Obsidian Wings

Courting Warren

by Eric Martin

Is there any doubt that Summers and Geithner have been disastrously incompetent in terms of managing the economic downturn?  Not that Rahm helped much.

I can only hope that Simon Johnson is right, and that Geithner's opposition to Elizabeth Warren will prove his undoing.  Obama needs a financial team overhaul, or at least a reconfiguration of which individuals hold sway.

Kevin Drum has more on the Elizabeth Warren issue.  Obama should really do the right thing on this.

If You Haven't Done Anything Wrong, You Have Nothing to Fear

by Eric Martin

Having previously railed about the excessive deference shown by politicians toward local police forces, and the obsession with appearing "tough on crime," New York Governor Paterson deserves credit for these two initiatives:

Today he will be signing a bill prohibiting the NYPD from storing the personal information--names, addresses, social security numbers--of individuals stopped and searched by the police, but against whom no further action is taken. According to the New York chapter of the ACLU, since 2004, the NYPD has stopped people more than three million times, 90% of whom did nothing wrong. This has resulted in what is basically a de-facto dragnet against blacks and Latinos, who, comprise 80% of those stopped. That's despite the fact that whites were slightly more likely to be found with drugs or weapons. The police will still be allowed to keep a database that contains "generic" information such as race, gender, and the location of the stop.

Paterson tried and failed to get marriage equality passed. But he did manage to reform the state's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. This doesn't redeem his other failures, but when it comes to criminal justice, Paterson has really made a difference in New York.

Serwer is right: he has not been a very good governor overall, but on these issues, his record is relatively solid.  Well done.

Wives of Farmers

by Eric Martin

Kevin Drum performs a neat and tidy evisceration of previously popular GOP misinformation regarding the supposed impact the estate tax would have on family farms, and the prospect of family farmers would be forced to sell their farms by the "onerous" burden of the estate tax.  The short answer: the estate tax wouldn't actually force any such sales, or impact more than a dozen family farms at all.

As Drum points out, "small businesses" are the new "family farmers", with the "expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans" standing in for "estate taxes."  Yet the GOP's fealty to the truth, or better yet, lack thereof, remains the same:

OK then. Let's show it. Step 1: The Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that only 1.9% of small businesses are in the two top brackets that would be affected. That's a little better than the dozen small farms affected by the estate tax, but not by much.

Step 2: About half of that 1.9% aren't really small business owners at all. They're high-income investors who get part of their income from investments in small businesses. So we're down to about 1% of small businesses that would be affected.

Step 3: The top brackets are just that: brackets. When the top rate goes up, it doesn't affect your entire income, just the portion in the top bracket. So if the top rate goes back up from 35% to 39.6%, it only affects the portion of income above approximately $400,000. A small business owner making $500,000 would see an increase of about $5,000. This is a fairly modest amount for someone making a half million dollars, and anything higher than that is hardly a "small" business to begin with. And the marginal effect is even smaller for the second highest bracket.

Step 4: The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the 10-year cost of these upper-income tax cuts is $678 billion, the vast majority of which hits wealthy individuals, not small businesses no matter how you define them. That's a fair chunk of change for anyone concerned about the deficit.

Yeah, but where do you find a politician who is actually concerned about the deficit?  Certainly not in the Republican Party.

The Words You Use Should Be Your Own

by Eric Martin

So I pumped around six posts, chosen from a range of many years, into this "who do you write like" machine thingy and each time, without fail, the answer was: David Foster Wallace. 

Although I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've never read his work, on the upside, you can't credibly accuse me of theft of style.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Blowing the Horn

by Eric Martin

Matt Yglesias reacts to news about the Obama administration's growing concern with the radicalized insurgency in Somalia - the result of a process of radicalization that was the predicted outcome of the Bush administration's decision to back Ethiopia's invasion of its longtime rival in the name of "helping" Somalia and, ironically, combatting radicalization:

At the time, we were intervening on behalf of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government against an Islamic Courts Union headed by Sharif Ahmed. The ICU, once crushed, splintered into various faction, the most radical of which, al-Shabaab, is now fighting against a new version of the TFG which is currently headed by none other than Sharif Ahmed himself! Military adventures are frequently counterproductive, but rarely in such direct and clearcut a way as this. Now the best-case scenario is Somalia ruled by the very figure we intervened to boot from power.

