pay their state taxes in gold backed currency.  Add this to the calls by Ron Paul and Glenn Beck to put us back on the gold standard in order to fight off the Federal Reserve from "further destroying wealth."  Glenn Beck has turned into a great spokesperson for buying gold coins against the coming apocalypse. Ron Paul went on the Colbert Report in order to debate the merits of a gold backed currency against the floating currency we presently employ.  The basic argument is that gold is more valuable than paper, and will hold it's value more into the future.  By making our currency free floating, the government can increase or decrease the value of said currency to meet political and economic ends.  These individuals are basically pissed that the Federal Reserve created inflation over a lengthy period of time causing the value of the dollar to decline, something that they argue would not happen if we were on the gold standard still. (As an aside, the current rate of inflation is actually really low.)

    I'm of the opinion that returning to the gold standard is kind of a dumb idea for a variety of reasons.  For one, it would completely derail the modern economy, there is simply not enough gold to properly back the amount of money that we use as a society.  Furthermore, there are still plenty of issues to be had with using gold.  For one thing, the value of gold would not be determined by the United States but more by the mining capabilities of Russian and African mines.  Most of the world's gold comes from those regions and they are the determining factor in it's value.  Yes we do have gold in the United States, but not so much that we will be determining its value.  Secondly, switching to the gold standard would likely diminish our own purchasing power.  The value of the dollar would likely increase greatly, but so would the costs of things, diminishing our ability to consume all of the nice stuff we like.  It would also diminish capital in all likelihood making investing in new businesses and ventures all the more difficult further decreasing our ability to economically expand  at the same levels as our international counterparts.  

    As for the belief that switching to a gold standard will somehow limit the federal governments ability to tamper with the value of money is just flat out fantasy.  Assuming that we go on the gold standard and we still keep the Federal Reserve, which we would still likely do because it stabilizes banks across the country (which is good), there would still be currency manipulation.  The Fed could still buy up gold to drive up the price or flood the market with gold to lower the price.  People in Congress could decide to peg the value of the dollar to a different amount of gold depending on the circumstances.  They could even make the gold less pure, diluting it with copper, making it easier to produce more gold bars to back the currency.  All of the same stuff that we do now with paper currency can be done with gold currency.  

    One of the things about the interview done on the Colbert Report that struck me was how anachronistic this conversation sounds.  This is an argument from the 50's.  We live in an age where the money we use is digital, held on pieces of plastic.  Open your wallet and see how much cash you have on hand.  (This task is directed more towards my contemporaries and less towards older people who still carry around money for no reason.  It makes more sense to keep as much cash as possible earning interest at all times.)  The plastic may not even be necessary any more with the advent of internet shopping, all I need to do to purchase something is to punch a couple of numbers into an interface and suddenly I have bought something physical.  I've taken the intangible and made it concrete.  Does my bank have the physical cash on hand to cover all of my purchases?  Do they ship the physical money to the account of Kroger when I buy groceries?  No, just more number transfers across the internet.  The first one is actually a yes, but I do wonder whether they have the physical cash reserves to cover all of their customers, were they to remove their money simultaneously.  Ron Paul asks the audience if we would prefer a box of gold buried in the ground or a box of twenties.  That's a really stupid question, I'd take that box of twenties and short sell gold for when it collapses after all the rampant speculation.  Why would you bury money?  In addition to that, Paul seems to be saying that a pound of bricks is heavier than a pound of feathers with this example.  $20,000 worth of Gold is the same value as $20,000 worth of paper money.  In twenty years there's no guarantee that gold will still be valuable.  There is a guarantee that the United States will still be going strong and making noise. 

    As a final note, a lot of the talk about gold is tied up with apocalyptic language and the fall of America.  If we switched back to a gold standard and banks held gold reserves to back our currency, I'd still be fucked just as bad as when all my money was digital.  There's now way I'd be able to get that gold from the bank without some serious firepower.  If you're really worried about the apocalypse, buy a farm and a ton of guns and bullets, anyone comes looking to trade with gold just shoot 'em and take the gold.  It's the apocalypse, ain't no rules. 

Technology and How it Affects Communication

    There was an interview last night on the Colbert Report with Sherry Turkle who came on and bemoaned the alienation we are now experiencing as a result of the rise of technology like smart phones, texting and things of that nature.  I felt that this was a remarkably idiotic position to take that really showed her lack of insight into human behavior and communication.  Yes, it is annoying that everyone can text at anytime, regardless of the social situation.  Guess what?  People were inconsiderate assholes long before the advent of Twitter.  The same people who tweet at a funeral, are the same people who would do something inconsiderate like arrive late to a play, chew with their mouth open, and dress casual at a formal event.  Technology does enable inconsiderate behavior and makes it easier to behave callously sometimes.  At the same time, poor behavior has existed for quite some time and technology does not seem to be making it somehow worse than it was in the past, just different from what it used to be.  Turkle talks about children being ignored while their parents text, is this fundamentally different from when parents ignored their children by reading the paper at meals, listening to the radio, or just flat out telling them to shut up?  Technology has changed a variety of behaviors in humans in the fields of science, business, politics, social interaction, why not rudeness?

    Furthermore, Turkle seems to ignore how human interaction takes place very much the same way with or without technology, just slightly different.  She talks about Facebook and how we behave differently on Facebook then we do in the rest of our lives.  OK, I'll give her that.  We also behave differently among friends then we do among distant relatives.  I behave differently at a party where I know most of the people versus when I know none of the people.  Facebook is simply a different social milieu that has its own special kind of behavior, like any other kind of social setting.  If I hold things back or keep to superficial topics at a party where I know very few of the people, does that somehow I am alienated from my fellow human beings?

    Turkle also makes the claim that technology like e-mail, twitter, and texting has altered how we communicate.  While true, I fail to see why this is a big need for concern.  Any advance in communication technology is going to alter how we communicate.  She says that our communication has been stultified due to the shear volume of texts, e-mails and such coming in.  Imagine how terse our communication was in days past when Morse code was used?  Or when messages were memorized to make up for the fact that vast swaths of the population were illiterate?  It is the case that we no longer have the long form styles of communication that were common when people engaged more frequently in epistolary communication, but given the rise of video technology like Skype or Apple's Face-to-Face it may be the case that communication will revert back to being more expansive. Technology has changed a number of things about humans, but in many instances it allows us to pursue the same kinds of behaviors just in new and more exciting ways.