Right after his inauguration Barack Obama’s approval rating was 68%.
That was when he should have done what Bill Clinton did, which was to raise the top tax rate, and what Franklin Roosevelt did, which was to hire people directly with programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps.
“the public response to the [Civilian Conservation Corps] program was overwhelmingly popular. A Gallup poll of 18 April 1936, asked “Are you in favor of the CCC camps?”; 82% of respondents said yes, including 92% of Democrats and 67% of Republicans.[26].”
Roosevelt did not move on the enduring reforms of the New Deal, like Social Security, until the unemployment rate declined. That gave him credibility on the economy that Obama has not earned yet.
Fascinating post NDD: I understand though that there was at least some complaining about New Deal “Make Work” programs. I didn’t know that CCC had its era of strong support. I wonder what its modern analogue might look like.
One of the twists that Obama faces is that top tax rates will rise if Congress does… nothing. The Bush tax cuts were geared to expire so as to not make the long run projections look too bad. Furthermore, there’s a case to be made that tax increases should be postponed until 2011 anyway-- given the softness of the economy in Jan 2009.
I have to say though that I’m glad Obama moved early. The modern conservative noise machine is far more developed today than it was in the 1930s. I’m of the “Window of Opportunity is Narrow” school of thought. But your point that the enduring reforms came in ~1936 is nonetheless pretty interesting.
Not a very good one: unemployed people don’t pay very much in (federal) taxes, anyway, so it doesn’t hurt them, and taxes pay for increased government jobs. In fact, the government is pretty much the one party you can expect to always spend anything it gets, which stimulates the economy. High-income earners (not necessarily the wealthy) are the ones paying the taxes, and they’re the ones most likely to “hoard” money rather than spend it (although they’ll call it “investing”). You can, in fact, tax your way to prosperity, although many folks don’t like the wealth redistribution that that implies.
And yet so many conservatives run for office on their extensive business management career (Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Bill Binnie here in NH), claiming that will give them the experience to balance the budget and create jobs. As if only we ran the government the way they ran their corporation, we could finally put the federal government on a paying basis.
Is that funny too, Sam? Or does that just make perfect sense to you?
Of course it’s not just another form of business, but then, neither is Microsoft, or AT&T, or Exxon, or Archer Daniels Midland. Any business that big becomes qualitatively different from smaller businesses.
Yeah, I gotta admit I’m not seeing an effective argument there, either. It’s like he just reflexively reversed the original statement, and thought he was somehow getting a zinger in.
As I read it, Sam was rebutting the notion that big government is analogous to big business; that conservatives are somehow inconsistent by liking “big business” but disliking “the biggest business.”
And he’s right: government is not like business in several key respects. Government has no need to make a profit. Liberals view this as a good thing, undoubtedly; conservatives generally view it as evidence that a government solution will be inefficient precisely because they don’t need to worry about profit.
And yet, as Fear Itself noted, many conservative candidates run on exactly the platform that they would run government like a business. This is supposed to be a good thing for conservatives. Funny that.
It’s not only profit, it’s that a transaction can only be consummated between an individual and a business if both parties agree. Or to paraphrase Adam Smith, a voluntary transaction only occurs if both parties benefit.
You, as a consumer, have 100% control over whether or not a transaction will occur between you and a private entity such as a business. If you don’t want to purchase a hamburger from Burger King, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to get your haircut from The Straight Dope Salon, you don’t have to. It’s all within your control.
You have 0% control over whether or not you can avoid doing business with the government. If you want to open a salon and cut somebody’s else hair for profit, and the government requires you to pass a cosmetologist test and pay a license fee, you can’t say “No thanks, I’ll just do it without the license and fee.”
[/begin aside]
It’s remarkable to me how many seemingly intelligent posters on the SDMB can’t understand this basic distinction.
But again, so many on the left paint themselves as helpless, hapless victims of evil corporations - unable to fend for themselves and make their own decisions in the cold, cruel world without a government nanny - that perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Does the hamburger have a choice? Does the Free Republic Hair Salon have a choice to gain your business after you go to the The Straight Dope Salon? Of course not. Most economic decisions have externalities, even if they are only lost opportunities, even if they are borne by non-human entities or generations yet unborn. Your happy little world where every action takes place purely between two consenting individuals is a fantasy. Two economic actors are rarely ever in the moral equivalent of pure vacuum. Now you may say that those other actors don’t count, that two humans living today with the power to make the deal are the ones with authority to do so. Fine. Then also accept that there are authorities over you with every right to treat you like the hamburger, or the lock of hair cut off.
Rarely are only two entities affected by a transaction. Yet anarcho-capitalist/libertarian theory is based on the idea that every transaction should be decided by the two entities party to it. But transactions which only affect two entities rarely exist.
So the two entities (let’s say a human being & a corporation, or two human beings) by deciding to undergo this exchange are making themselves authorities over everyone else affected–even their future selves who may regret the decision.
And that’s OK. An absolute right to consent is unnatural–a fantasy. In the state of nature, there is no money & precious little barter. Nature is red in tooth & claw. The strong take; the wise strong also manage the resources they take. Your demands that you be left alone are rooted in a child’s delusion of how the world works–a perverse false idea of natural law. You have no real right to live unaffected by the decisions of others.
In the real world, the most you can ask is that somehow you are given some choices, that some of the sovereignty of decision is granted to you. But there will never be a world where everyone gets to choose everything that affects them.
When you demand freedom of contract for yourself as an adult human citizen, you are saying that you as an adult human citizen should have a measure of [del]sovereignty[/del] suzerainty, that you are a natural aristocrat to be given autonomy–& therefore authority to impose your will on other entities that lack your power.
Libertarians think they want everyone to be free. But the only entities that are really freed are those that have the power to consent at the time–and only as they exist at the time. Not infants nor the unborn; not even our older, sadder but wiser future selves. Certainly not beasts or inanimate objects. You merely replace a smaller aristocracy with a larger, more unruly one.