Politics in Economics

Listening to economists Russell Roberts and Robin Hanson discuss the differences in conclusions and interpretations of statistics and data in the field of economics, Robin Hanson puts forth a few interesting possibilities, one in particular that I think may be right on.

Assuming that economists have a greater foundation of information and training based on actual fact, there are 3 possible explanations for the vastly differing opinions:

1) The economic foundation shared among economists is not very applicable, thus leaving gaping holes in conclusions.

2) Economics is applicable, but there are details that are still questionable, thus creating uncertainty on a few conclusions. The differing opinions get widely discussed because nobody talks about what everyone already agrees on. When economists agree, it's likely because it's a valid conlusion. When they argue, it is because some of the variables are still undefined or are based on uncertain assumptions, therefore the conclusions are based on estimations and guesses rather than fact.

3) Economists can for the most part make valid conclusions based on the given statistics and data, but their interpretation of the data is biased by personal incentives.

I believe it's a combination of both 2 and 3. The Keynesian argument is valid and one can see why so many take that side of the argument. I personally lean very strongly to the supply side of that argument, though, for reasons which I will have to explain another time.

But so many economists are incredibly unwilling to even hear a valid argument opposing their own view. I think there is a bias caused perhaps by personal ties, or more likely by funding, causes economists, lawyers, other consulting professions, even scientists to skew assumptions and interpret results to achieve the desired conclusions. Political groups may hire economists to push a certain theory of economics, liberals pushing Keynesian ideas, republicans pushing supply side economists. Scientists that are funded by government and other interested private parties may continue to push the "global warming" idea (which is now being promoted as "climate change"). Lawyers can take a situation and skew the evidence to support their client.

So who can we trust? Who do we believe?

It's just like the rest of politics. We must find the most honest consultants who have no financial, personal, or any other ties toward any conclusion, and will present their honest conclusions without bias. This is impossible with lawyers in the current law system. But with science, economics, and politics we can research the sources and their motives.

Once we find those with sincere motives, their perspectives will necessarily be open to new ideas and differing opinions. When there is new and real evidence supporting one position, their opinion will change with that evidence (strengthen or weaken). If it doesn't, we can know that they are biased for whatever reason.

We need to find better ways of funding research. Remember when the U of U supposedly figured out cold fusion? The current system is far too suseptible to unethical reports and conclusions. In the meantime we must be careful who we trust.

Sons of Perdition

I read a couple of interesting verses in my scripture study this morning that has changed my perspective on the eternal plan of salvation, specifically with respect to the sons of perdition. I'm in D&C 76, and the Lord's explaining who the sons of perdition are:

38. Yea, verily, the only ones who shall not be redeemed in the due time of the Lord, after the sufferings of his wrath.
39. For all the rest shall be brought forth by the resurrection of the dead, through the triumph and the glory of the Lamb...

Whoa, hold on. Okay, you can read this two ways. In verse 38, it indicates that they will not be redeemed by the Atonement, even after suffering hell fire. Verse 39, though, seems to indicate that they won't even be resurrected? That's one way to read it at least.

But the real kicker is this:

44. Wherefore, he saves all except them--they shall go away into everlasting punishment, which is endless punishment, which is eternal punishment, to reign with the devil and his angels in eternity, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, which is their torment--
45. And the end thereof, neither the place thereof, nor their torment, no man knows;

"No man knows"? Now this implies that there is an end to it eventually!

So with this knowledge, I have the following resulting questions:
If their torment ends, can they then become happy?
If their torment ends, can they progress?
Can Satan and his followers progress eventually?
Could they possiby change and get a second chance?

I haven't had much time to consider all the questions, nor formed an opinion on the answers to these questions yet. But it opens up a lot of possibilities of further understanding of the plan of salvation. Even those who rebel against God and become perdition are not necessarily lost forever in misery. I think the principle of change and progress is eternal for everyone.

The Politics of Fear

The President and his party, with a lot of assistance from the national media, have instilled a great fear of our current economic situation. Great Depression II. We have to act fast! We have to stimulate now! We have to spend big!

It's a farce. It's a political game. It's a smart move by democrats. But it's very unethical and pretty dang messed up.