This military intervention was, naturally, hailed by conservative foreign policy pundits as a great triumph in counterterrrorism policy - a model to be replicated becauase the Ethiopians showed such a blatant disregard for civilian casualties and human rights concerns.  If only we could be more like them, it was argued.

Of course, we haven't actually captured or killed any high ranking al-Qaeda operatives, by and through this operation, but on the upside, a lot of Somalis are dead (and the Ethiopians aren't concerned in the slightest!), we've swelled the ranks of an al-Qaeda affiliated outfit, increased its prestige and fueled anti-American anger due to the destruction we helped sow.

Time to dust of the old "Mission Accomplished" banner. But seriously, war is no way to go about counterterrorism.  That is basic, if often disregarded, knowledge.

Everybody Knows that the War Is Over, Everybody Knows the Good Guys Lost

by Eric Martin

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.” - Warren Buffet

It always seemed to me that "trickle up" makes more sense than "trickle down" as a general economic model for this country (in a general sense, with the particulars up for debate and variation).  Pumping up the demand side is more efficient in many ways: dollars spent by the lower and middle class will go directly into the domestic economy (quickly), and to the companies that offer the most enticing products and services - thus rewarding innovation/efficiency and, in turn, maximizing on capitalism's engine of positive incentives.

On the other hand, pumping money to all companies and wealthy individuals indiscriminately regardless of the soundness of their business models/product offerings, and regardless of their status as industrial mover or mere heir/heiress/gifted athlete/actor/musician, is an inefficient method that rewards too many unproductive individuals/entities. 

Further, considering the fact that our economy is consumer/consumption based, it makes more sense to continue to enable consumption, rather than encouraging accumulation of wealth amongst a tiny group of individuals with limited consumption reach.  After all, if the middle/lower class can't consume at a robust enough pace, then no one will be able to purchase the output generated by our businesses, thus creating a negative economic spiral (although sales of luxury items will remain brisk, as well hoarding of cash by corporations, as we've seen).

In addition, as a general rule, lower and middle class spenders tend to keep their money/ consumption on the domestic side of the ledger, where as wealthy individuals and corporate interests have more incentive and ability to pursue overseas investments and offshore operations that move jobs and money to other locales - creating a "trickle across" effect that ends up dissipating the benefits.

Regardless of this basic sketch of the dynamic, after a multi-decade supply side experiment, trends are not going in the right direction.  Robert Reich explains:

Missing from almost all discussion of America's dizzying rate of unemployment is the brute fact that hourly wages of people with jobs have been dropping, adjusted for inflation. Average weekly earnings rose a bit this spring only because the typical worker put in more hours, but June's decline in average hours pushed weekly paychecks down at an annualized rate of 4.5 percent.

In other words, Americans are keeping their jobs or finding new ones only by accepting lower wages.

Meanwhile, a much smaller group of Americans' earnings are back in the stratosphere: Wall Street traders and executives, hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers, and top corporate executives. As hiring has picked up on the Street, fat salaries are reappearing. Richard Stein, president of Global Sage, an executive search firm, tells the New York Times corporate clients have offered compensation packages of more than $1 million annually to a dozen candidates in just the last few weeks.

We're back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground.

And as long as this trend continues, we can't get out of the shadow of the Great Recession. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

America's median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped. Under these circumstances the only way the middle class could boost its purchasing power was to borrow, as it did with gusto. As housing prices rose, Americans turned their homes into ATMs. But such borrowing has its limits. When the debt bubble finally burst, vast numbers of people couldn't pay their bills, and banks couldn't collect.

Each of America's two biggest economic downturns over the last century has followed the same pattern. Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928--with 23.5 percent of the total.

We all know what happened in the years immediately following these twin peaks--in 1929 and 2008.

The results of favoring the supply side of the equation are predictable, if not necessarily beneficial.  From Laura Bassett:

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest -- not only in amount but also as a percentage of income -- which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.

