Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Depression 2.0

Something to get you all prepped up for THE BEST DEFENSE: SURVIVAL tomorrow night, from Michael Malone at PajamasMedia:
Every sane adult knows what it takes to pull out of an economic deadfall: you tighten budgets, cut inessentials, pay as you go and restructure your debt - and hang on to your current job for dear life. And we also understand that, when it comes to a national economic crash, the same principles apply - with the addition that you stimulate the economy briefly with increased spending, you cut taxes and loosen onerous regulations, maintain free trade because the alternative is so much worse, and you support innovation and new company creation in hopes that a new cohort of hot companies will help pull you out.

What you don’t do is nationalize industries under emergency rule and make them less efficient, you don’t conduct social experiments with large segments of the economy, you don’t increase expensive regulations on industry, you don’t pile on massive amounts of debt that will flatten any economic turnaround when it finally comes and that will take a generation or more to pay off, you don’t turn against entrepreneurs as they are your last best hope, and you don’t increase taxes on the most productive members of your economy.

Only fools and ideologues don’t know all of this. And yet, that is what smart people in Washington did in the 1930s - at the very moment when they seemed to have the Depression beaten - and that is what Washington seems to be doing today.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Indeed!

I very much fear that Cap and Trade may be our generation's Smoot Hawley.

nj_larry said...

Looking forward to the show. Hope that you will be covering CPR, AED's and other base line medical knowledge. Certainly not looking for more shoot, reload, shoot scenarios.

Michael Bane said...

Larry;

There will be "shoot-reload-shoot" stuff, but I hope what's around it will be worthwhile. This season is more of what I think of as a "survey," covering a lot of ground. If we go forward — which is not my decision — we'll become increasingly specific.

This season we focus on the events...next season my plan is to focus on skills.

I made the decision for this season to talk about first aid kits and not get into medical specifics. Those specifics will come 2nd season (and yes, there is a legal issue that has to be resolved before we show such specifics).

I talked at length to medical "disaster specialists," including responders in New Orleans and the Pacific Rim tsunami, and it was fascinating and amazingly informative...in essence a complete recasting of what we think of as "first aid." I lok forward to brining that information to television in the second season.

mb

Anonymous said...

"What you don’t do is nationalize industries under emergency rule and make them less efficient, you don’t conduct social experiments with large segments of the economy, you don’t increase expensive regulations on industry, you don’t pile on massive amounts of debt that will flatten any economic turnaround when it finally comes and that will take a generation or more to pay off, you don’t turn against entrepreneurs as they are your last best hope, and you don’t increase taxes on the most productive members of your economy."

That assumes that the Officials actually have the Nations best interests at heart. Unfortunately we are saddled with a socialist, illegal alien, usurping bastard, and Rahm,"never waste a good crisis" Emanuel.
Gee, wasn't it a socialist that screwed us in the LAST Depression as well ?
Tom Bogan

Unknown said...

I'm one of those who is without job. Partly of my own doing, but I doubt the economy helped any.

It's a struggle...means losing things you've worked hard for.

Means letting down your family...

:-(

Lawrence said...

Michael

Your new show is going to address every problem I thought of before I saw yesterday's episode.

I do wish, however, you would go into detail how to use the lever gun AND the 10-22 you had there in self defense.My father and I are fortunate to have two decent homeland defense rifles but I know a lot of folks who will have to make do with a 10-22, a 30-30 and a couple of revolvers.

They deserve help too.

A little discussion on how to be a grey man in such situations and why that might be a good idea would also seem to be prudent.