Best line of the day.  In the comments.

Pay people to use your search engine.

It won’t work for me. I love The Google to much to let a little cash or prizes tempt me.

Scott

To the Editor:

Dear Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson:

My student loans are too big and it is hurting the economy. Can I have a bailout, please? I need $92,000.

Thanks.

Nathan Kottke
St. Paul, Sept.
17, 2008

LINK

about our national debt. Did you know that our country is 9 trillion dollars in debt? (Let me say it this way…we are 9,000,000,000,000 dollars in debt.) (Yes…that IS 12 ZEROs). There are about 300 million ( thats 300,000,000) men, women, and children in America. Each of our part in the national debt it $30,000.

And as I ponder this I am really not happy with EITHER candidate. Obama’s policies will likely raise more revenue but offset any gains by creating more social programs and giving back to middle-income tax-payers. McCain’s tax cuts are even larger (and are very large cuts for the super-wealthy) while not making any real effort to roll back the size of government.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that over the next 10 years the deficit will increase by 5.8 trillion under the Obama plan and 7.3 trillion under a McCain plan over the next 10 years.

Of course, this is a kind of “all things being equal” analysis and a LOT of things can change those numbers, especially economic growth. And the thing that most worries me about Obama’s plan is that he is creating new programs with VERY optimistic assessments of their cost. The Tax Policy Center is basically doing the analysis based on the actually policy proposals and stump speeches of the candidates. Can those be trusted? And does history show that spending on social programs stays flat during the program’s lifetime? Do I need to answer that question?

But McCain doesn’t thrill me either. He may not be proposing whopping new social programs but, as has been discussed here before, his eagerness for warfare can hardly be contained. And war-making is expensive. The Iraq war is costing us 1 billion dollars a week.  And it looks like we will be going back to Afghanistan soon. (Something that both candidates support as do I–although the situation there is bleak.)

Each of the candidates (and, you could argue each of the parties) each support one side of the budget which is why seeing a reduction in government spending is so unlikely. The majority of our budget is split pretty evenly between military spending and social spending. Each sides is eager to get money from the other.

Which reminds me why I have a growing interest in libertarianism who are generally non-interventionists (which reduces expenditures on the military side) and small government advocates (which reduces expenditures on the social side.)

Will we EVER have a Ron-Paul-Like candidate in charge of things. In some ways I think it is our only hope for the country.

Seth

is that all the poor tour guides and cab drivers lamented how expensive it is to live there and that regular middle class folks have to live way outside the city. San Francisco desperately needs rent controls.

More about my San Francisco trip over the next few days.

Scott

Is their any other class of species with a nastier or more notorious list of bloodsucking, stinging and biting members:

Spiders                                                                 Ticks                                       Scorpions