For a Nobel prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman sure is retarded. How else to explain his explanation for the need for financial regulation?

Just to be clear, businessmen are human — although the lords of finance have a tendency to forget that — and they make money-losing mistakes all the time. That in itself is no reason for the government to get involved. But banks are special, because the risks they take are borne, in large part, by taxpayers and the economy as a whole. And what JPMorgan has just demonstrated is that even supposedly smart bankers must be sharply limited in the kinds of risk they’re allowed to take on.

It is true that businessmen are human. But what are regulators: angels? Unless regulators are inhumanly perfect, how can one credibly claim that they won’t make mistakes or succumb to bribery? Or spend their days masturbating to internet pornography on the taxpayer dime?

Satan's summer home

And who says that the taxpayers should be forced—by threat of government imprisonment—to bear the risks of the banksters? Bankers are, presumably, grown adults—let them bear their own risks.

Why, exactly, are banks special? Because history tells us that banking is and always has been subject to occasional destructive “panics,” which can wreak havoc with the economy as a whole. Current right-wing mythology has it that bad banking is always the result of government intervention, whether from the Federal Reserve or meddling liberals in Congress. In fact, however, Gilded Age America — a land with minimal government and no Fed — was subject to panics roughly once every six years. And some of these panics inflicted major economic losses.

I do not know why Krugman writes nonsense like this. While certain right-wing pundits might gloss over the fact that banking panics can occur on the free market—market participants are hardly perfect, after all—the observable reality of history* is that there have 39 panics, recessions, or depressions when a central bank existed in the United States. There have been eight panics or recessions during the time when a central bank did not exist in the United States; there was never a depression. Furthermore, the Great Depression occurred just twenty years after the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. So, while it’s true that panics can and have occurred during times of relative freedom,** it’s not like they’ve disappeared under the various central banking regimes. In fact, panics and recessions occur with the same frequency, although it appears that these panics and recessions last longer and are more extreme during periods of central banking than in periods of “free banking.” Or, to put it in language so simple that even a Nobel prize-winning economist can understand: central banks don’t solve the problem of baking panics, they make them worse.

So what can be done? In the 1930s, after the mother of all banking panics, we arrived at a workable solution, involving both guarantees and oversight. On one side, the scope for panic was limited via government-backed deposit insurance; on the other, banks were subject to regulations intended to keep them from abusing the privileged status they derived from deposit insurance, which is in effect a government guarantee of their debts. Most notably, banks with government-guaranteed deposits weren’t allowed to engage in the often risky speculation characteristic of investment banks like Lehman Brothers.

This system gave us half a century of relative financial stability. Eventually, however, the lessons of history were forgotten. New forms of banking without government guarantees proliferated, while both conventional and newfangled banks were allowed to take on ever-greater risks. Sure enough, we eventually suffered the 21st-century version of a Gilded Age banking panic, with terrible consequences.

This is all true enough. If the federal government is going to subsidize risk, it had better regulate it as well. However, if the federal government decides that it is no longer going to regulate risk, then it should also cease to subsidize risk as well. Contra to Krugman’s initial assumption, banking risks do not have to be borne “by taxpayers and the economy as a whole.”  Again, bankers are grown adults, and should be treated accordingly.

It’s clear, then, that we need to restore the sorts of safeguards that gave us a couple of generations without major banking panics. It’s clear, that is, to everyone except bankers and the politicians they bankroll — for now that they have been bailed out, the bankers would of course like to go back to business as usual. Did I mention that Wall Street is giving vast sums to Mitt Romney, who has promised to repeal recent financial reforms?

Again, there are alternatives to regulation. For whatever reason, Krugman’s Nobel prize-winning brain is incapable of coming up with any alternatives to regulation. Even accepting the premise that risk subsidy and regulation go hand-in-hand, there are actually two logical policy responses that can be offered: increase regulation or eliminate risk subsidy. And there’s no reason why we can’t eliminate risk subsidy. Except for pissing off the banksters and all that.

It’s no surprise that Mitt Romney is getting money from the banks in exchange for his promises to fellate deregulate them. What is surprising is how Romney’s current donor list is similar to Obama’s 2008 donor list, in that banks make up a sizeable portion of both candidates’ donations. In fact, both candidates have received similar amounts of money from banks and investing firms. This is because both candidates should properly be considered full-fledged members of the banking party. At least if we’re being honest and not partisan.

And that would be the rub, wouldn’t it Mr. Krugman?

Paul Krugman, professional partisan, part-time retard, full-time liar

* My methodology for calculating all this was simple: I went to Wikipedia’s page on the history of central banking in the United States and listed all the years that a central bank existed in the United States and compared that to Wikipedia’s page on panics, recessions, and depressions in the United States. I did have to make a couple of judgment calls, but I believe anyone can get roughly similar results.

Incidentally, there were an average of .21 banking panics per year during the existence of a central bank, compared to an average of .26 banking panics per year when a central bank did not exist. The latter does account for the five year period between the first and second central banks’ charters, which seem to skew things as there should naturally be recessions to counter balance the distortive effects that occurred during the existence of the first central bank. There are also likely some ill effects of regime uncertainty. There was an average of .23 banking panics per year during the “free banking period” of 1837-1863, which is a statistically negligible difference. It should be remembered that state governments were able to and often did charter their own banks during this period, which is hardly the mark of a free market, but I digress.

