Politics As Usual

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by the Spartan
Edwards is a parasite, leeching the capitalist system at the expense of productivity. He moved on to use his bloodmoney to purchase the slot as the 97th most important Senator.

Those of us who know the words to the University of Chicago fight song also know that American industry would not be as efficient if it didn't have the plaintiff's bar around to keep them on their toes.

As for Bush, he was the CEO of a state with an economy that dwarves most of the worlds'.

John Edwards was actually able to make a living without having it handed to him. George Bush would have starved to death in an Albertson's for most of his life if he hadn't been his father's son.

RT will explain to you why Bush's record in Texas shouldn't impress anyone, but, hell, you're not even trying to make any claims that he did anything there.

And his firm leadership in wartime is the reason most of y'all are speaking arabic by now.

Tell me again why he's not running with the slogan, I'll do for American what I did for Iraq.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And how old was he when Bush left the National Guard to work on GOP senatorial campaigns? Oh that's right, we don't know exactly when that was.

You crack me up (not really its an expression).

Bush to you has fucked up the country from panacea to completely screwed economically and socially, he also lied us into a war that you believe makes no sense, he also screwed up our relations with every other country in the world, and is going about killing everyone by implementing enviromentally horrible rules. Meanwhile, to fuck everything up this bad he and his henchmen had done back door deals and cheated and lied at every turn, in fact everything the have ever done is either really stupid or illegal.

Meanwhile half the country still supports him. Don't you feel like giving up and moving somewhere else? Or is SF kind of llike the Pakistan mountains- you figure the Reps won't come in there?

[the Spartan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
this post sounds like you know stuff, \

Looks like ironweed fooled another naif.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by ironweed
That tune is a little too much like the University of Chicago fight song.

Not quite.

"Wave the flag of old Chicago,
Maroon the color grand.
Ever shall her team be victors
Known throughout the land.
With the grand old man to lead them,
Without a peer they'll stand.
Wave again the dear old banner,
For they're heroes ev'ry man."

Of course, the Law School cheer probably fits.

"LAW SCHOOL CHEER (apocryphal)

Wall Street, Law Review,
Contingent fees, all right!
To get an A from Levi,
We'll study all the night.
Rules of law and bar exams,
They can go to h---;
It's economic theory,
For which we're goin' to yell.
SO GO, GO, EFFICIENCY,
GILBERT'S ALL THE WAY.
Learned Hand and U of C
Are going to win this day.
GO, MAROONS!"

Gattigap

[Tyrone Slothrop]

You crack me up (not really its an expression).


You had me worried there.


Bush to you has fucked up the country from panacea to completely screwed economically and socially, he also lied us into a war that you believe makes no sense, he also screwed up our relations with every other country in the world,


You overstate things somewhat, but OK.

and is going about killing everyone by implementing enviromentally horrible rules.

Whatever.

Meanwhile, to fuck everything up this bad he and his henchmen had done back door deals and cheated and lied at every turn, in fact everything the have ever done is either really stupid or illegal.

How about, a lot of what they've done is ideologically-driven and venal.

Meanwhile half the country still supports him. Don't you feel like giving up and moving somewhere else? Or is SF kind of llike the Pakistan mountains- you figure the Reps won't come in there?

I think you're paying for the board in December.

And I also don't think it would be the worst thing for my guys in the long term if Bush won re-election. Because his own mistakes in Iraq have put real limits on his ability to make the same mistake elsewhere. And someone is going to have to take a huge political hit to clean up the budgetary mess that we're in, and I'd rather it was the GOP, all else equal.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Not quite.

"Wave the flag of old Chicago,
Maroon the color grand.
Ever shall her team be victors
Known throughout the land.
With the grand old man to lead them,
Without a peer they'll stand.
Wave again the dear old banner,
For they're heroes ev'ry man."

Of course, the Law School cheer probably fits.

"LAW SCHOOL CHEER (apocryphal)

Wall Street, Law Review,
Contingent fees, all right!
To get an A from Levi,
We'll study all the night.
Rules of law and bar exams,
They can go to h---;
It's economic theory,
For which we're goin' to yell.
SO GO, GO, EFFICIENCY,
GILBERT'S ALL THE WAY.
Learned Hand and U of C
Are going to win this day.
GO, MAROONS!"

Gattigap

Sounds like an REM song

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Not much meat in that story, just a bunch of conclusions.