The average household in the top 1 percent earned $1.3 million after taxes in 2007, up $88,800 just from the prior year, while the income of the average middle-income household hovered around $55,300. While the nation's total income has grown sharply since 1979, according to the CBPP report, the wealthiest households have claimed an increasingly large share of the pie. [...] 

"If income growth had been shared equally among all income groups, the families at the bottom would have $6,000 per year more than they do now, and the middle would have $13,000 more," he said.

Sherman said one key to closing the gap is a responsible tax policy.

"It would be a big step in the wrong direction to enact proposals like a big rollback in the taxes on the wealthiest estates," Sherman said. "It would probably help to enact some of the middle class tax extender proposals advanced by the President and the Democrats, including things like the extension of the expanded child tax credit."

As I've mentioned before, despite this mounting evidence, the wealthy elites have such a stranglehold on the political process and media discourse, that any attempt to bring tax levels even back to those that prevailed during the hoary socialist heyday of the 1990s is treated as persecution of the poor, put upon, insanely wealthy - who are just trying to get by despite the onerous hoi polloi tugging at their waistcoats.

Filibustering Unemployment Benefits

--by Sebastian

The filibuster has become such a routinely used tool, that reporters now speak of 60 votes required to pass nearly anything through the US Senate.  I'm temperamentally conservative, so I'm loathe to get rid of procedures.  But I'm temperamentally conservative, so I don't like seeing the social conventions against using emergency measures only during emergencies ignored such that emergency measures become routine.   

But before we decide to get rid of the filibuster entirely, we need to look at why it has become so ugly.  The reason is simple.  It is an emergency measure, with a theoretically legitimate use to keep an under-debated topic under consideration for debate.  In theory, it is a strong statement by a Senator that this particular topic is so important that he is willing to devote all of his time to keeping the debate open. If 60 Senators disagree, they can shut him up, and bring the matter to vote.

That is the filibuster in theory.  In recent practice, no one really debates in a filibuster.  They just threaten to debate, and the majority gives up until they can get 60 votes.  The reason it has become so common, is that if the minority party is never called on it, it is essentially costless.  They can threaten to debate, and instead of needing a 51% majority, they just need a 41% minority to defeat bills.  

An excellent explanation of this is found at The Monkey Cage:
 

  Just as there is more than one way to filibuster, there is more than one way to defeat a filibuster. I classify them as “closure” (a classic term meaning any rule for bringing about a decisive vote), “reform” (changing the rules, or making an unorthodox use of existing rules), and “attrition.” Attrition means that the coalition seeking to pass a bill remains in the chamber, dragging out the debate until the obstructionists are tired, have run out of opportunities to speak (there’s a limit of two speeches per topic), or leave an opening to start a vote—once a vote starts, it cannot be stopped. Attrition was the typical response to a filibuster before the Senate had a cloture rule and, as Gregory Wawro and Eric Schickler demonstrate, majorities did not NEED a closure process to win before 1917 (although Wawro and Schickler emphasize the role of informal norms as a restraint on pre-1917 obstruction).

The 1939 movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” concludes with a very realistic depiction of 1930s style attrition. Smith gains the recognition of the chair and begins speaking from his desk.

And Smith speaks through the night. His speech doesn’t have to be about the appropriations bill on the floor, so he can read from books, talk about the Constitution, etc. And, periodically, he can note the absence of a quorum and compel the other senators to show up in the Senate and prove there are enough senators around to conduct business.

But after a few hours, Smith is exhausted. And public opinion (“astroturfed” in the movie) has arrived in the form of telegrams, telling Smith to quit.


Note, though, that the senators do NOT file a cloture petition, wait two days, and then vote. That would take too long, and would force them to vote to stop a filibuster. Attrition, even if it means lost sleep or a nap on an army cot, is preferable. Second, a filibuster is a public event: the media perks up at the outbreak of a filibuster (as they had when Huey Long was entertaining them from 1933 to 1935), and the filibuster is Smith’s means of “expanding the game” to allow the public to weigh in on the Senate’s proceedings with editorials and telegrams.

...