** Relative being the operative word, see footnote above.

Here’s some cosmic justice:

The amount Americans owe on student loans is far higher than earlier estimates and could lead some consumers to postpone buying homes, potentially slowing the housing recovery, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Total student debt outstanding appears to have surpassed $1 trillion late last year, said officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created in the wake of the financial crisis. That would be roughly 16% higher than an estimate earlier this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This is going to destroy retirements and those who currently own homes. You’re finished folks.

Here’s the problem — we have a demographics issue, as everyone who has paid attention knows. That is, there are fewer young people compared to old, which leads to pressures on things like Medicare and Social Security.

But the traditional path is for older people to downsize their economic lives. They sell their big house and buy a smaller one, or live in an apartment.

To sell it someone has to have money to buy it. Who is that going to be?

It’s not going to be the young adults now in college because we have screwed them by saddling them with this debt. They thus cannot qualify for a loan to buy your house!

I think what I like most about this scenario is how the Boomers get it right in the shorts as a direct result of their bad advice.  For years, Boomers told their kids and grandkids to go to college, get an education, and have a career.  They told us to do this to get ahead.

Then, out of the kindness of their hearts, the Boomers decided to subsidize higher education in the form of Pell Grants and other forms of federal age. The Boomers then thought that such subsidies weren’t enough, and so they decided to make it extremely easy to go into debt (which for the most part can’t even be discharged in bankruptcy), in part because they offered sweetheart deals to the banks that offered student loans. Then the Boomers decided to obfuscate the simple fact that college debt is burdensome, and so they tricked their own grandchildren into going into debt to essentially function as slaves when they graduate.

Unfortunately, the Boomers didn’t anticipate two things. First, Boomers failed to see decreased wages for increasing numbers of college graduates, apparently because Boomers don’t understand supply and demand. Then Boomers failed to see that students who had scores of thousands in dollars in debt while still in their mid-twenties would be in no position to buy a house.

Boomers, counting on sales of their mega-mansions as a way to enter retirement in good fiscal shape are now looking at depressed housing markets, and the consequent decrease in equity that accompanies such things, and are slowly coming to realize that they aren’t going to have the money they thought they would (and it doesn’t help that they never bothered to save money.) Boomers made their bed by encouraging their children and grandchildren to take on massive amounts of debt in the pursuit of unnecessary status symbols. This is now coming back to haunt Boomers, as the current generation is so saddled with unnecessary debt that they can’t take Boomers’ houses of their hands unless the house prices tank, thus depriving Boomers of a good portion of their retirement equity.

It looks like karma is still a bitch.

The fuel of a million rationalization hamsters

From Feministing:

I understand that Western society needs to understand that the average woman is a size 16, not between a size 4 and 12, and it is absolutely absurd that the fashion industry continues to dismiss the majority of women by employing “plus-size” models that are, in actuality, smaller than the average woman, and relegating women’s clothing over a size 12 to specialty “plus-size” stores, meaning that most women cannot shop in “regular” stores. And that is absolute bullshit.

Here’s where the problem in the argument starts: using clothing sizes instead of BMI. While the BMI calculations are far from perfect, they are a better proxy than clothing size to describe a woman’s general fitness. BMI is absolute and objectively defined (though it is itself a subjective metric). Clothing size, however, is variable, subjectively defined, and is also a subjective metric. The actual fit of, say, a size 14 pair of jeans will vary from brand to brand. As such, trying to make a comparative argument based on an inherently shifty definition is either stupid, ignorant, or dishonest.

However, other parts of the message promoted by this image are EXTREMELY problematic. First of all, it kind of seems to be promoting the idea to women that it’s okay to be a little bit bigger than your “ideal” size because men are okay with it. I’m sorry, did I miss the meeting where we decided that men get a say in how women feel about their bodies? ‘Cause I’m not on board. My confidence in my body will NOT depend on whether on [sic] not the majority of dudes think I’m fuckable. [Ed.—Because she’s a lesbian.]

If women want to allow third parties (men or women) to determine their attractiveness, what is that to anyone else? One can allow my as much of one’s happiness and self-image to be externally derived as one so desire. Since there is some variance in the definition of attraction, this chart is actually providing a good service by providing examples of what various parties find attractive. Thus, depending on who women want to impress, they can easily select an appropriate model. Anyhow, it matters not that the author of this putrid fat-shaming shaming does not share in other women’s desire to allow other men to decide their attractiveness, because once you decide to attract someone you will by definition attempt to conform to their standards of attractiveness.

Second, putting aside the  dress sizes of these women for a moment, all three of these women fit conventional Western beauty norms. Long hair (windblown, too!), clear skin, no body hair, no cellulite, no wrinkles…and it appears as if all of their breast-waist-hip ratios fit the so-called ideal. Note that on the size 16 model, her waist is noticeably narrower than her hips, and her breasts stick out much more than her stomach. As one Facebook commenter astutely pointed out: “I actually think they’re all beautiful – and I don’t think that EVERYONE’s beautiful.” My point exactly.

I’m don’t know enough about larger women’s sizes, so I’m not actually sure that the rightmost model is actually a size 16. She does appear to be pushing the edge of a healthy BMI (for women, the healthy range is basically 19-26). I would guess that her BMI is between 26 and 28, which is the beginning of unhealthy territory.

Anyhow, one can still be on the heavier side and still have an ideal hips-to-waist ration, clear skin, long hair, etc. and still be relatively beautiful. But if one is heavy but has all the other general marks of beauty, her sex rank would improve if she lost weight.

