Big Government and the Bailouts Saved the Day

Krugman:

So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government.

Just to be clear: the economic situation remains terrible, indeed worse than almost anyone thought possible not long ago...

For all that, however, the latest flurry of economic reports suggests that the economy has backed up several paces from the edge of the abyss...

So what saved us from a full replay of the Great Depression? The answer, almost surely, lies in the very different role played by government...

Probably the most important aspect of the government’s role in this crisis isn’t what it has done, but what it hasn’t done: unlike the private sector, the federal government hasn’t slashed spending as its income has fallen...

In addition to having this “automatic” stabilizing effect, the government has stepped in to rescue the financial sector. You can argue (and I would) that the bailouts of financial firms could and should have been handled better, that taxpayers have paid too much and received too little. Yet it’s possible to be dissatisfied, even angry, about the way the financial bailouts have worked while acknowledging that without these bailouts things would have been much worse.

The point is that this time, unlike in the 1930s, the government didn’t take a hands-off attitude while much of the banking system collapsed. And that’s another reason we’re not living through Great Depression II.

Last and probably least, but by no means trivial, have been the deliberate efforts of the government to pump up the economy. From the beginning, I argued that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, was too small. Nonetheless, reasonable estimates suggest that around a million more Americans are working now than would have been employed without that plan — a number that will grow over time — and that the stimulus has played a significant role in pulling the economy out of its free fall.

All in all, then, the government has played a crucial stabilizing role in this economic crisis. Ronald Reagan was wrong: sometimes the private sector is the problem, and government is the solution.

And aren’t you glad that right now the government is being run by people who don’t hate government?

Yglesias points out that "“bailouts saved the economy” and “bailouts were structured so as to be very favorable to politically influential financiers” are not exclusive options."

I think that's right. The stimulus worked, but it could have worked better if it had been targeted solely at... stimulus, and less at, oh, say Goldman Sachs.

If there are any responsible Republicans left, please take lessons from this for the healthcare debate. You can't stop it, like you couldn't stop the stimulus. (In fact you shouldn't stop it, like you shouldn't have stopped the stimulus.) But if instead of fearmongering and holding your breath and throwing tantrums, you direct your opposition to things that actually should be opposed, you could affect positive change.

With regard to the stimulus, you could have held your fire, not smeared Obama as Stalin-incarnate, not ridiculed the very idea of stimulus, and instead insisted on making sure that the stimulus was as trim and directed as possible. Oh, you'll say you did argue against some of the waste and misdirected funds, and of course you did, but that was lost among the greater lunacy.

Now you have an opportunity to make sure that the health care plan does what it sets out to do rather than rewarding corporate interests at the expense of everybody else. But you've got to stop lying about everything, smearing Obama as a socialist, pretending that Obama's coming for grandma, insisting that government can never do good, and generally engaging in fearmongering. Instead, be a responsible opposition party. The Dems put forward a plan, respond with the same plan slightly improved. Stay on message. Say you support the plan, but you want to include tort reform. Or you want less money for X and more for Y. You can do that. If you put all your energy on making the plan better and none of it on insanity, you could not only cause a better health care plan, but take great strides in restoring a civil democracy.

Or you can scream "Socialism" and tear at your hair and have to live with whatever the Democrats manage to ram through without your help. Your choice.

In Defense of "Uncivil" Atheists

A reader of The Daily Dish writes:

I understand where you are coming from when you say, "Atheists are much more likely to be ostracized for their beliefs, but that does not excuse incivility on their part." Even as an atheist, I get annoyed by many of the tactics of hardlined atheists and do wish for more civility in the discussion, but one has to realize that its incredibly hard to be an atheist and even the best of us have days where we can't bite our tongues. Surely as a gay person Andrew has had those moments where he just snapped at someone's homophobia.

Most people are aware that admitting to atheism pretty much bars you from political office, immediately makes your patriotism suspect, can ruin friendships, families, and careers. For reasons of self-preservation, we're often compelled to live "in the closet". In some ways, its tempting to make parallels with other minorities that have been discriminated against over the years, be it based on gender, race, sexual preference, etc. But unlike those groups, we're not forbidden to vote, get married, buy houses, eat at the same restaurants, or any of the other rights other groups had to fight for. In some ways, even I, as an atheist that has been discriminated against time and time again feel like maybe I don't really have any right to complain. But I am treated very differently, and very unfairly, and in a country where "all men are created equal" its time we put an end to that. But what is there to end?