So why did the Senate change? The stock answer is that the chamber’s responsibilities grew with the size and scope of the federal government, so it became more costly to sit around watching obstructionists kill time. There is some truth in that explanation. Also, however, senators’ work habits changed. The introduction of railroads, cars, and (especially) air travel made sitting around in the Senate chamber so…boring. Tedious. Totally lame. During the mid-20th century, the Senate increasingly became a Tuesday-Thursday club, and individual senators began insisting that major legislation be kept from the floor to accomodate their travel schedules. A serious attrition effort would mean cancelled speeches in Manhattan and Chicago, no trips to the Delaware coast, and waiting longer to return to the ranch back in Texas.

Several stock explanations do NOT have a significant effect in my analysis: Senate turnover, partisanship, and the threat of reform are not strongly correlated with Senate filibustering (1901-2004). Most cloture rule changes (1917, 1949, 1959) have no clear effect, while the 1975 change is correlated with an INCREASE in filibustering. One reform that did matter was the 20th amendment, which cut down on filibustering during the final months of each Congress by changing the Congressional schedule.
...

The perceived relationship may also stem from the adoption of cloture as the dominant response to a filibuster. The necessary condition for an old-school attrition filibuster was a team of intense warriors ready to defy the rest of the chamber—“a little group of willful men” as Woodrow Wilson put it. These groups were typically identified in press reports by ideology (liberals, conservatives, progressives), region (Southerners, Westerners, etc.), or policy preference (isolationists). Even filibusters conducted on behalf of a party (say, to forestall an investigation into a questionable election) were carried out by a few senators identified by name.

Once cloture became the test of a filibuster, however, the necessary condition for a successful floor filibuster was a coalition big enough to prevent cloture. In the context of a Senate that is polarizing for other reasons (hint: not because of redistricting), this increasingly means uniting one party or the other behind a filibuster.

Essentially, Senators filibuster so often now because it is so easy to do.  If you don't want filibusters to be routine, you have to make them cost more than just a simple vote.  At some point you have to test the threat of a filibuster with attrition.  But to do so requires that the majority break the filibuster on something they are willing to take a stand on, and that they are willing to put in the few days of constant work required to break the back of a stupid filibuster.  

I believe that Democrats have been unwilling to do so because either they are lazy, or because they are scared.  If it turns out that it is because they are merely lazy, there isn't much we can do about it.  So I will operate under the assumption that they are scared.  The fact is that the trend of elections during a recession is worse for incumbents than just about any other scenario.  See for example this by Kevin Drum.
 
Fair or not, people tend to blame incumbents for the current state of the economy.  So Democrats ought to be very scared for their seats.  But this brings us to the recent votes on unemployment benefits. Republicans have offered a perfect opportunity for Democrats to portray Republicans as heartless SOBs who would rather let people suffer in misery that they themselves can't fix, during the middle of the deepest recession since World War II.  Until Byrd died, there were 60 votes for the unemployment extension.  But when he died, Republicans threatened a filibuster.  

Democrats should have taken them up on it.  They need a key issue to remind voters of how Republicans helped get us here, and how their responses aren't making things better.  Making individual Republicans stand and debate about how the unemployed don't need benefits couldn't possibly lose net centrist voters.  Get a few good video editors.  Plaster the worst offenders all over youtube.  Break the back of the routine filibuster without killing it for real emergencies.  Win more votes.  

Or just continue whining.  

UPDATE: I understand that WV is rushing a Senator in for the Unemployment extension vote.  That's great, but if you don't get 60 votes, make the Republicans talk.  Hell don't even ask for cloture.  Propose a vote and make them talk until attrition wins it for you.

Do Deficits Matter?: On Keynes and Catfood

by Eric Martin

I believe the term of art to describe Dean Baker's treatment of a recent David Brooks offering on economic policy is "evisceration":

David Brooks has decided to jump into the debate over stimulus with both feet. In a column in which he warns against arrogance he tells readers that additional stimulus would: "risk national insolvency on the basis of a model."

Mr. Brooks doesn't tell readers how he has determined that further stimulus carries this risk. He doesn't explain how raising the country's debt to GDP ratio by 4-8 percentage points over the next few years would jeopardize the creditworthiness of the U.S. government. This is certainly a rather strong assertion, given that even with this additional indebtedness, the debt-to-GDP ratio in the United States would still be far lower than it had been at prior points in its history.