But yes, the more general point that even the models are too beautiful to be average is correct. And it also indicates the logical conclusion of feminism’s attempt at fat norming: ugliness norming. If you want to say that it’s acceptable to be overweight and that everyone should love you and your triple chin, then you have to take that argument to its logical conclusion and say that everyone should love you and your buckteeth, hairy warts, small asymmetric breasts, etc. Really then, society’s buttress against fat-norming is crucial because it is the first line of defense against the normalization of ugliness.

This leads me to my third point: the largest woman in this picture is only the (American, I’m assuming) NATIONAL AVERAGE. Which means that a large percentage of the population is bigger than the woman on the right. What about those women? They’re not “ideal” nor “average” and therefore they are left out of the conversation? There are beautiful size 18, size 20, size 24 and beyond women. But we cannot talk about that because then we’d be forced to admit that women CAN be beautiful AND fat. Because, guess what–some women ARE fat. And that’s fine. And that’s beautiful. But this photo, like most of our conversations about body image and body acceptance, refuses to go there. And that’s a problem.

What’s overlooked in this debate is the social benefits of fat-shaming. Now that the US has universal health care, and given that fatties tend to have more health problems and higher health costs, it behooves society as a whole to shame the fatties for being overweight because if society fails to do this, healthcare will eat more and more of the federal budget and impose increasing costs on the taxpayers. Given that health care is now a national issue, and given that a sizeable portion of aggregate health costs come from the overweight, fat shaming is no longer the patriarchy’s way of keeping women down; it’s now every American’s patriotic duty. And if fat shaming happens to increase aggregate beauty, then that’s just a bonus.

My fourth and final point is that while this photo does open up the discussion around “average”/”plus-size” women’s beauty, it also opens up a space to critique the bodies of women who fall into the size-8-and-below category. One commenter explicitly said, “I would NOT want to look like the chick on the left.” That’s totally fine–I don’t want to look like someone that’s not me either–but the implication is that she looks sickly, she’s unattractive, she’s anorexic, she’s not a “real” woman because “real women have curves” or whatever. I am not trying to suggest here that the positive body image movement (or whatever you want to call it) is like “reverse fat shaming” or anything ridiculous like that.

With a few minor exceptions, the only people who shame skinny women are (wait for it…) women who do not happen to be skinny. While anorexic women do not tend to be absolutely attractive,* they are certainly preferable to land whales. Also, note that skinny-shaming is something generally undertaken by the matriarchy.

Anyway, this photo should NOT be used as an excuse to tell any woman that she is not real or that her body is somehow offending those attempting to cultivate positive body image. A woman’s confidence in her own body should not come about comparatively–whether it’s comparing her body to the national average, to what men deem fuckable, or to what other women’s bodies look like. And keep in mind what I said earlier–all of the women in this photo fit OTHER standards of beauty. The woman on the left is conventionally attractive in ways that other skinny/thin women are not. Also, she is quite tall, so she is much thinner than most women who fit into the size 4 to 8 category (I doubt this was an accident–the taller she is, the skinnier and more “sickly” a size 4 to 8 looks). Not that I am suggesting that this is a problem–she is beautiful. The message is not.

And here’s how you can tell that this attempt at fat- and ugly-norming is nothing more than an exercise session for an underworked rationalization hamster: the concluding paragraph concludes by contradicting the entire post.

First note, however that some standard of beauty has to be met. The standard can be set by men, by other women, or by oneself. The standard can be comprised of weight, hair length, hair color, eye color, skin color, hip-to-waist ratio, and so on, or the standard can be that beauty doesn’t matter. No matter what the decision is, no matter who the judge is, there will be some form of judgment about one’s beauty. The only question is: who will be the judge and what is the standard? There will be some answer, even if the answer is “me and none.”

Getting back to the assertion that the writer of the quoted article contradicts herself, note the penultimate sentence: “Not that I am suggesting that this is a problem–she is beautiful” (emphasis added). To paraphrase an expert on the subject, I’m sorry, did I miss the meeting where we decided that a lesbian feminist gets a say in how women feel about their bodies? ‘Cause I’m not on board. Women’s confidence in their bodies will NOT depend on whether or not some feminist lesbian thinks they’re beautiful.

Ultimately, the lesson to be taken from this feminist lesbian is that even the most hardcore feminists judge women’s looks and beauty. Sometimes even when condemning others for doing that very thing.

* Note: for this article, it is assumed that a) beauty is subjective, b) relative, and c) correlates with markers of health and fitness.

Here’s a perfect example:

This would seem to jibe with popular laments about why Apple can’t make its products domestically. There are a lot of reasons, but a significant one is the lack of necessary skills for higher-end manufacturing. This is in no small part because American students shy away from the training necessary to do these kind of jobs even if they originally think they want to be engineers. Why? Because American college students don’t like doing homework.

So, America is doomed, right?

To be honest, this sounds like a lot of pious baloney. As Michael Beckley points out in a new article in International Security, “The United States is not in decline; in fact, it is now wealthier, more innovative, and more militarily powerful compared to China than it was in 1991.”

Yep, and the Roman Empire saw continuous growth right up until it declined. A trend line is not a guarantee of future performance, as anyone with half a brain knows. Yet this clown somehow thinks that this particular trend line will continue on its path. The best way to predict the economic future is to look at fundamentals of the economy (e.g. legal system, regulatory system, tax policy, etc.) and see what effect the current policies and practices will have on the future. Of course, this is significantly more difficult than identifying a trend line and extrapolating (probably because fundamental analysis requires thinking whereas trend analysis requires Excel and rudimentary data entry skills, which many trained monkeys are capable of performing), which is why most mainstream economists never bother with it.