Question: it seems to me that he is limiting his analysis to the direct effect of minimum wage increases. What about indirect effects like (a) inflation and (b) increasing of wages for those earning above minimum wage?

DeLong has a post up responding to Landsburg. What's below picks up after quoting Landsburg's point about who bears the costs of the minimum wage:

I--and almost everybody else I've talked to--think this is dead wrong: the incidence of the minimum wage "tax" falls almost entirely upon the customers of firms that employ minimum-wage workers, and that's pretty much all of us. It's not as though the owners and managers of firms that employ minimum-wage workers have no other options. So I believe Landsburg is wrong: the burden of the minimum wage is broadly distributed across all taxpayers.

Landsburg goes on to write:

• If you want to transfer income to the working poor, there are fairer and more honest ways to do it. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, accomplishes pretty much the same goals as the minimum wage but without concentrating the burden on a tiny minority. For that matter, the EITC also does a better job of helping the people you'd really want to help, as opposed to, say, middle-class teenagers working summer jobs. It's pretty hard to argue that a minimum-wage increase beats an EITC increase by any criterion.

Now I like the EITC. Come the Day of Wrath, my best pleading will be the role I played in 1993 in the Clinton administration in expanding the EITC. But the EITC is a program that uses the IRS to write lots of relatively small checks to tens of millions of relatively poor people who satisfy picky eligibility rules. This is not the IRS's comparative advantage. The IRS's comparative advantage is using random terror to elicit voluntary compliance with the tax code on the part of relatively rich people. The EITC is a good program, but it a costly program to administer, and it is administered imperfectly to say the least.

The minimum wage, on the other hand, is nearly self-enforcing: its administrative costs are nearly nil, for workers (legal workers, at least) have a very strong incentive to drop a dime on bosses who violate it. From a government-administrative and error-rate perspective, it's a very cost-effective program.

The right solution, of course, is balance: use the minimum wage as one part of your program of boosting the incomes of the working poor, and use the EITC as the other part. try not to push either one to the point where its drawbacks (disemployment on the one hand, and administrative error on the other) grow large. Balance things at the margin.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I think you're paying for the board in December.

I know you do. Lot's of people pay for this board after losing bets to me they thought they'd win.

W/O me the board would not be.

Originally posted by the Spartan
Looks like ironweed fooled another naif.

Jealous much? Hank, like many others on these boards, has been starved for the real deal while you squandered every oldskoolers' hard-earned rep with your baseless blabber. He's been getting Velveeta, but now it's goat cheese time. The kind with the little green specks on it that costs extra.

And BTW, w/r/t to the "fifteen point bounce" routine you've been working here with all the subtlety of an ugly stripper at the end of a slow afternoon shift, let me give you some advice. You need to plant the baseless exaggerated expectation at least 48 hours in advance of any attempt to use it, or else you come over all phoney-like. Bottom line? More pictures + fewer words = Everbody Loves Penske.

[Replaced_Texan]

Is anyone else just a little appalled that they're going through with the debate and vote for the Gays Can't Marry Each Other But We're Really Not Homophobic Amendment? They don't have the two thirds needed for the amendment, and it's just serving as political posturing to placate the bases on both sides. Call me naive, but I have a strong feeling that you don't fuck around with the Constitution, even if it is just for show.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I know you do. Lot's of people pay for this board after losing bets to me they thought they'd win.

W/O me the board would not be.

And may the tradition continue. I encourage any and all board-paying bets.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I know you do. Lot's of people pay for this board after losing bets to me they thought they'd win.

W/O me the board would not be.

I can testify

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Is anyone else just a little appalled that they're going through with the debate and vote for the Gays Can't Marry Each Other But We're Really Not Homophobic Amendment? They don't have the two thirds needed for the amendment, and it's just serving as political posturing to placate the bases on both sides. Call me naive, but I have a strong feeling that you don't fuck around with the Constitution, even if it is just for show.

Yes.

[confidential to Sidd] See, some of us do go against our own. See also my rants on the 1st amendment infringements [/confidential to Sidd]

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Call me naive, but I have a strong feeling that you don't fuck around with the Constitution, even if it is just for show.

I thought the whole point is that there are some things you just don't fuck around with.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by the Spartan
What are you talking about ??!!? I am a lesbian!

Wow -- maybe the Repubs are right and gay people are evil.