Even after a decade of accumulating debt at a rapid pace, the U.S. would still face a lower debt burden than countries like Italy do today. Italy is currently able to borrow in financial markets at very low interest rates. Projections for 2020 show that the debt burden of the United States would still be less than half of the current debt burden of Japan, which still pays less than 2.0 percent interest on its long-term debt.

Financial markets also don't seem to share Mr. Brooks view that national insolvency is a serious concern. The people who are putting their money on the line are willing to buy 10-year Treasury bonds at just 3.0 percent interest rates. That would seem to suggest that insolvency is not a real concern, but Mr. Brooks insists that President Obama should hesitate on stimulus because he thinks that insolvency is a problem anyhow, and the people who disagree with him are arrogant. [...]

After inventing a crisis of national insolvency to concern the president (should President Obama also worry about invading Martians?), Mr. Brooks tells readers that:

"The Demand Siders don’t have a good explanation for the past two years."

Hmmm, is that right? Seems to me that we have a very simple theory to explain the past two years. There was a huge bubble in housing that burst beginning in 2006. This led to a plunge in residential construction that cost the economy more than $500 billion in annual demand. In addition, the loss of $6 trillion in housing wealth, coupled with the loss of around $7 trillion in stock wealth, has cost the economy more than $500 billion in annual consumption demand. This is the result of the wealth effect on consumption, a phenomenon that economists have been writing about for close to a century. In addition, there was a bubble in non-residential real estate that collapsed about a year after the collapse of the housing bubble. This cost the economy about another $150 billion in demand. That gives a total loss in annual demand of around $1.2 trillion. All of this was completely predictable and predicted by at least some demand siders.

It was also easy to see that the stimulus approved by Congress was inadequate. Demand siders rely on something called "arithmetic" to reach this assessment. After pulling out the $80 billion fix to the alternative minimum tax, which had nothing to do with stimulus, and the $100 billion or so designated for later years, the stimulus provided for roughly $600 billion in spending and tax cuts over the years 2009 and 2010. This comes to $300 billion a year. Roughly half of the federal stimulus was offset by cutbacks and tax increases at the state and local level, leaving a net stimulus from the government sector of roughly $150 billion a year.

Demand siders did not believe that $150 billion in annual stimulus from the government could offset the contractionary impact of a reduction in annual spending by the private sector of $1.2 trillion ($1.2 trillion > $150 billion). That is how demand siders explained the failure of the stimulus to have much impact in reducing the unemployment rate. Perhaps this explanation is too complicated for Mr. Brooks (he repeatedly complains about the high IQs of the demand siders), but it actually seems fairly straightforward. If he wants to be honest, he could at least say that he doesn't understand the demand siders' explanation, rather than asserting that demand siders do not have an explanation.

Brooks has also developed his own theory of consumer and investment behavior. He decided that consumers are not spending because of concerns about the debt. This is an interesting theory. Consumer spending is probably still somewhat higher than would be expected given the loss of stock and housing wealth. (The savings rate is between 4-5 percent, compared to a long-term average that is more than 8.0 percent.) Furthermore, with many experts and media pundits (like Mr. Brooks) insisting that the government must cut Social Security and Medicare, it is really surprising that the huge cohort of baby boomers approaching retirement is spending as much as they are. In short, it doesn't seem like the evidence fits Mr. Brooks theory very well.

There were at least two things that were entirely predictable, and predicted, during the Bush administration's tenure:

1. The Party of "deficits don't matter" would become hyperconcernd with deficits and the debt once they no longer held the White House (and once back in power, again, deficits wouldn't matter).  But for now, this disingenuous argument is all the rage at a time when increased government spending is vital to juicing the demand side which is lagging in the throes of a global slog.

2. The large debt built up during the Bush years (with big contributions from tax cuts primarily benefitting the uber wealthy, and two wars - at least one of which was entirely pointless and unnecessary) would be used to justify the "unfortunate" need to cut social security - taking advantage of serendipitous timing of the impending baby boomer coming of age.