1) The United States is successfully deleveraging. As the McKinsey Global Institute notes, the United States is actually doing a relatively good job of slimming down total debt — i.e., consumer, investor and public debt combined. Sure, public debt has exploded, but as MGI points out, that really is the proper way of doing things after a financial bubble.

Sweet Maynard but these modern Keynesians are completely unfamiliar with Keynesian theory. The rule is that government raises taxes and saves money during the boom years and then lowers taxes and spends (from its savings) during the busts. But, and this is important to note, the two go hand in hand. If the federal government doesn’t raise taxes and save during the boom period (which it most certainly did not), then there is no point in increasing federal spending, particularly if it requires debt. As a side note, Keynes’ theory did not inherently rely on debt for economic smoothing, although it was certainly not opposed to it. As such, any policy that relies on increasing debt is going to fail in the long run.

2) Manufacturing is on the mend. Another positive trend, contra the Harvard Business School and the GOP presidential candidates, is in manufacturing. Some analysts have already predicted a revival in that sector, and now the data appears to be backing up that prediction.

While this is certainly a positive trend, it is actually evidence that the negative consequences of free trade have come to fruition. The current free trade setup, wherein domestic businesses are severely hamstrung by the federal government while foreign businesses are allowed to trade freely even if they aren’t similarly hamstrung, has effectively subsidized foreign businesses at the direct expense of domestic businesses. As such, foreign businesses have increased their productivity, thereby increasing their prices (since demand for highly productive labor tends to be high). As the prices of foreign labor increased while the prices of American labor remained stagnant, businesses began to domesticize production once again. Thus, the recent increase in domestic production is simply proof that the federally mandated transfers of wealth from domestic producers to foreign producers is complete.

3) A predicted decline in energy insecurity. British Petroleum has issued their Energy Outlook for 2030. The Guardian’s Richard Wachman provides a useful summary:

Growth in shale oil and gas supplies will make the US virtually self-sufficient in energy by 2030, according to a BP report published on Wednesday.

This is simply another iteration of stupid extrapolation. What’s to say that the rapidly growing cult of environmentalism won’t start demanding legislation that tamps down on the production of shale oil on the grounds that Mother Earth is too fragile to handle a good, hard fracking? Again, any idiot can use a spreadsheet application to make a pretty trend line. But trends do not prove or guarantee anything. The more relevant question is that of incentives: does the current incentive structure encourage the continuation of this trend? What is the likelihood that the current incentive structure will change? This guy is obviously unfamiliar with environmentalists, else he would know better than to predict that the US will manage to have access to more domestic oil in the future.

At any rate, this article is pretty representative of the problems plaguing mainstream economic analysis. There’s a lot of happy talk based on short-sighted extrapolation coupled with a healthy dose of very shallow analysis that often neglects to account for a host of relevant variables. Really, this isn’t economic analysis; it’s economic propaganda.

If this list is any indication, no they’re not:

Look – in the era of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Schaal, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Lisa Lampanelli, Amy Schumer, Samantha Bee, Whitney Cummings, Melissa McCarthy, Anna Faris, Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler – are we really still having this stupid discussion? As this list shows – and this is, of course, just a random and minor sampling – not only are there lots of funny women around, but they’re being funny in many different ways. There are funny, traditional stand-ups that some might think hacky; funny out-there comics, no doubt referred to in some circles as “alternative,” whom others find just weird; funny actresses, improv performers and showrunners; funny-smart and funny-too-reliant-on-stereotypes; funny clean and funny filthy. Pick a genre, and you’re sure to find funny women there. Treat yourself to a show at any number of venues from coast to coast such as UCB, Largo, The Pit, etc., and you’re sure to see funny women you’re never heard of before, possibly being funny in ways you’re never seen before.

The problem with Getlen’s argument is that his evidence doesn’t match his assertions. Saying that Tina Fey is an inherently funny person is not the same as saying she performs well on a sitcom. Saying that Kirsten Wiig is an inherently funny woman is not the same as saying she’s good at improv. And saying that Whitney Cummings is inherently funny is not the same as saying she is currently starring in a sitcom and producing another.

Starring on a sitcom is proof that I'm actually funny, and not just using my looks to further my career!

The best test of one’s inherent comedic abilities is standup. You don’t have writers, second takes, or a supporting cast to cover your failures and weakness. Standup, then, is perfect for seeing which people can be funny by themselves. By this metric, none of these women are funny. In fact, Lisa Lampanelli, Sarah Silverman, and Whitney Cummings are dreadfully unfunny.

That’s not to say that none of these women contribute to the greater world of comedy. For example, Tina Fey is a generally humorous writer (Bossypants had its humorous points), and she had her moments on SNL. But her role as Liz Lemon on 30 Rock is a traditional straight man character. She is not funny in this role, but again, that’s the point (and, for what it’s worth, Judah Friedlander, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan are all pretty hilarious).

In contrast, Jane Krakowski (who plays Jenna on 30 Rock) is pretty funny. She absolutely nails the character of an astonishingly narcissistic C-list celeb who completely lacks self-awareness. Of course, it’s hard to tell how much of her character’s comedy is due to her ability as an actress and comedienne and how much is due to writing.

Amy Poehler is similar to Tina Fey. She isn’t particularly funny, but can act well enough to embody a generally funny character. Her role as Leslie Knope (on Parks and Recreation) is pretty funny, but it’s obvious from watching season one that writing plays a larger role in Poehler’s funniness than her inherent comedic chops.

