mendeleev

As discussed ad nauseam the other day, many of us straights have chosen not to procreate. Should we not be allowed to marry?

D*mn right! And if you cannot procreate, because you're too old or sterile, you also shouldn't be allowed to marry. After all, marriage has only one purpose.

I wonder is any of that stuff can be found in Carson Sink, Nevada. There are lots of old uncovered strip mines out there, and huge piles of tailings. If I knew what I was looking at, perhaps I could make a few bucks next time the guys get together for desert trip.

Good luck. The real money is in rare earth refining ... and that's probably the reason the Chinese are restricting their exports of crude product. The separations are tough, so purified compounds and elements draw a premium.

Still don't think Tea Partiers are racist?

http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/07/tea-partier-mark-williams-writes-open-letter-to-lincoln-from-the-coloreds/

Legacy, at first I thought your post was a joke or a hoax, and not something one would actually write down for people to see. I was wrong. Tea partiers can be even nuttier than I imagined!

So, the Chinese really do have us by the #######!

They do, but it doesn't have to be that way.

The Chinese do produce the vast majority of rare earth elements these days. This was not the case 15 years ago. Indeed, Unocal operated a large mine in California that they shut down in spite of the fact that it was profitable. It just wasn't profitable enough for an oil company, who wanted to deploy their capital elsewhere.

North America has plenty of undeveloped rare earth -- and the deposits, by and large, are not in environmentally sensitive places. There just isn't a will amongst American capital, apparently, to develop and continue to utilize domestic resources.

My (former) company switched to Chinese rare earth sources when Unocal shut down their otherwise profitable mine.

We have to hope and wish them well.

97%? What a bunch of #######.

Mawlison demonstrates, again, that he doesn't know what he talks about. He is under the delusion that lithium is a rare earth mineral. Anyone who took even high school chemistry and was paying attention is aware that the rare earth elements range from lanthanum thru ytterbium. Some chemists include lutetium and yttrium because they occur in many rare earth deposits.

For several years, the Chinese have produced the vast majority of rare earth elements and compounds sold into world markets. There are moderate deposits in California (Unocal shut that mine down several years ago but it should reopen soon), Estonia, India, and some other places. Afghanistan may have some rare earth deposits but they are not mined yet.

For several years, I had responsiblity for sourcing rare earth compounds that my company used -- and the markets changed radically as Chinese production increased markedly about 10 years ago, depressing prices and greatly helping out consuming companies like mine.

In point of fact, China does provide over 95% (and one can find the figure 97% all over the place) of rare earths globally. This has been the case for about ten years.

Mawlison, besides elementary economics, you need to learn some chemistry.

I forget ... how do you spell

liquidity trap?

also - bonuses would be reported as income

... unless there's a little tax evasion added into the mix!

This information is gleaned from a front page article of Tuesday's (13 July) Financial Times.

BP may not need to pay Uncle Sam any taxes for a few years, because of the oil spill. If BP manages to seal the hemorrhage by August, Financial Times reckons that BPs total spending in the gulf could be about $30 billion. About $10 billion would represent cleanup costs and $20 billion compensation suffered by fishing, tourism, and other damaged industries.

BP believes they can deduct these costs from taxable earnings. With a 30% tax rate on profits -- a good estimate globally -- BP would have roughly $10 billion it could deduct.

BP paid $8.4 billion globally in taxes last year. Of this, 930 million pounds went to the British treasury and it is thought that the Feds got a similar amount: maybe $1.5 billion.

With $10 billion to deduct, if BP plays it smart, and Uncle Sam went along, maybe they won't have to pay taxes for four years and, in effect, the US and UK taxpayers will subsidize BP's recklessness.

BP's share price is going up. With a 4-year tax holiday in sight, there's no reason why it shouldn't.

I imagine there are folks here who think these sort of tax breaks are the way things should be.

Surely there comes a point where the debts are so massive that you can't increase spending without plunging the country into a spiral of debt from which it will not soon recover. I'd say we're already at that point.

If the bond markets agreed with you, which apparently they don't, the interest rate on a 10-year Treasury Bond would be a lot more than 3%. Last I checked, the rate was 2.97%.

Alan Greenspan is an idiot.

Not many people will say that out loud, but he's a very large reason why we're in the economic mess that we are in today. Just ask Brooksley Born on that one.

Thanks, P&V, for another datum consistent with the hypothesis that the current GOP is so extreme that Ronald Reagan, were he a politician today, would be too liberal to get their support.