There are no real battles to be fought and won other than general acceptance. Laws about religion are already on the books. There are no acts of Congress that can alleviate the acts of discrimination we face. It is almost purely a battle of intangible social constructs. There are no equivalents to the marches against Prop 8 or riots against faulty elections. There are very few ways to channel the anger, sadness, and frustration of our discrimination.

Every atheist is bound to have a day just bad enough where they explode on some poor believer who pushes too hard and every atheist has felt at time that even the most accepting of believers is tacitly agreeing to the discrimination we face. Sure, I disapprove of many of the less civil tactics some of the more well-known atheists engage in, but I can't say that I don't understand what pushed them to that point. But, in the grander scheme of things, as a group we've yet to do anything as "uncivil" as Stonewall, or the riots we saw during the civil rights movement. Many of these acts are not only forgiven, but celebrated as reasonable responses in the face of discrimination, yet we're screamed at any time an atheist acts like a jerk on TV, writes something a bit testy on a website, or files the occasionally dumb lawsuit.

I dare say that in the history of discriminated groups in this country, atheists have been the most civil and with plenty of room to spare, yet still, we're told that its too much and that we need to calm down and scale it back a notch.

So no, I don't like the incivility some bring to the discussion, but if they didn't, would anyone even be talking about this issues? If everyone remained "civil" it'd get swept up under the rug like it always has in the past. Their incivility might not solve the problem, but it sheds enough of a spotlight on the subject to open a door for the civil conversations that need to happen. Without them I strongly believe the conversation would never happen at all.

As someone who has been guilty of incivility more than once, I agree. Growing up in a society that equates religiosity with morality and patriotism and in a community that equates leaving Orthodoxy with disloyalty, dysfunction, and selfish hedonism and essentially pretends that we no longer exist and don't need to be taken seriously, it's hard not to lash out sometimes.

Newsflash: Media Still Really Really Not Liberal

What with Democrats owning the White House and Congress and the media being allegedly liberal, one would expect the debate over the most important issue of the day to be slanted heavily to the left. It's not, because the media are not liberal but incompetent, offering "two sides" of any debate without any perspective on whether those two sides have anything remotely to do with the truth.

The Democrats and most economists believe that the economy requires a stimulus package. Obama, being a moderate kind of guy, chose a moderate number for the size of the stimulus, as compared to the numbers suggested by economists. The Republicans, on the other hand, staked out an insanely far-right position: a spending freeze. (A freeze? Holy crap, we dodged a bullet in the last election. What if McCain had actually followed through on the Hooverian rhetoric?)

So the media, incompetent approval-seekers that they are, dutifully accepted those two positions as representing opposite ends of the spectrum and has presented them as such. The result is a "debate" wildly skewed towards the right.

This happens on many issues. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the right staked out the "we must invade" position, while the left took to a moderate "let's wait and see" position. So the media dutifully framed the debate that way, effectively making the new center the "we'll probably invade soon, but we'll pay a little lip service to waiting first."

Krugman:

One major sin of news coverage, especially on TV, is the way certain points of view just get excluded from consideration — even if many of the best-informed people hold those views. Most famously and disastrously, the case against invading Iraq was just not heard in the months before the war.

And still it happens. According to the invaluable Media Matters, the idea that the Obama stimulus plan might be too small — a view held by many well-known economists — basically went unreported on broadcast news during the stimulus debate. Out of 59 broadcasts addressing the plan, only 3 mentioned concerns that the plan was inadequate. And it’s actually even worse than that: one of those three involved Harry Reid talking about longer-term goals on health and education — and one of the other two was me.

Meanwhile, it’s rapidly becoming clear that yes, the plan was too small.

The future of our economy is at stake. And it's at risk because the Republicans are better at framing the debate and the media are too cowed to correct for it.

Obama should have opened with a 1.3 or 1.5 trillion dollar package, with almost no tax cuts. The Republicans would have stuck to their extreme, and the media would have framed the debate so that a $750 billion stimulus with $300 billion in tax cuts appeared to be the moderate, centrist position it is. And who knows? We might have even gotten a stimulus big enough to fix things. Now we just have to hope.

VP Debate Reaction

Palin

Palin did much better than I expected and, admittedly, far better than I'd hoped. I was hoping she'd do so badly that the race would be over. That did not happen. Unlike Couric, Ifill did not (and could not, according to the rules as I understand them) press her for an answer when she was non-responsive, so she could just filibuster when she didn't (I assume) have a pre-scripted answer or just deliver an answer to a different question. So there were no deer-in-the-headlights moments, although that's a pretty low standard. She did not to my mind exhibit detailed knowledge of any topic and I'm not sure how her admission that she wasn't going to necessarily answer all the questions will go over.