Maya Rudolph tends to overact, much like David Cross and Bob Odenkirk in the first two seasons of Mr. Show. This isn’t generally problematic in sketch comedy and improve, but it is distracting on a proper sitcom (Up All Night) or a movie (Idiocracy). A good portion of her comedic abilities comes from her writers, not herself.

Look at how shocking this is! Aren't I funny?

As for the rest of the women on the list, I can’t say that I find any of them funny in way. Silverman is shtickish, and relies too much on shock and not enough on actual wit; also, she can’t act. Lisa Lampanelli, Kathy Griffin, and Chelsea Handler are all basically the same to me: they try to pass shock off as wit; I’ve never seen them in anything funny. I’ve never seen Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy, or Anna Faris, so I can’t speak to their comedic abilities. As for Samantha Bee, I’ve only ever seen her on The Daily Show, and it’s obvious that the show’s writing props her up. She is radically inferior to Wyatt Cenac, Jason Jones, and John Oliver.

Of course, it is necessary to point out that comedy and humor are subjectively valued. But even with that, it seems apparent that most women just aren’t considered funny, especially when judged on the funniness of their standup. And most of these women’s current success is built upon the work of others.

Ferdinand decided to attend an OWS event in Syracuse, leading to a very excellent piece that has lots of great insight. For this post, I’m going to focus on his observation regarding the OWSer generation:

This is why #OccupyWallStreet is necessary – it’s the first major backlash against every scam the Gray Mafia have pulled in the past fifty years. An inarticulate and idiotic backlash, but a backlash nonetheless. It’s the Baby Boomers’ chickens come home to roost. After lying, cheating and stealing their way through life, they thought they could sit back and expect their children to selflessly sacrifice for them like nothing had changed. It doesn’t work that way, gramps. Bad faith begets bad faith, and people who’ve been wronged have long memories. [Emphasis added.]

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but it is interesting to observe how ill-equipped the #OWSer generation is to overthrow the Boomers. Frankly, most of the people in my generation are idiots, mostly incapable of prolonged rational abstract thought.  The socialist tendency of #OWS emphasizes how ill-equipped my generation is for fixing the mess our parents and grandparents left for us.

What’s ironic is that socialism is now inevitable in the United States. And not the fun social safety net bullshit of the past fifty years, either. The socialism that’s to come will be of the concentration camp variety. But, and here’s what is especially diabolical of the Boomers, the iron-fist socialism that’s to come will not arrive until the Boomer generation is safely in the grave.

Fifty years from now, when historians sit down to write the decline and fall of America, they will marvel at how brilliantly the Boomer generation played America. When they were young, they smoked pot, dodged the draft, and went to college on the cheap. They fought for social justice and equality, sowing the seeds of cultural dissension via minority group rights activism.  When they got older, they banned pot and other drugs, kept the Selective Service in place, and implemented policies that jacked the cost of college through the roof. They protested the mega-corporations during the sixties and seventies, and then bought those same organizations in the eighties. They protested government corruption when they were twenty, and then turned around and corrupted the government in ways that few can fathom, even in this day and age, when they turned forty. Everything they condemned in their youth they now do on scale that would turn the collective stomachs of the generations before them. The Boomers avoided responsibility in their youth and are looking to do the same in their old age.

To that end, the Boomers set up social safety nets that wouldn’t go bankrupt until they were in the grave. They consolidated their political power to ensure that the government would steal from future generations until the last of the Boomers could enjoy the final sleep. And by dismantling education, they ensured that their children and grandchildren wouldn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. And when they eventually woke up to the fraud being perpetuated by the Boomers, they wouldn’t know how to address it.

Now, I’m not suggesting that a bunch of Boomers sat down one day and discussed the best way to keep future generations ignorant of their evil plans. From what I’ve observed, the dumbing down of education is mostly a result of the self-esteem movement which, by pure coincidence, was started by the Boomers. Therefore, I think the most likely explanation for this is that evil thinking begets evil thinking.

The Boomers rebelled against all sorts of traditions, and the traditions present in education and child-rearing were no exception. Instead of encouraging self-esteem the old way (only praising children when they met some high standards, e.g.), they dumbed down the standards for praise. Instead of trophies for winners, they offered trophies for participants. Instead of rewards for As, they handed out rewards for attendance or not dropping out. They celebrated the mundane, making normal the exception and substandard the norm. This wasn’t a hidden conspiracy, accomplished by back-room wheeling and dealing, this was the natural by-product of their thinking. Boomers have always been narcissistic and self-centered, and they want their children and grandchildren share in this vice. Sadly, they do.

The children and grandchildren of Boomers are the messiahs they’ve been waiting for. They’re exceptional, brilliant, and every other positive superlative you can toss their way. The problem is that some of them still need to consult a diagram when tying their shoes. The praise and adulation heaped upon the current generation by the Boomers, coupled with dumbed-down standards to ensure that rhetoric matched nominal reality, has ensured the current generation is unable to clean up the mess they caused. Don’t expect the Boomers to complain, though. Why? Because cleaning up their mess almost certainly requires the elimination of the world’s most selfish generation: the Baby Boomers.

The dual purpose of the Boomers’ existence has been self-preservation and self-enrichment. Everything they’ve done fits one of those two goals. They don’t care about a legacy, because if they did, they would have raised their children instead of shipping them off to daycares and prisons schools indoctrination camps. They don’t care what happens to their children; many don’t plan on leaving an inheritance, physical, spiritual, or otherwise. They simply want to take as much of this world’s wealth and lavish it on themselves. They desire opulence on a grand scale, and they don’t care who they destroy to get.  They’ll sell their grandchildren, if necessary. Actually, they already have.