Is it Greenspan that's the cause of today's mess -- or is it the legacy of the *HUGE* Reagan deficits that started (and both Bush's escalated) long before Reagan appointed Greenspan? Just asking.

As far as unemployment goes, I'm not completely against it. But it should be limited. At least it's something that's earned by prior work. But 2 years worth of unemployment payments? Where is the motivation in that? People get content to stay at home and collect their check.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, not particularly known for being an out-of-touch liberal, said the following in recent testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, “nemployment benefit insurance here is essentially restrictive

because it’s been our perception that we don’t want to create incentives for people not to take

jobs. But when you’re in period of job weakness where it is not a choice on the part of people

whether or not they’re employed or unemployed, then, obviously, you want to be temporarily

generous. And that’s what we’ve done in the past, and I think it’s worked well.”

Greenspan was famous, while chairman, for making Delphic statements no one could understand. But this statement is pretty clear, and it recommends an extention of benefits.

And just when will that time be? When will the economy be roaring along at the very same time we're in dire straights in terms of deficit and debt? It's too easy to kick the can farther down the road and let some future government and population deal with it. It's been almost 30 years since we went over the trillion mark in debt. Prior to that, I doubt anybody outside a mathematician had ever even heard of the word trillion before.

As far as unemployment goes, I'm not completely against it. But it should be limited. At least it's something that's earned by prior work. But 2 years worth of unemployment payments? Where is the motivation in that? People get content to stay at home and collect their check.

Taking your two points one at a time:

When will it be time to cut spending and increase taxes (primarily on the rich in order that the tax increase have the least possible contractionary effect)? It is a very good, impt question. If proper stimulus is in place, probably 1-2 years. Will Congress actually do it? Skepticism is warranted -- but which party was the last one to run a balanced budget? (Hint: Clinton was president then, and he put the budget on track toward surplus with his first budget in 1993.) Each GOP president we've had since Eisenhower (maybe Ford, but not really) has presided over an explosion in the deficit. Carter did a decent job holding the line -- a statement hard for many to swallow but go back and examine the facts. My grandfather was a hardcore republican for over 50 years -- until he got so disgusted with Reagan's blowing the budget deficit to unprecedented levels. Gotta hand it to him: he was a budget hawk with integrity, so he left the GOP and ended his life an independent who, at the end of his life, surprised both him and me with praise for Clinton's budget discipline.

Next, we still have a situation where, on average, there are 5 job seekers for each opening. The odds aren't good for job seekers and employers will tend to discriminate in favor of those whose unemployment is shorter rather than longer. (I would -- in fact in a previous recession, I did.) Studies by economics show that unemployment can encourage the unemployed to be pickier during good economic times, but your argument that the unemployed are discouraged from accepting new work is supported by the data, empirically, during severe recessions. Yours is a bias with a certain appeal -- but it simply isn't supported by the data. I have a strong bias (maybe my scientific/technical training kicks in) to act on fact when facts are available.

The public isn't nearly as worried about the debt as the bipartisan elites in Washington are

By Michael Lind

The new conventional wisdom in Washington is that more spending to promote job creation is out of the question, because the public has changed its priorities and its obsessed with the danger of federal deficits.

Really? What public? The Paraguayan public? The Moroccan public?

The actual views of the American people are at odds with the corporate media's portrayal of a nation of deficit hawks. According to a June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup Poll, 60 percent of Americans favor "additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy." Only 38 percent of the respondents opposed the proposal, while 2 percent had no opinion.

Federal deficits are an obsession with American elites, including many establishment Democrats. But deficit reduction is not the leading priority of the American people. In another USA Today/Gallup Poll, taken March 26-28, the list of issues considered "extremely important" by voters was headed by the economy (57 percent), followed by healthcare (49 percent) and unemployment (46 percent). The federal budget deficit came in fourth, at 45 percent. Note to the Obama administration and Congress: Fewer than half of Americans think that the federal budget deficit is an "extremely important" issue.

Back in March, the only group in which a majority listed the federal budget deficit as extremely important comprised independents (52 percent). The deficit was less important for Democrats (37 percent) and Republicans (47 percent). Inasmuch as supply-side economics is a variant of Keynesianism, it is not surprising that conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats alike should be less concerned about deficits than independents, who seem to share the views on this subject of Ross Perot's followers of the 1990s.

