links for 2011-07-31

• Jefferson’s Tea Party Moment – Sam Tanenhaus
  Whatever the outcome of the debate on the debt ceiling, everyone seems to agree that it has been one of the most alienating spectacles in recent political history — a peculiarly Beltway form of theater, with much of the public still confused about what exactly is at stake.

  But here is a disquieting fact: In one version or another, this conflict, centered on protest against the federal debt, has been going on almost since the beginning of the Republic.

  (tags: history jefferson democracy debt taxes government policy crisis politics hypocrisy usa extremism negotiation)
• America's Own Extremists – The Changing World
  Why the next big threat to US security could come from within: a look at two different kinds of home-grown extremism in America.
  (tags: usa extremism radio islam hatred terrorism jihad right-wing intolerance racism militia politics)
• Chain World Videogame Was Supposed to be a Religion—Not a Holy War | Wired Magazine
  The stick would soon hold a videogame unlike any other ever created. It would exist on the memory stick and nowhere else. According to a set of rules defined by Rohrer, only one person on earth could play the game at a time. The player would modify the game’s environment as they moved through it. Then, after the player died in the game, they would pass the memory stick to the next person, who would play in the digital terrain altered by their predecessor—and on and on for years, decades, generations, epochs. In Rohrer’s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion—a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation. This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird. Before Chain World, like religion itself, mutated out of control.
  (tags: video_games culture religion game rules)
• Thugs | This American Life
  Like a lot of Mexican towns, Florencia has had its share of problems dealing with drug gangs. That is until recently, when new narcos rolled into town telling residents that they were there to liberate them. They promised that people would live in peace and tranquility. And so far, it's working. As long as the narcos are on the streets with guns, people feel safe. That and other stories of thugs.
  (tags: radio this_american_life egypt torture army revolution politics crime)

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links for 2011-07-29

• Congress is cutting the wrong spending – Ezra Klein
  Indeed, since it’s cheaper to repair a road now than it is to fix a road later, you might actually be increasing your total deficits down the line. And the same goes for less tangible investments like scientific research. Withdrawing our support for medical breakthroughs and advances in clean energy might save us money now but cost us money — and health, and atmosphere — later. Cutting discretionary spending so deeply might be penny wise, and even politically wise, but it’s pound foolish.
  (tags: ezra_klein politics deficit debate spending government investment budget future education)
• INFOGRAPHIC: Where does our national debt come from? | The White House
  One of the fundamental things to understand when considering the debate about reducing our national debt is how we accumulated so much in the first place.

  To explain the impact various policies have had over the past decade, shifting us from projected surpluses to actual deficits and, as a result, running up the national debt, the White House has developed a graphic for you to review and share:

  (tags: usa debt bush obama policy taxes economics spending war crisis infographic)
• Lessons From the U.S. Economy's Malaise – David Leonhardt
  We are too often occupied with distractions, rather than trying to answer a simple question: What works? What economic policies have succeeded before and are most likely to lead to the best life for the largest number of people? Instead, we’ve effectively decided that because the United States is the richest, most successful country in the world, it is guaranteed to remain so.
  (tags: david_leonhardt economics lessons usa crisis facts policy)
• Left, right, left: the changing face of EU politics
  With 21 EU member states now under varying degrees of rightwing government, Europe has never been more blue. See how has its political complexion has changed in the 38 years since Britain joined the EEC
  (tags: infographic europe history politics map eu election)

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links for 2011-07-27

• Larry Summers: ‘I think Keynes mistitled his book’ – Ezra Klein
  The second element is that people see economic issues through moral frames and people think there’s an extent to which recessions are punishment for sins — mainly sins of excess — and you don’t expiate sins by binges. So there’s a kind of moral counterintuitiveness that has made it difficult for the public and for political figures to accept stimulus. You can see this in the past, too. John Kennedy’s economic advisers told him after his 1961 inauguration that the country needed a tax cut and he told them they may be right, but he had just given an inaugural address about bearing any burden and paying any price and so he explained to them that he could not turn around and propose a tax cut.
  (tags: interview economics larry_summers keynes morality society crisis ezra_klein policy bailout)

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links for 2011-07-25

• When Patents Attack! | This American Life
  Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist in Seattle, a 40 pound cookbook, and a war waging right now, all across the software and tech industries.
  (tags: innovation patents tal radio law technology fraud)

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links for 2011-07-24

• Grover Norquist's Pledge Is a Colossal Failure – Conor Friedersdorf
  What Norquist doesn't understand or won't admit is that deficit spending is worse than a tax increase, because you've got to pay for it eventually anyway, with interest. Meanwhile, you've created in the public mind the illusion that the level of government services they're consuming is cheaper and less burdensome than is in fact the case. If you hold the line on taxes but not the deficit, you're making big government more palatable.
  (tags: politics government spending taxes deficit entitlements irrationality extremism partisanship economics)
• What Do You Mean, 'Government Is Too Big'? – James Kwak
  The idea that there is one thing called "government"–and that you can measure it by looking at total spending–makes no sense
  (tags: government fallacy spending budget investment entitlements)