And so, here is the legacy of the Boomers: They have gained the whole world but lost their soul. They have it all, and have mortgaged everything to get it. They will leave this world in tatters and their children with nothing.

Cross-posted at Le Cygne Gris.

Since the budgetary debate has been going on for some time with plenty of poLIEticians making lots of promises and lying through their teeth reporting on the ramifications of hitting the debt ceiling, I thought it appropriate to bring a healthy dose of economic reality to the debate.

In the first place, it is helpful to know that this year’s federal budget is projected to be $3.85 trillion, funded by $2.17 trillion in revenue and $1.68 trillion in debt.  The $1.68 trillion figure is also known as the deficit. It is also good to know that the current interest paid, as of fiscal year 2011, is less than $400 billion, and the remaining interest payments are projected to be less than $200 billion for the calendar year.  These are facts which, when coupled with basic mathematics and simple logic can enable anyone who has completed the fourth grade to understand the current economic situation of the United States Federal Government.

Now, many charlatans politicians have claimed that a failure to raise the debt ceiling will lead to default.  Recall that projected revenues for fiscal year 2011 are $2.17 trillion, and that interest payments on the debt are projected to be well below $600 billion on the year. If you have completed the fourth grade, you should be able to tell that $600 billion is less than $2.17 trillion. This means that it is quite possible to pay the interest due on the current federal debt, and have plenty of money left over afterwards. In fact, there will be at least $1.57 trillion left over for the government to spend.

Pay attention to the yellow portion labeled "Pensions" Source:

(Source of the above graphic.)

Additionally, some have notoriously claimed that there is no guarantee that Social Security checks will be sent out as planned if the debt ceiling is raised. While it is hard to tell how serious this claim is in relation to the federal government’s actual cash flow, it is easy to see that this should not be a budgetary concern. For fiscal year 2011, Social Security spending is around 21% percent of the budget, which equates to a little over $800 billion. This figure is quite affordable, even after paying interest on the debt, and does not require taking on more debt, at least in the long term.

Furthermore, this tactic of holding older citizens hostage is not only generally distasteful, deeply unethical, and unbecoming of a democratically elected leader, it also appears to be illegal. Social Security is funded by earmarked payroll taxes, and politicians have promised since its inception that all funds collected were earmarked for a specific purpose. The government is obliged, then, to pay what it has specifically promised because Social Security is an obligation.

Therefore, it should be clear that the politicians who have promised the economic equivalent of the apocalypse are either liars, ignorant, or innumerate.

In addition, the current proposal for addressing federal budget concerns is laughably stupid. The current proposal of increasing the debt ceiling by up to $2.4 trillion in exchange for matching budget cuts does nothing to actually fix the systemic problem facing the federal government.

For starters, the budget cuts are not, for the most part, actual cuts. Instead, they are decreases in the rate of growth. If, hypothetically speaking, spending were to increase from $3.85 trillion to $4.1 trillion, politicians would call that a cut if the budget were originally projected to grow to $4.3 trillion.

Additionally, the current debt is unsustainable. The ratio of federal debt to GDP, as it stands now, is just over 1. But once one accounts for the problems of GDP*, the ratio is even higher. This means that if the federal government were to confiscate all national product over the course of the year, it would not have enough money to pay the debt it currently owed. The federal government is leveraged to the hilt.

Furthermore, the government has trillions of more dollars in liabilities. The government must pay Social Security as promised. It is also the guarantor of all personal bank deposits (hence the FDIC and NCUA). And there are more liabilities besides, all of which total to tens of trillions, if not hundreds of trillions in liabilities. There is simply no way to pay for this.

As such, the federal government must do three things to fix the mess it’s currently in.

First, the government must reduce its liabilities. This means eliminating a large number of federal bureaucracies including, but no limited to the Social Security Administration, the National Credit Union Administration, and the FDIC.  These agencies were created by fiat** and can be eliminated in the same manner. This is, in a sense, a form of default. But this is unavoidable. The promises politicians made about these organizations were false, and there was no way they ever could have been true. The American people are idiots for believing that the federal government could guarantee income for everyone in old age, or that it could guarantee everyone’s bank deposits.

Second, the federal government must actually cut spending to be at or below revenue levels. The federal government can no longer afford to live beyond its means. Borrowing is expensive, and as the federal government’s future becomes more uncertain, the cost of borrowing will go up. And if revenue declines while America’s macroeconomic growth stagnates, the amount the federal government needs to borrow will simply increase. Eventually, if left unchecked, servicing the debt will cost more than is collected in taxes, and the federal government will either to default or hyper-inflate the currency to pay it off. When that happens, the federal government is done.

Finally, the government must also eliminate the debt. This means that the federal government must not only stop issuing new debt, but should also buy back the existing debt and retire it. Debt is toxic, and must be eliminated, pure and simple.

In closing, let me address those who recommend tax hikes as a possible solution. The simple fact of the matter is that the federal government has almost never been able to collect more than 20% of GDP in taxes, regardless of rate. Raising taxes changes the market, but only because people wish to avoid paying taxes. The only things raising taxes accomplishes is increasing people’s incentive to avoid taxes and thereby changing the way they acquire and spend their money.

Take a good look at the teal line.