On the basis of that poll and similar ones, many have concluded that in order to reduce the defection of independents to the Republicans in the fall, the Democrats must at least make a show of being deficit hawks. But other polls suggest a different strategy. In the June USA Today/Gallup Poll, majorities of Democrats (83 percent) and independents (52 percent) supported more stimulus spending. Only the Republicans opposed it, by 61 to 38 percent. How can it be argued that Democrats need to appeal to independent swing voters in the fall by denouncing deficits, when a majority of those independents side with Democrats against Republicans on the need for more spending to spur job creation?

Is it possible to be in favor of more federal spending now to save the economy and promote jobs, while being in favor of deficit reduction in the long term? It is not only possible, but necessary. The more rapidly the economy grows, and the greater the number of Americans who are employed, the higher tax revenues will be and the sooner federal deficits can be reduced without measures that would cripple the economy, like raising taxes and cutting spending in the middle of a near depression.

On this issue, President Barack Obama has failed to articulate a position that is both right and popular. Instead of emphasizing that borrowing more to pay for infrastructure investments and job creation now will pay off in greater revenue growth and faster deficit reduction later, he has taken measures like proposing a freeze on deficit spending and supporting the deficit commission, with its right-wing bias. By doing so, he has effectively conceded the right-wing argument that the federal government is spending too much in combating the Great Recession at the present moment, instead of what is in fact true —it is spending too little. (If Obama sincerely believes the former, then he is the wrong person for the job, and economic leadership will have to come from Congress, not the White House).

Further evidence that Americans are more concerned with job creation and shoring up social insurance comes from the AmericaSpeaks "town hall" forums sponsored by deficit-hawk billionaire Pete Peterson. As numerous commentators have pointed out, Peterson must be disappointed if he expected these forums, coming shortly after his associate David Walker's deficit-fear-mongering "IOUSA" movie and discussion tour, to demonstrate public support for the case he has made since the 1990s, in good times and bad, for major cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

Even though they were probably less liberal than the public as a whole, the AmericaSpeaks town hall participants delivered a devastating setback to the Peterson-Walker agenda. By 51 percent to 38 percent, AmericaSpeaks participants favored more stimulus spending. To reduce budget deficits, the participants favored cutting defense spending and raising taxes on the rich.

A majority of the AmericaSpeaks participants opposed reductions in Social Security benefits. To pay for future shortfalls in Social Security revenue, participants favored raising the payroll-tax cap above $106,800.

Indeed, an extraordinary 85 percent of AmericaSpeaks participants favored lifting the payroll-tax cap. This option was mentioned by Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign, but despite its popularity with the American people, it is not to be found in mainstream discussions of Social Security, which are instead focused on cutting benefits and forcing elderly Americans to work longer. Obama is partly responsible for this, because his administration ruled out any increases on taxes for people making under $250,000 a year.

Here we have a clue to the oligarchic nature of the contemporary American political system. As observers pointed out during the campaign-year debate about lifting the cap on payroll taxation, only the top 5 or 6 percent of American wage earners would be affected. But that tiny minority includes the overwhelming majority of politicians of both parties, as well as think tank experts, elite journalists and other opinion makers — to say nothing of the donors to both parties. Is it coincidence that affluent members of the bipartisan political class, whose members pay considerably less as a percentage of their income to Social Security than do janitors and maids, want to keep it that way? And is it coincidence that members of the elite political class, who are the least dependent on Social Security for their retirement income, are the most vocal about making the less-well-off majority work longer in order to receive less?

In the Roman Republic, the two parties were the populares, representing the ordinary citizens, and the optimates, representing the hereditary elite that controlled the Senate. Analogies between Rome and the U.S., particularly in foreign policy, should be taken with a grain of salt, but we do seem to be re-creating something like the politics of late republican Rome, right down to a Senate controlled by rich, reactionary optimates and the equivalent of Rome's slave population in the form of illegal immigrants and indentured servants like H-1B's who labor on American soil without the civil and political rights of Americans.

The apparent lack of interest on the part of our elected officials in the actual views of the American people about Social Security, stimulus spending and other subjects makes sense, once it is understood that most ambitious Washington policymakers of both parties seek to engage in triangulation between the party of the people (non-elite Democrats, Republicans and independents) and the party of the oligarchy (elite Democrats, Republicans and independents). The politically attractive position is the one that will be least alienating to the non-elite majority and the elite minority, two groups that are given equal weight in spite of the great disproportion in numbers between the two.

