I Think Stockman Is An Interesting Sort

People Respond To Incentives. If Unemployment Becomes More Attractive Because Of The Unemployment Benefit, Some Unemployed Workers May No Longer Try To Find A Job Or May Not Try To Find One As Quickly As They Would Without The Benefit.

It Should Be Possible To Emphasize To Students That The Level Of Employment Is A Macroeconomic Issue, Depending In The Short Run On Aggregate Demand And Depending In The Long Run On The Natural Rate Of Unemployment, With Microeconomic Policies Like Tariffs Having Little Net Effect. Trade Policy Should Be Debated In Terms Of Its Impact On Efficiency, Not In Terms Of Phoney Numbers About Jobs Created Or Lost.

For Decades The G.o.p. Has Won Elections By Appealing To Social And Racial Divisions, Only To Turn After Each Victory To Deregulation And Tax Cuts For The Wealthy — A Process That Reached Its Epitome When George W. Bush Won Re-election By Posing As America's Defender Against Gay Married Terrorists, Then Announced That He Had A Mandate To Privatize Social Security.

Political Figures Who Talk A Lot About Liberty And Freedom Invariably Turn Out To Mean The Freedom To Not Pay Taxes And Discriminate Based On Race; Freedom To Hold Different Ideas And Express Them, Not So Much.

The Fact Is That The Two Years Or So After 9/11 Were A Terrible Time In America – A Time Of Political Exploitation And Intimidation, Culminating In The Deliberate Misleading Of The Nation Into The Invasion Of Iraq. It’s Probably Worth Pointing Out That I’m Not Saying Anything Now That I Wasn’t Saying In Real Time Back Then, When Bush Had A Sky-high Approval Rating And Any Criticism Was Denounced As Treason. And There’s Nothing I’ve Done In My Life Of Which I’m More Proud.