* GDP includes government spending, approximately thirty-five percent of which is fueled by debt. GDP also assumes that government spending is as efficient as market spending. Thus, real GDP is likely around $12 trillion instead of the reported $14 trillion, which makes the debt-to-GDP ratio around 1.17.

** These agencies are also unconstitutional to boot.

(Source of the graphic to the right.)

Allow me to riff on something FB said a few days ago:

The second is that drug abuse is a symptom of our society’s dysfunction, not a cause. While there will always be a minority of addicts in any population, widespread substance abuse is due to the fact that reality for most people is so awful that they’d rather construct their own artificial realities with the aid of illicit substances. Spare me the lectures about how our quality of life is higher than our parents’ generation – the truth is that most people are aimless, lost and unsatisfied with their lives. For a populace with no purpose for living, no hope for having good friends or a meaningful job or a significant other to love, any reality is better than the one they’re condemned to. Basically, those who become addicted to alcohol, or marijuana, or heroin are addicted for the same reasons that people get addicted to Facebook, or World of Warcraft, or playing Angry Birds on their iPhones – reality avoidance.

I believe it was Marx who observed that religion was the opiate of the masses. If I recall correctly, this wasn’t intended as a pejorative, but rather as an observation that religion existed as a coping mechanism.

Of course, religion wasn’t good enough for the enlightened progressives that wished to mold a new society. It was just too mystical, too simple, and overly populated with “those people.” It needed to be scrapped and replaced with something more rational, something more serious and enlightened. Everyone now needed to conform to elitist values.*

Of course, elitist values don’t change the fact that some people’s lives suck, and so there will always be those who need some sort of opiate in order to function on a daily basis. The difference between now and, say, a century ago is that people were more inclined to turn to God instead of narcotics. Whether this is good or bad will be evident fairly soon.**

Thus, the fatal conceit of progressive elitists is that they failed to see that people wouldn’t trade religion for elitist values. Instead, they traded religion for drugs. And now they want to ban drugs as well, as if this will magically convince people to buy into rationalism. History suggests that people will simply find another opiate to dull the pain of their lives. Maybe next time the opiate of the masses will be more productive than narcotics.

* Elitists are total idiots in that they seem incapable of recognizing how ludicrous it is to try to make everyone embrace elitist values. In order for something to actually be elitist, it cannot, by definition, be embraced by a large number of people. Incidentally, this is why elitist social goals are always in a state of flux. They have to keep redefining the curve in order to stay ahead of it.

** Hint: it’s going to be really, really bad.

Originally published at Le Cygne Gris on May 5, 2011.

Last week, I posted on how MRAs had become a bunch of whiners and complainers. In an effort to prove me wrong, MRAs took to the comments en masse to whine and complain about how I was being cruel, unfair, naive, and an all-around sh*thead. Being the kind and magnanimous guy that I am, though, I thought I would take a moment to help those unfortunate victims of society by offering a road map to success. (Warning:  I’m a sucker for acronyms.)

Whatever Happened to Alcoholism?

Before I do that, though, I think it best to clarify why MRAs need to stop whining on the Internet: it’s unseemly and counterproductive.

There’s a reason why “complaining” is also called “bitching.” It’s because that’s what women do. It’s their national pastime, as it were. Complaining is not a pastime for men. Men that feel compelled to complain about their problems will rightly be labeled as women (and other considerably less polite synonyms). So, men, when it comes to complaining, don’t. Just don’t do it. Don’t even think about doing it. What are you, a woman?

Additionally, no one wants to be part of a movement full of sad-sack whiners. It doesn’t matter if the complaints are legitimate – no one wants to be a part of group that spends a significant portion of the time complaining about things that they either can’t fix or have no apparent inclination to fix.

People want to be part of a movement that they believe is going to bring a measurable improvement to the world in which they live. People generally don’t like to be part of a therapy group, especially when participants aren’t serious about addressing their own flaws. And yes, MRAs, this means you need to embrace Game, get in shape, and do something productive with your life. You don’t have to marry or otherwise live in the service of women (as disposable ATMs, e.g.) but you have got to do something other than play videos games and watch porn. You can’t withdraw from society and expect it to change in your favor. It’s the people who show up that set the agenda.

The RoadMAP

That said, it’s time to discuss the future of the movement. The way I see it, there are three necessary components to every revolution, which is what the MRM needs to be. You have Missionaries, Activists, and Philosophers. Each one has a specific role, and each is necessary for effecting change.

Missionaries

The new missionary position

The function of missionaries can easily be guessed by their name. Quite simply, their role is to tell others about, in this case, the harsh realities of the legal system and society at large. This may be accomplished on the Internet, although this tends to turn into a preacher speaking to the choir scenario (not always, obviously, but often). It would be better if missionaries, then, focused on real life people such as family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. You don’t have to be stupid about this; we’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses, after all. But telling actual humans instead of pseudonymous screen names will be more effective than venting all that pent-up anger at the screen.

There are two benefits to this. First, people who may not actively seek out this subject will be exposed to it and may join in the movement. Second, this will create a sense of solidarity that is much stronger than anything which can be found online. It’s easier to act when your brother and your neighbor two doors down and your coworker the next cubicle over are right there next to you.

(Note: at this point, there is very little to add to the online commentary about how the legal system screws over men. The abuses have been well-documented, to the point where any honest person would be convinced of the problem. As such, there is very little to add to the existing online commentary, especially since doing so has, of late, the tendency to devolve into the most vituperative sort of complaining.)