If the populares were the ignorant yahoos that the press controlled by the optimates would have us believe they are, then we might welcome the check on mob passions provided by our oligarchic institutions like the U.S. Senate. But when it comes to support for more federal spending to combat the Great Recession and raising taxes on the affluent rather than cutting benefits for the needy as the solution to Social Security revenue problems, sound economic analysis and the preferences of the majority are aligned.

The problem with American politics is not that it is too easily influenced by public opinion. The problem is that it is not influenced enough.

Michael Lind is the policy director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and the author of "Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America."

link

Interesting post.

It is encouraging that a majority of people support common sense. It is no surprise to see invective and screed spew here from wingnuts out of touch with the mainstream.

There are good, reasonable, cogent arguments to make for this sort of policy -- and those policy arguments when laid out here aren't really engaged but rejected with assertions and prejudice.

Well, that's an opinion, I guess. I'd think that the more important question would be "can we afford to do it?"

It is my opinion that its useful to use facts in considering the "can we afford to do it" question(s). Relevant facts are available from the bond market. 10-year US Treasury Bonds, last I checked, were commanding a interest rate of (only!!) 2.97%. The bond market has no worries at all about whether the US government can afford the debt we are presently taking on. There are no bond vigilantes bring the US to heel like they did Greece. While it is true that the US deficit is large, much to large on a sustainable basis, a lot of that deficit is created by the current economic emergency. The bond markets aren't worried about debt and rational people should not be too worried at this time either.

Time will come when the US needs to address our long-term fiscal problems, and they should be addressed with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases but only when the economy is operating close to productive limits. That time is not now.

We can afford to provide the long-term unemployed with extended benefits and it makes a lot of economic sense to do so.

This is something I keep noticing - the big government people generally want to hand money to the government to then hand out to other people because it's the "right thing to do" rather than getting involved on their own, volunteering at local soup kitchens, donating via private charities, etc. I'm not suggesting everyone needs to go to church (I don't, as a rule), but there's no denying that when churches were more central to American culture, people generally did a better job of "taking care of their own". Now that more and more people are worshipping at the altar of government programs, that whole approach has all but gone the way of the dodo.

Sgt.: you "notice" things without *any* evidence and if I were more prone to take offense, you certainly would have offended me. You might look and consider my post immediately above and reflect whether an apology is warranted.

How many unemployed people do you know and have provided monatary assistance too? Besides family of course I would hope we would all help our families.

I am a founder of a church-based soup kitchen that provides tens of thousands of meals a year. I don't give money to individually unemployed persons -- and I do give to charities that target the unemployed. I suspect, evli1996, that my individual actions to support people at the bottom compare just fine to anyone else on this board.

But this string is about "The GOP and the Politics of Economic Pain" and my thesis that the GOP has made a cold, calculated decision to do everything they can to obstruct economic recovery stands unchallenged -- and indeed supported by many responding to this string. The economic principles I've addressed here are really pretty simple to understand provided one has a modicum of basic economic knowledge. But, as Upton Sinclair observed long ago, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Its fair to observe that the same goes these days for a political party doing anything they can to regain power.

more like the democrats can't organize a trip to the bathroom, much less capitalize on their majority in the house and senate along with having a democrat president. they'll blame anyone but themselves.

Oh, Charles! -- you shouldn't need a basic civics lesson, but here goes: in the United States Senate, a obdurate minority can prevent any progress if they can marshall 40 votes. You might have heard that there are 41 members of the GOP in the Senate -- or maybe you learned it just now. One things you have to admire these guys for -- they are a disciplined party that is saying "NO" to just about everything. In a republic such as ours, laws cannot get passed if that PARTY OF NO is unified. And they are.

The majority in the House is one thing, but to get things done in the Senate, apparently a larger supermajority is needed. The PARTY OF NO, despite their minority status, can prevent anything from happening. They cannot get what they want, but they can stop all progress. And they have apparently made the cynical calculation that anything they can do to obstruct economic recovery is in their partisan interest.

You did not answer the question ...

I addressed it though: the question was whether the long-term unemployed deserve unemployment insurance payments. My point is that this is a rather dumb question. For me, the more interesting questions have to do with the best responses to get the economy moving again.

(have you heard the debt consolidation commercials

No. I do not waste time watching television and therefore don't see TV commercials.