We're not really nearly as bad off as government and media outlets are making this seem. We are in a recession. We are not in the Great Depression part II. Take a look at this: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/01/deja-vu-all-over-again-1992-vs-2009.html

Note from the graph that the economy goes through cyclical recessions. It happens. The economy goes bull, the money pours in, investors dump their money in, the investments overextend the market (typically in one particularly hot investment, what we call a bubble), and the market recesses as a result. It auto-corrects. It returns back to where it should be.

Here's some more:
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/01/were_the_bush_years_really_so_bad.php

Recessions are painful for a while, and people lose money and jobs. But once it reaches the point where the market should be, it turns bull again. Unless, of course, we prolong it by making rash and stupid moves in an attempt to fix it. We can't fix it artificially. It doesn't work. The free market is a balanced system. When we force the balance to one side, the whole system becomes so improperly imbalanced that it takes a great long time to return to the correct balance that can only be defined by the market itself.

Glen Beck has often pointed out that in foreign nations the Great Depression is simply referred to as "the Depression" because it didn't last nearly as long as it did in the U.S. Why? Because of the New Deal. Modern economists now believe that the Great Depression would have only lasted 3 or 4 years had FDR stayed out of the economy.

This is what the President is doing with this "stimulus package" that we have to implement now: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012003980.html

A report by the Congressional Budget Office
found that only about $136 billion of the $355 billion that House leaders want
to allocate to infrastructure and other so-called discretionary programs would
be spent by Oct. 1, 2010. The rest would come in future years, long after the
CBO and other economists predict the recession will have ended.

A lot of this money isn't even going toward the economy. For example, half a billion dollars of this "stimulus package" is going to family planning centers. Half a billion dollars, which we don’t even have, will be spent to provide condoms and abortions. How is this supposed to stimulate the economy??

So what is happening in Washington? President Obama is using a normal recession in the economic cycle to panic the nation into giving him the power to implement all his idealogical plans. He is trying to get funding for the programs that conservatives have long rejected as fiscally irresponsible. And it looks like it's going to work.

Smart move President. Unfortunately, as a side effect to your corrupt manipulation, we may turn this recession into a real depression. Anti-recessionary policies exacerbate inflation and screw up interest rates, resulting in augmenting the next recession. This article was published in the Wall Street Journal in 1992 after that recession was already ending: http://marshallinside.usc.edu/joines/544/articles_pdf/wsj921202.txt.pdf, which should be titled "If It Aint Broke, Don't Break It").

Of course, the recession will end, as it always does, and Obama will get the credit he doesn't deserve. But what was really smart was the clauses President Obama's crew put in to implement several programs in 2011, right before his term ends. He really knows how to play to the masses, spending money we still don't have to give them what they want without having to earn it. "4 more years!"

Unless smarter people start making some noise, this is how I see it playing out: The stimulus package will get passed, since congress is owned by liberals, the stimulus will slow the recession (which is actually projected to end by the time this plan even kicks in), but since a recession returns an overextended market to where it should rightfully be, the recession will instead be prolonged or postponed until the market finally returns to it's proper balance. We will come out of if finally and be back on the up in the latter half of Obama's term, just about around the time when Obama's non-stimulating parts of his stimulus package kick in. Also, around this time, hyper-inflation will start to kick in from the $1 trillion we've just printed. The love affair with Obama will be at an all time high by this time, so they won't blame him, but instead the focus will be on the new programs being implemented.

Obama will get re-elected, and continue to implement his communalist programs. Some time during his 2nd term, the now devastatingly weak dollar will drop us into a new recession, but this one will be devastating. This is the one to be scared of. Many american people will finally figure out that they were wrong, but it will be too late. It will hit hard, and government, which will by this time have taken most control from the free people, will assume control of the situation. We will officially be a socialist nation. Government will continue to pitch the notion that capitalism has failed us, giving them an excuse to seize more control. And that will be the end of the super-power that was the American free nation.

Maybe a little extreme, but that is where I see it going if we don't stop it before then. Go America.

The Separation of Church and State

I often feel that the judicial branch doesn't have enough checks on it. They have a whole lot of power on national policy, and there's not much that we can do about it.