Activists

Yet another thing whitey can borrow from a brother

There also needs to be an organized political component to this movement. The role of activists, then, is to basically mount public political campaigns. This may mean forming a PAC, showing up at town hall meetings to voice your opinion, or even running on a pro-man platform. Preaching to the choir in a dusty corner of the internet is not enough to change the debate. There must be a public discussion that cannot be escaped (this means that MRAs need to control the frame).

Imagine if CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC devoted significant airtime to MRA talking points. Imagine if people everywhere were talking about Men’s Issues.  That’s the goal of activists: to change the debate and make sure everyone is engaged in it. Make it a wedge issue. Make it a question in the presidential debates. Make it the central issue of every election, every town hall meeting, every fundraiser. Make it inescapable.

Philosophers

Every movement needs a guiding force, which is the role of philosophers. The movement needs men who are concerned about the greater principles of the movement, who answer the big questions:

The real Elusive Wapiti?

What is good for men? What is good for women? What is good for children? What is good for society? What values do we want to promote? How should we go about promoting those values? These questions barely scratch the surface.

Philosophers are the ones who set the tone for the movement. They need to be concerned with the principles, morals, and ethics of the movement. They need to be concerned with how the movement should behave, with which changes must be made and in what order, and with how to bring about and maintain the necessary improvements to society at large.

(For what it’s worth, I believe Elusive Wapiti to be the perfect example of a philosopher, for he has written about changes that should be made to the legal system, to society, and other related things. Of course, there’s room for more than one philosopher.)

Where to Go

I don’t know if there’s any hope of changing the system. It may be that society is irreparably damaged, and there is nothing that can be done to fix it. I don’t know if my plan will work.

What I do know, however, is that you either need to accept reality or you need to change it. Don’t sit in the middle and complain about it, because that doesn’t accomplish anything. We’re living by new rules now. If you want to win, you must either adapt or change the game. The choice is yours.

I’m not an MRA (Men’s Rights Activist), nor am I part of the MRM (Men’s Right Movement). I do think that MRAs do have some valid complaints, and I also think that their opposition to feminism is laudable, but I simply cannot bring myself to associate with such a large group of embittered betas.

Seriously, these guys are a bunch of sad sack whiners, and I want no part of it. It is far too common to hear these men complain about being asset-stripped in a divorce, about being prevented from having even partial custody of their children, and about all sorts of legal and social ills forced upon them. I do not deny the validity of their complaints, but do they always have to be so whiny?

Everything they say* is always about forces outside their control, about how “the system” or “she” ruined everything for them. And you know what? This is starting to get real old, real fast.

Yes, the system sucks. But who doesn’t know this already? We’ve seen default custody switch from men to women a long time ago.  Alimony has been around for decades. And it’s not like marital law is hidden from public record. So why do why do MRMs complain about how they’re still losing when the game changed a long time ago? At this point, the fault lies primarily with the men who failed to adapt.

And yes, beta male providers are treated like disposable wallets. Guess what? They are. They allow themselves to be treated that way. Somehow, they got the silly notion in their head that women are attracted to quiet, introverted provider males and will never cheat on them because money can buy loyalty. Oh, society, women, your parents, and the church all told you that’s what women want? And what did your eyes tell you? Who did you see the hot girls going off with? The quiet beta provider? Or the alpha bad boy? Who are you going to believe, society or you own lying eyes? You picked society, and got shafted. And that result was easily predicted.

And guess what else? You bear a good portion of the blame in your divorce. Do you think that getting married doesn’t mean you have to try anymore? Does it mean you don’t have to tease your wife, flirt with your wife, or take her out on dates anymore? Marriage may mean that you don’t have to charm multiple women anymore, but it doesn’t stand to reason that you don’t have to charm any women at all. (For starters, it’s a very good idea to charm your wife.) But beyond that, it is incredibly naïve to think that paying the bills is enough to ensure attraction. Your wife didn’t marry an ATM, she married a man. She married someone she was once attracted to. Did you think that marriage meant you didn’t have to try anymore?

And so you settled into a boring routine, ignoring her deeper needs, thinking that if you just paid the bills, she would still be in love with you. And you were wrong. Marriage doesn’t mean you stop trying, it means you focus your effort on one person, and you failed to do that, so her attraction to you turned into disgust, and she divorced you. Now you want to cry about how unfair her behavior is.

The problem that MRAs have is that they don’t claim power for themselves. They can only do so much (read: earn a paycheck) and everything that happens after that is out of their control. Look at the words they use: “the legal system screwed me over”… “my wife ruined me” … “the fem-marxist judge had it out for me because I was a man” … and so on. They should have simply stepped up from the beginning and said: This is my life, and I’m in control of my destiny! This may not be true, at least at the start, but it generally becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, they relinquished control of their lives to women, to the state, and then acted like the loser betas they were and hoped for mercy. They ceded control and got screwed as a result. They got what they deserved.

And like I said before, I’m tired of hearing them complain. The game changed, but you still played by the old rules. Did you seriously expect to win? You ceded control of your life to others and got taken advantage of. How could you reasonably expect different? You made some incredibly foolish mistakes, which had consequences, and now you want to complain about it.

Some argue for reform, some argue for revenge, some argue for dropping out. Why not simply focus on self-improvement instead? In the end, the only thing you can really control is yourself. So be a man and take charge of your own destiny.

And while you’re at it, quit annoying me with your whining.

* Allow me some hyperbole.

Originally published at Le Cygne Gris on April 15, 2011.