The War on PBS

During the recent presidential debate, Mitt Romney said the following:

I’m sorry, Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS. I like PBS, I love Big Bird — I actually like you too — but I am not going to keep spending money on things [we have] to borrow money from China to pay for.

Since the debate, the left has made Romney out to be someone who hates Sesame Street and PBS, and the right has made Romney out to be someone who takes spending cuts seriously. Both completely miss the point. This statement from Romney actually tells you quite a lot about the candidate. This is a statement with far-ranging implications that matter a great deal more than even PBS’ defenders realise.

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The Mother of All Output Gaps

There’s an interesting assumption going on behind the estimation of the output gaps (the difference between the economy’s current output and the economy’s estimated maximum potential output)–that not only did the economy decline during the recent crisis, but that the economy’s potential declined as well. This assumption leads to governments believing that their economies are less capable than perhaps they are, that the output gaps are not especially large, and that there is little revenue to be raised to offset stimulus spending, but what if it is not true? The idea comes from Capital Economics, a macroeconomics research company, has received attention from the Financial Times and Paul Krugman, and now it will receive attention from me as today’s topic.

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Where Have the Conservatives Gone?

Conservatives are people politically who are anti-change, anti-reform, who want to preserve things as they are, or return to the way things used to be not so very long ago. Conservatives always represent the time just passed or the time being passed. In the age of the industrial revolution, the conservatives were agrarians who mourned the loss of pastoral life. When the progressive era came along, the conservatives were capitalists who pushed back against the unions and labour reform. Nowadays, however, the left no longer pushes new social programmes, new reforms, or new ideas. Today, right wing politicians like Paul Ryan and David Cameron are the ones supporting things like “welfare reform”, “NHS reform”, “social security reform”, “Medicare reform”, and other reform policies that would change the state structurally, altering elements of it that have been in place for in many cases well over half a century. There is nothing conservative about wanting to change these policies. Change is, inherently, anti-conservative. So where have the conservatives gone? That is today’s topic.

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Misconceptions: “Female Leaders Who Express Dominance are Acting Male”

Recently, I listened to an argument claiming that female leaders like Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, Margaret Thatcher, or Angela Merkel do not represent significant improvements to gender equality because they “act male” in that they are perceived have dominant personalities reminiscent of those of males. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how leadership works and what it is to be male or female. Today, I aim to dissect, identify, and pick apart this misconception.

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Fed-Bashing Tomfoolery

It has become fashionable on the political right to attack the Federal Reserve and its policy of quantitative easing, the process by which the Federal Reserve increases the money supply by purchasing assets owned by the private sector with cash that it prints. The right argues that quantitative easing encourages inflation and makes it easier for the government to borrow money, that it discourages saving, and that these are bad things. In contrast, these are very good things, and I shall endeavour to argue as to why.

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