School doesnt teach basic knowledge anymore

Well, that's a pity but it doesn't seem to keep some of the young ones around here (and maybe not so young, who knows?) from spouting off all sorts of wingnut economic nonsense. By pointing out that they *should* have learned about basic economics in school I hope to encourage them to go back and learn it now themselves. As for myself ... my formal schooling was done decades ago but learning continues ... partly with the time saved by not seeing TV commercials!

So the GOP is somehow intentionally killing the economy without winning any major legislative battles for the last year and half.

So you really think people should be entitled up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits?

The Party Of No is able to do quite some damage with their refusenik politics.

Do I really think people should be entitled up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits? The question, to me, misses the point.

The economy is depressed largely because Investment Spending is on strike and because the Consumer is afraid to spend, because too many of us are afraid that we might lose our jobs, too. (One of the things we should have learned in school, is that GDP = I + C + G, right?)

Individually, it is a very good idea, in general but especially in this economy, to spend less and save more. I'm using all of my money from Obama's income tax cut, and quite a bit more, to save and invest.

I'm like a lot of people here. I'm saving and getting rid of debt. Soon, within a month or two, I'll be 100% debt free, and since the Great Recession began my debt has never been more than 4% of personal income. And as I save aggressively, I'm finding, like lots of people, that there are better investment opportunities outside the USA right now than in it That is, my personal share of Obama's tax cut is not helping to revive the economy, because I'm well-enough off to save and scared enough to save aggressively. Probably lots of folks here at like that, too.

The unemployed, as a cohort, are not in such a nice position. They aren't earning money and they aren't in any position to pay of debt or save. The unemployment money they get, essentially all of it, goes right back into the economy as consumer spending. It is just about the strongest countercyclical spending government could engage in -- because essentially none of it gets siphoned off into savings or debt service.

Especially while Capital (that is, investment spending) remains on strike and the Consumer remains nervous or worse, providing a safety net for the long-term unemployed is just good economic policy. Do all of them deserve it? Probably not. (Do all recipients of business tax cuts deserve it? Does BP deserve their generous tax credits?) To ask the "deserve" question is to have an inappropriate, perhaps prejudicial moral judgement cloud what should be a simple economic calculation. What is one of the most effective things government can do to support the economy in times of great economic stress? Support the unemployed -- because essentially all that money gets plowed right back into the economy.

But this is basic stuff some of us learned, and all of us should have learned, in school.

STOP. A government cannot put money into an economy. A government can only keep money in an economy by lowering taxes. If you raise taxes, if you 'create jobs' with government funds you are still taking money out of the economy. Government spending and government jobs are a negative on the economy. Simple math and following the money trail tells you this.

Looks like you weren't paying attention to the massive successful, massive intervention the Chinese made to rescue their economy from the US financial crisis.

Rather than making commands IN ALL CAPS that suggests one might be losing one's temper due to on target criticism, I suggest that you get a subscription to Financial Times (or The Economist, although FT covers more news more rapidly), read it for a year or so, make up for what you clearly never learned in school, and only start resuming making comments on the economy when you are more educated on current events.

I have a feeling that, against the odds, The Netherlands are going to pull it off today.

Still lots and lots of time ... but Brazil looks dominant so far.

The GOP wanted to extend benefits using stimulus money that wasn't already spent. The OP article was pretty crappy to miss that and then drone on about other topics.

"Republicans argue that the bill would add $33 billion to the deficit and want the money to come out of unspent stimulus funds, while Democrats argue that the unemployment assistance should qualify as emergency spending. Approximately 1.7 million people will have lost their unemployment benefits by the end of this week without the extension."

http://www.webcpa.com/news/Senate-Again-Fails-Pass-Unemployment-Extension-54842-1.html

A lame excuse, masked as attempt to take money out of the economy rather than put more in as is needed during the emergency, only provides evidence to support the accusation that the GOP cynically wants the economy to deteriorate in order to improve their electoral prospects.

This is a pretty cynical analysis -- the GOP wants to hurt the economy because their calculus is that a bad and especially a worsening economy will help them at the polls in November.

The sad fact is that they are probably correct -- and the American public is gullible enough not to see the crime for what it is.

I've already been working the streets to get the vote out in November. Have you?

sarcasm yes, but you can't be serious...

Think of something you enjoy/do to relax/whatever that may/may not be the best thing in the world for you, and imagine it being taxed to hell...

I think it is great that these taxes are as high as they are. And it amuses me to hear people whine about it as though they were entitled to something else.

I firmly believe in the Polluter Pays Principle and am glad to see it applied to individuals.