Take the separation of church and state for example. The supreme court has taken that philosophy and interpreted it in the most strict sense, thus removing religion from anything public. But if the court officials had cared to study the founding fathers and their teachings, there would have been no way for them to so incredibly misinterpret the Constitutional laws thus. The separation of church and state was never intended to be a separation of religion and state.

First, let me begin to explain by pointing out that the phrase "separation of church and state" wasn't coined until 1802 in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association. The letter was written to explain President Jefferson's position that federal government had no authority to proclaim a religious holiday, even though he himself, while still in Virginia's legislature, helped initiate the bill he was responding to, which would create a national day of fasting and prayer. He said that the Constitution had created "a wall of separation between church and state."

Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinence, passed by the Constitutional Congress in 1787 (the same year the Constitution was created by that same congress), says this: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

In his farewell address, George Washington said. "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political posterity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.... Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education... reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

It is very clear that the framers of the Contitution intended the nation to not only be religious, but to actually be educated in religion, morality and other knowledge. Public education was meant to teach religion and morality???

Jefferson explained what this "wall of separation between church and state" was intended to be: "No religious reading, instruction, or exercise shall be prescribed or practiced inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination."

The government was never meant to take God out of public education, ceremony, or life. They wanted it! We swear on the bible in our courts, the President's oath ends "so help me God", our national motto is "In God We Trust"!! The federal government is simply not to promote one religion over another. It must teach either notions accepted by all religions or teach all religions equally. But it should teach religion!

But instead, we are being taught scientific theories (theories! not even proven facts!) in place of religion, and teaching in public schools that religion is false. What??? That is the opposite of what was intended! How was the law so misinterpreted?? Those scientific theories should be taught alongside each other as plausible explanations.

Why are we giving up one of the most important pieces of our culture because some 7% of our nation doesn't believe in God?? WE are the vast majority! This is OUR culture! We need to fight for the moralistic society that can only be brought by the teaching of religious and moral principles. We need to return to honor and integrity!

More Denotings of a God

I think one of the biggest evidences of the creation of man by a divine being is our conscience.

Consider the darwinistic theory of the evolution of man. Natural selection, the survival of the fittest. Not only does this theory apply to intraspecies interaction, but even more specifically to interspecies interaction.

In other words, animals are fighting animals of their same species for survival just as much as they are fighting other species. The fastest, tallest, strongest will get the food. The rest go wanting. Animals, while instinctually prone to share their winnings with their own family (mothers in particular), and even in some cases with their whole group, would not think to share their spoils outside of their own circle. Thus they survive, and the weakest die off. This is natural selection. Ultimately you get the best of each species, those that had the best defenses against threats, the ones that were most adept at gathering food, the ones that had the best instincts.

Now consider man. Man, more than any, will work together in communities for survival. But not only that, we will share any surplus with another community that is lacking. Why?

When we are threatened by another with the loss of our business, when our ability to survive and provide for our families is threatened, what do we do? Nothing. We find work elsewhere or we beg, surviving on the sympathies of others. Other than a threat on our very lives, we defend ourselves very little. We fight to win, we compete, but the competition is naturally fair. Even war, for many centuries, was fought with great care of ethics and civility.

Why do we give up what we have grown/built/saved in aid of another country that will do nothing for us in return? What good does that do us??

Why do we have a conscience? What, if we evolved naturally, could have created such a weakness? Naturally, the weakest of us should be allowed to die, and the strongest, smartest would continue to reproduce and we would eventually breed a better species. But that's not what we do. We save the little guy, we protect everyone, regardless of our relation with them.

Of course, this isn't entirely true of all people. Some have less inclination to help others, and some are fine to live with the guilt. But we are all born with a conscience, whether we follow it or not. It is natural in all men. Evolution could not have produced that. It must, therefore, be a gift from God.

My brother feels strongly to point out that because a conscience is a gift from God, this doesn't mean that the body of man could not have evolved. I'm simply showing that our conscience (the light of Christ), did not. This is evidence of the existence of a supreme Creator.

The vast majority of Americans should stand up for their belief and not give in to the fringe outcry of few to take our God out of our society.