I thought the message that she is an expert in energy policy was a strong one, especially for low-information voters who may take her at her word for it and not realize it's not actually true. Voters might think it's okay that she doesn't know foreign policy or Supreme Court history if they think she has a different area of expertise.

I'm not sure how her folksiness will play. To me, it seemed like she was trying too hard. I watched it with my (liberal) fiance and Palin was driving her nuts. Some of her folksiness was so over-the-top I have trouble believing that many women will fall for it. "Did she just wink at the camera?!" was one thing I said out loud.

The only real gaffe I noticed was that she kept referring to our military leader in Afghanistan as "McCellan." (It's McKiernan.) I myself couldn't recall the name, although I knew immediately that it was not McClellan. Biden didn't call her on it, although he was a little conspicuous about not using his name. I don't think it was an important mistake, but it may become one, depending on how it plays out.

Regarding the substance, I think she was (perhaps unknowingly) dishonest. The line about Obama voting for taxes on families making $42,000 a year is a lie that was debunked long before the debate. Her speech about being tolerant of gay people was nice, but I wish someone had asked her whether she agreed with McCain's vote against the Employee Non-Discrimination Act.

Biden

I thought Biden did great. His most important task was to assure older white voters that Obama is ready and not a scary Muslim or something, and I think he did that. He was also quite charming and even chivalrous and he did not do anything that could be perceived as being sexist or disrespectful of Palin. His thousand-watt smile may do to older white women what Palin's looks to do men of all ages.

The moment where he choked up will be remembered, and I think that combined with the fact that his son is going to Iraq, may soothe the worries of some voters about the Obama/Biden foreign policy. It was also a great reminder that Sarah Palin isn't the only candidate in the race with a family.

Biden did an excellent job of emphasizing the middle class. He gave a strong defense of progressive taxation with an implied attack on McCain's trickle-down economics, and his mentions of Scranton and his home town appeared genuine and may have established him as a "real" person in the minds of middle-class watchers. I think his explanation of McCain's health care plan was devastating as well.

He didn't have any major mistakes or gaffes. I laughed out loud when he said "Bosniaks," thinking it was a mistake, although apparently he used the term correctly. (It is the correct term for the ethnic Muslim in Bosnia, as opposes to the Serbs and the Croats.) And I was shocked when I thought he said he supports gay marriage, but he later clarified and said he does not. (Needless to say, I strongly disagree with Obama and him on that stance.)

Conclusion

All in all, Biden was the clear winner if we are to judge them by the same standards, but Palin will probably be held to the low standard of "she didn't humiliate herself and her party," which she succeeded on. I thought Biden seemed much more real and Palin appeared to be trying too hard to be folksy, but we'll see how that plays with the undecideds. Between Obama's serene and competent performance last week and Biden's charming one today, I think they may have sealed up the older white Democrats who may have been skeptical about voting for a relatively young Black man. I doubt Palin convinced anyone she's ready to be the backup president, but she at least stopped the hemorrhaging. In the end, the debate probably won't have a strong effect on the election.

Rational Atheism

This article by Michael Shermer is making the rounds.

Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

He then lists the following 5 reasons, elaborating on each:

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail.
2. Positive assertions are necessary.
3. Rational is as rational does.
4. The golden rule is symmetrical.
5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief.

The piece features two great quotes as well:

Charles Darwin: It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follow[s] from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science.”

I didn't realize Darwin became as opposed to Christianity and theism as this quote implies. Fascinating.

Martin Luther King, Jr: The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We should be careful not to alienate our religious allies.

Followup: Gil Student and Censorship

In the comments section of the very post that claimed his censorship policy was "not out of fear but out of annoyance," Rabbi Student censored a comment in a way that can leave no doubt that it is in fact about fear and not annoyance.

Commenter Modeh B'Miktsas provided a list of blogs that allow free discussion "for those skeptics who don't know where else to post." The comment could not be construed by any rational individual as rude or annoying, but Rabbi Student censored it with this explanation: they can find these places on their own.

What is the purpose of making it harder for skeptics to find places where they are welcome to comment? The only possible explanation is that Rabbi Student is, in fact, afraid of open debate, not just for himself but for all the doubters out there. He is afraid that if both sides are allowed to argue their point of view, people who are on the fence will be swayed by the skeptics.