and the mistaken impression of the economy that it generates.

At this point we are far enough into August that I can demonstrate with initial claims data that the point I was trying to make about problems with the seasonal adjustment formula is real. The bottom line is that we are basically in purgatory. We are still in economic decline, it's just that the freefall has ended for the moment. NDD called me out on this point over at Big Orange last month, and basically said that we'll see if you are right. Now I have the data to demonstrate that the problems I was suggesting were influencing the data have influenced the data.

Basically all that I want to do is demonstrate to the people who attacked me last month that I was right, and they were wrong. There is nothing horrible about being wrong, but there is something deeply offensive about continuing with an argument when the facts show it to be wrong. And personally attacking anyone who point out that there was a problem with your data. That's what's pissing me off.

Own up to your mistakes, don't attack the people who point them out.

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oh boy is that one most ignored factor these days. it's turned into political hot potato so seemingly one is not supposed to talk about it, regardless of how it defines a major region upon which the data is being calculated upon. I just scanned his graphs but noticed he is mentioning it.

Railroad pasenger load is down by 17% (of course, August is traditionally vacation month, but that is when traditionally railroad occupancy goes up and up).

Also, Fedex is still dropping in shipments. (Could it be because it's sooooo anti-union???)

Starbucks' store outlets has been steadily going down - but that may be consumers who have just discovered good taste in java.

Is the 15% HSA. The problem is that even with the fact that most poor and working class folks will blow through that quickly and be funded by the government, it's still not progressive enough, because most poor to middling folks need 100% or more of their income to pay for the necessities; even if they have a healthy year and don't use their HSA money, they really can't afford to only get that money on the back end. I explained as much in the Yglesias thread.

Furthermore, since these sums aren't going to cover the cost and are still going to cause people economic pain, it just seems pointless to avoid going to full single-payer, if we're dealing with "dream scenarios."

We really, really have to avoid another 1937 - believe me, people at the time thought that the New Deal was breaking the bank. To give you an example, the 1935 Emergency Relief Act which funded the WPA was, at $4.8 billion, the largest appropriation in history, as large as the rest of the Federal budget put together, and the WPA itself was multiple times the size of the entire Federal government workforce. Budget hawks like Budget Bureau Director Douglas HATED the WPA.

2. That's exactly what the PWA did; it established a rolling fund from the revenue generated. It still was too slow and too restrictive. Self-liquidation just doesn't work if the object is to employ as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

3. Regarding cutting spending, the only major areas that really could generate the kind of money you're talking about is defense and trimming Medicare reimbursements - not easy to do.

is your Doctor saying (s)he can charge $50 because all off the overhead/rules/restrictions in dealing with insurance companies...if he just ignores all of it, it's that much of a savings?

This whole "healthy" thing I really question. Mainly due to big pharma wanting to get the whole world on anti-depressants. There are so many conditions which depression is a symptom, have nothing to do with serotonin levels....

So, I personally don't trust some of this "preventative".

Take weight....they just blast people instead of looking at say, the corn fed problems of cattle, which produce very fatty, high cholesterol meat. So you can get various money interests trying to declare what is healthy so they maintain their profits.

the problem is that the fiscal situation of the government is somewhat different than it was in the 30s. Yes, the economy was down, and states were hurting. But back then, Uncle Sam didn't maximize his credit card.

Secondly,regarding the dams and such "self-liquidating" projects, they should have established a public projects dividend fund. That is, have this fund be partial owner of these revenue-generation operations, and receive part of the income to fund these other projects. Imagine, had this Public Development Fund been able to garner a piece of the action on all the tolls collected, what projects it would be able to invest in now.

My problem with the stimulus was exactly what you pointed out. The tax cuts (which I favor in general), were not needed for whom it went to. What was needed, as you aptly pointed out, was labor-demand work. They should have focused the bulk of the funds towards infrastructure from roads to schools. Once more, had we developed an independent Public Development Fund, a permanent stimulus project of sorts, this wouldn't be that much of an issue regarding much-needed projects. BTW, when I mean "independent," I mean that conspiring politicians not being able to raid its funds like they had been doing with other pools of public money.

Here's my fear. That the government, to come close to what FDR did, will have to continue to bust it's budget. Yes, deficits to increase demand. But have you seen the size of the deficit? There is, I firmly believe, only so much we can borrow or print before the whole things shuts down. Raising taxes isn't the only solution, we really need to look at our books and see what it is we're spending on now. Surely we can find hundreds of billions to cut from the budget that isn't adding to really anything. To me, we live in an era of falling bridges and money being wasted. Something's got to give here.

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www.venomopolis.com

(hence my qualifier).

But that blogger has some other more obscure series up that I wasn't aware of before. So I wanted to bookmark the page and this was a good way to do it.

Maybe next weekend I'll issue a pollyanna challenge. ;)