prole

Like I said - it's an interesting speculation and if the entire population of the state were vaporized by a magical wizard and replaced with clones bred in the Cato institute's basement - then perhaps the political consensus you are dreading would emerge here in Washington. Been there, done that!

Poppycock! Where would you possibly get such a notion? Conservatives are only concerned with providing deadbeats with the most necessary services as efficiently as possible.

So the social services you say are being massively cut are still being staffed and compensated at the same rate? How does that work?

My statement above isn't an argument, it's an observation that an argument that the continuation or expansion of social services is a given, if we could just cut government workers' jobs, pay, and benefits, is a fallacy. Doubly more so coming from people who've a reputation for wanting such services cut. I know there's room for reform in pay and benefits but I'm not under any illusion that it would lead to better or more delivery of social services in the current political climate. More likely, just more calls for dumbass taxcuts.

There is no reason to think that layoffs and wage and benefit cuts would necessarily lead to the continuation, much less the expansion, of social services. This is particularly so since the most vocal advocates for busting public sector unions are also opposed to the public provision of social services. At least Fairweather has the intellectual honesty not to go here.

Stocking stuffers for the little ones... [video:youtube]

Don't get me wrong, the shit is hitting the fan big time. But the crisis is not limited to the current fiscal constraints on states and municipalities. As the original Mish piece makes clear (not that there aren't problems with it) the crisis is global and systemic. Any argument that doesn't address this fact doesn't pass a sniff test any more than Peter and Jay's newfound concern for food stamps and healthcare. At the risk of "getting all meta", ferry ticket takers and Metro bus drivers are only indicative of a larger questions that's facing the post-industrial world as a whole about what the hell we're going to do with all our people and what kind of society do we want to live in. There have developed serious contradictions between achieving maximum utility and efficiency in the economic realm and meeting the demands people have for living with a modicum of security, compensation, and hope for their future. Whether those people work for the government or not is irrelevant. Some appeal to the "private sector" as a model for how things should be run but one only need look at how the American worker has actually fared there to see that it's failing dramatically to meet those criteria. Is $16-$20 an hour unreasonable in this day and age? How is making more people redundant or reducing their purchasing power in the context of (permanent?) structural unemployment going to improve the outlook? How is is it likely to rebound on the political landscape? In the current anti-tax climate, is there really likely to be an improvement in service delivery (or god forbid an increase) corresponding to government worker layoffs and wage and benefit reductions? We certainly know there will be a corresponding increase in demand for those services in the event.

No successfully industrialized nation-state in the history of global capitalism has achieved its status without industrial policies that include elements of protectionism. None.

Why would that money necessarily flow to those programs when it could mean another tax-cut for the Eloi?

Because being a ticket taker and being able to put a kid through college or buy a house is unacceptable!! Permanent underclass now!

And why not? Tacoma, like working Americans, has been absolutely basking in the prosperity created by the boom. Time to give it back folks.

Is there really anything we need to know? [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oKtS0VVE38

More pious orthodoxy. In practice, capitalist competition trends naturally towards monopoly. Allowing monopolies to develop, deregulating, etc. in the real world firm in the notion that things will simply shake out in theory smacks of a kind of messianic faith.

That didn't come out right, but I don't care!

Getting rid of Rob Johnson is like finding a cure for herpes. Yay!

Quoting a thought bubble of yours from 1989? Exactly. Slovoj Zizek recounts how uncannily the "we didn't go far enough" narrative that free-marketeers employ today mirrors that of the Stalinists of old. Hilarious.

Ironically, the only reason why free market ideology hasn't been swept out of the "marketplace of ideas" in the wake of the global crisis it spawned is that its think tanks are subsidized by Big Capital! LOLZ!

The op-ed and think tank free marketeers love to position themselves as maverick outsiders by dint of their "let it burn" policy positions and the purity of their assumptions. Outside of these airless environments the real impact of these ideas is to provide ideological cover for the very activities you describe above. Amongst real world capitalists, "let self regulating markets rip" is simply the rhetorical means to realize the first leg of a political strategy to privatize gains and socialize losses. To the extent that "free market" policies have been implemented during the ascendancy of the Washington Consensus, they've been an unmitigated disaster. The notion that free market principles simply haven't been adequately applied is not only an ahistorical reading of what we've just lived through but a textbook case of denial on the part of zealots who've built their careers and reputations on a house of sand.

I wonder if it concerns Jay that the only people that give him the time of day around here are Billcoe, Fairweather, and Kojak.

Glad you're coming around. Hasten thee to the nearest tattoo parlor and have it permanently inscribed on your forehead.

"Hey, soldier, would you rather have a) a gay person or b) no person on that M60?" When your only comparative advantage is being the world's billy club in worthless shitholes, it's best to be as inclusive as possible when it comes to your labor force.

I'm withholding judgment until I hear what Gene Simmons has to say about it. Or Ellen Degeneres.

Looks like the same Road to Serfdom crap you're always peddling to me.

Gotta love it. As the picture becomes clearer and the ideological fog over what has amounted to the open swindling of a nation for couple of generations lifts, you resort to cheap obfuscation and more of the same Hayekian horse-manure. Which phase of the acceptance process is this? Looks like we're still in the denial phase to me.

BUY GOLD NOW!!!