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links for 2011-07-23

• Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong – By Leon Aron | Foreign Policy
  The credibility of official ideology, which in Yakovlev's words, held the entire Soviet political and economic system together "like hoops of steel," was quickly weakening. New perceptions contributed to a change in attitudes toward the regime and "a shift in values." Gradually, the legitimacy of the political arrangements began to be questioned. In an instance of Robert K. Merton's immortal "Thomas theorem" — "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequence" — the actual deterioration of the Soviet economy became consequential only after and because of a fundamental shift in how the regime's performance was perceived and evaluated.
  (tags: politics history revolution communism soviet democracy dignity dictatorship self-determination corruption freedom legitimacy)

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links for 2011-07-22

• Food Supply Under Strain on a Warming Planet – NYTimes
  Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.
  (tags: agriculture food economics population world hunger global_warming weather future water sustainability)

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links for 2011-07-21

• The Netanyahu-Obama Meeting in Strategic Context | George Friedman
  The United States, given its overwhelming challenges, is neither interested in Israel’s desire to reshape its region, nor can it tolerate any more risk deriving from Israel’s actions. However small the risks might be, the United States is maxed out on risk. Therefore, Israel’s interests and that of the United States diverge. Israel sees an opportunity; the United States sees more risk.
  (tags: recommended israel usa foreign_policy strategy obama netanyahu settlements politics middle_east george_friedman)
• 9/11 and the 9-Year War | George Friedman
  But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attack. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly, resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible, disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the world’s only global power cannot be captive to this single threat.
  (tags: foreign_policy usa al_qaeda terrorism strategy 9/11 iraq afghanistan priorities lessons intelligence military george_friedman)
• Can Greeks Become Germans? – Thomas Friedman
  Germany is the epitome of a country that made itself rich by making stuff. Greece, alas, after it joined the European Union in 1981, actually became just another Middle East petro-state — only instead of an oil well, it had Brussels, which steadily pumped out subsidies, aid and euros with low interest rates to Athens.
  (tags: thomas_friedman greece crisis debt corruption growth entrepeneurship euro welfare competition future culture)
• The Israel Crisis | Walter Russell Mead
  Israel by rights should be in even worse shape than it is. Even more than the United States, it is a nation of immigrants, as Jews from all over the world sought refuge there. Traumatized European survivors of the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of penniless refugees forced out of Arab countries after Israeli independence, hundreds of thousands fleeing the wreckage of the Soviet collapse, black Ethiopian Jews, and many others have had to build a new society and a new state under constant threat of terror and conventional war while facing non-stop criticism from all over the world. That Israel would be a flawed and divided society was inevitable; that it would grow into a dynamic and lively democracy with one of the world’s most innovative economies was not.
  (tags: israel history terrorism settlements usa foreign_policy democracy extremism politics middle_east recommended)
• How Are the Kids? Unemployed, Underwater, and Sinking « The Baseline Scenario
  In order to solve future structural problems in the United States and ensure a future for the sandwich generation, fiscal policy focused on educational and job growth is crucial. While deficit hawks may squawk about the costs, the burden of repayment is on younger people Without adequate education and careers for students, we will never be able to balance the budget. In the long run, it makes more fiscal sense to create jobs and collect tax revenue than to rely on a model that merely waits for the private sector to invest.
  (tags: generation economics future investment education policy unemployment recession austerity growth government)
• Serious in Singapore – Thomas Friedman
  If Singapore has one thing to teach America, it is about taking governing seriously, relentlessly asking: What world are we living in and how do we adapt to thrive. “We’re like someone living in a hut without any insulation,” explained Tan Kong Yam, an economist. “We feel every change in the wind or the temperature and have to adapt. You Americans are still living in a brick house with central heating and don’t have to be so responsive.” And we have not been.
  (tags: thomas_friedman politics policy singapore usa investment government economics education competition regulation recommended)
• Why Patients are Not Consumers
  Republican budget guru Paul Ryan has a plan to end Medicare as we know it to be replaced with a series of less-generous vouchers. The House of Representatives has voted to implement this plan. The political side of this has been written about a lot, and I am not going to rehash what has been better covered elsewhere. I do want to address what seems to be a persistent fallacy or delusion which is held to a near-religious level by many free-market conservatives: The idea that market economics can have an impact on health care costs.
  (tags: politics economics health_care policy budget deficit cost markets insurance)

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links for 2011-07-20

• What the Keynesians learned from the crisis – Ezra Klein
  “The polarization of fiscal policy is one of the worst legacies to come out of the recession,” Romer says, sighing. “Before the crisis, there was agreement that what you do when you run out of monetary tools is fiscal stimulus. Suddenly, it’s like we’re back in the 1930s.”
  (tags: keynes ezra_klein stimulus politics partisanship economics crisis policy history)

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links for 2011-07-19

• How the U.S. Surplus Became a Deficit – David Leonhardt
  The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

  You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

  (tags: david_leonhardt usa bush obama debt budget economics spending history president crisis infographic recommended)

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