Recent Posts
Published Sat, 22 Oct 2011 05:00:00 +0000
Published Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:04:49 +0000
The Consumerist: "Someone has graffitied this Burger King billboard in downtown Seattle to transform it into criticism about how sugary fast food contributes to diabetes and the obesity crisis."
Published Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:16:36 +0000
Published Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:19:00 +0000
Blog? What blog? Oooh you mean that blog that I started and then I fell off the rails after a while. That blog.
Here are some things that are new, since I haven't posted in a while. Also, this is in bullet form because this morning's P90X has made my arms feel like limp sausages:
- I'm married to Kevin! Have I posted since our wedding? Hmm...
- We have a dog! Her name is Ruby and she's a Rhodesian Ridgeback/Corgi/Who knows? Let's just say she's a mixed breed and leave it at that. She likes bacon cheddar cookies, going for walks, squeaky toys, and chasing other dogs at the dog park. She dislikes being told when to go to the bathroom, being ignored, taking baths, and vegetables.
- I have a new job (woo!) and it is UH-MAzing. Seriously.
- I'm exhausted - it's been a busy week already and it's only Tuesday. Last night we had Newlyweds Small Group, tonight and tomorrow night I have staff meetings for my student assistants, Thursday night is Married Life Live at church, and Friday my cousin and his wife are flying into town and I am cooking dinner for the WHOLE family. The whole family.
This is crazy-town, people....
Published Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:45:39 +0000
Last month Tim Bray reminded me that I should be reading The Economist. The thing I like best about The Economist as a publication is that its editorial stance is to be uniformly in favor of global economic growth. While I am certainly much more left wing than their usual reader or their editors, I am essentially in agreement with them that the number one priority of economic policy must be continued, long-term economic growth, even if I disagree with them on other priorities or occasionally on the best approach to creating sustainable growth.
In any case, whether or not you agree with The Economist on anything, they are the best advocates out there for center-right, pro-business policy. Even if you disagree with their conclusions, their arguments are worth grappling with.
Their policy prescription for dealing with the current jobs crisis and economic slowdown is straightforward — Western governments should pursue policies that prop up demand encourage job growth now and make binding commitments to address structural deficits later. This should sound familiar, because this has been the Obama administration’s position since President Obama took office. It’s also the position of nearly all economists who are not partisan hacks. And the truth is that if President Obama resigned tomorrow and House Speaker John Boehner took over, it would probably be his policy as well.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that this policy course is stunningly obvious, the odds are that a gut-level impulse toward austerity, a misplaced fear of short-term inflation, and pursuit of partisan advantage are all conspiring to render not just the US government, but governments all over Europe, impotent in the face of this crisis. And as The Economist points out, an economic crisis is also a human crisis:
… the human cost of the economic crisis is paid largely by those who are out of work, for joblessness increases depression, divorce, substance abuse and pretty much everything that can go wrong in a life. Worse, today’s joblessness is a particularly dangerous sort. A disproportionate share of those out of work are young, and youth unemployment leaves more scars, in terms of lower future wages and greater likelihood of future unemployment (see article). Joblessness is also becoming more chronic. In America, famous for its flexible labour market, the average jobless spell now lasts 40 weeks, up from 17 in 2007. In Italy half of those without work have been so for more than a year. Long-term unemployment is harder to cure, as people’s skills atrophy and they become detached from the workforce. Its shadow lingers, reducing future growth rates, damaging public finances and straining social order for years to come.
People are looking to Belgium with envy because their lack of a government prevents them from pursuing pro-cyclical austerity measures that deepen the crisis. I thought that multinational organizations like the OECD and the G-20 were created in order to facilitate coordinated responses to global crises like the one we’re facing right now. Instead we’re seeing little collective action to turn the global economy around, and very little on the policy front from individual countries as well. In the meantime, things continue to slide downhill.