Heck, way back in 2004 I saw the "deficits made us cut social security" gambit coming down the pike:

It has been the stated and unstated goal of conservatives in America to undo the legacies of the liberal policies enacted under the rubric of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's visionary New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's bold Great Society. The elimination of these programs is a central tenet of the goal to shrink the size of the federal government, to "starve the beast" and usher in an era of truly small government. The two most prominent survivors of this siege, Social Security and Medicare, have been the nemeses of conservative lawmakers, almost since their inception... They represent the last vestige of the American voters' refusal to vote against their interest. [...]

A frontal assault on Medicare and Social Security has proven impossible to mount, and certain political suicide for those that try. But perhaps there is another way - a back door of sorts.

That back door would involve a massive tax redistribution to the wealthiest Americans, followed by a spike in spending (much of it on the defense side), at a time when economic conditions would suggest that spending should be tightened and tax cuts put off indefinitely. 

Even with large deficits and debt, though, taking the scalpel to Social Security would be a hard political sell.  Presumably.  However, the one aspect of this predictable sequence that has caught me off guard is that a Democratic administration has been so complicit in the selling.  Let's hope the Obama administration doesn't really intend to follow through with such political, and policy, folly.

This Yankee's Gone to Heaven

by Eric Martin

George Steinbrenner passed away today at age 80.  Guess he was waiting for Bob Sheppard to go on ahead first so that he could get a proper introduction at the pearly gates.

Say what you will about Steinbrenner, as a Yankee fan, you knew the guy was going to spend his money to put a contender on the field, which some owners with more loot simply choose not to do.  He wasn't as wealthy as many owners when he bought the team (which was struggling under CBS ownership) back in the early 1970s, but he turned the team around and made it into a lucrative money making venture, and then plowed a good deal of the revenue back into the players he put on the field. 

It's the end of the era of Yankee ownership that I've known all my life up until now.

RIP.

The Entire State of New York is Under Attack by Zombies, Do You 1) Help, or 2) Worry About the Deficit?

by Jacob Davies

The last post was a little dry, so I thought I'd try to illustrate the scale of the problem and the strange indifference in our response with a dramatic illustration. Plus, the last zombies post had stopped being about zombies, and I think it's important that we have at least one zombie-related post current at all times. (So we keep on our toes. They could come any time, you know.)

If things were going well in the US, unemployment would be about 5,000,000, or around 3% of the 153,741,000 people in the total US labor force; but right now, 14,623,000 people are unemployed, or about 9,500,000 more than that.

Coincidentally, the state of New York has a labor force of about 9,500,000. Now, imagine that it's 2006, and I tell you, "Hey, the ENTIRE STATE OF NEW YORK has been attacked by zombies, all of its inhabitants have barricaded themselves in their homes, and absolutely nothing is getting done there! Crops lie in the fields! Factories are idle! And worst of all, nobody has any money to order stuff from Amazon!"

I think we'd agree this was a pretty serious problem. A whole state out of work? Disastrous! Think of all the stuff from New York that we would be missing out on! Think of the human cost of all those foregone Broadway musicals! And ... whatever else it is that people in New York do. OK, we might actually be more worried about the zombie problem spreading, but bear with me here. So we'd see the incapacitation of an entire state as a really, really big problem that would justify really, really big interventions. After all, the GDP of the state of New York is over a trillion dollars, and the prospect of New Yorkers having to stay barricaded in their homes for many years to come means that a trillion dollars a year or more in output would be lost. Spending a trillion - maybe two trillion - maybe three - on a massive zombie-eradication effort would seem like a pretty sound investment, right?

Right. That's why, when faced with the prospects of something more like Illinois or North Carolina being eaten by zombies, we spent $900 billion last year on a successful - but too small - attempt to fend them off. We didn't even dream that, even with that effort, things would get so bad that all of New York state would be eaten by zombies. And yet here we are - New York is being eaten by zombies - and our dashing President, who you would expect to be in full Independence Day mode with, like, jet fighters & secret alien spaceships & stuff, is saying things like, "The government can't create jobs".

Maybe if employing the unemployed was actually more like fighting a zombie war, we'd get on it faster. But I guess if it can't be handled with lots of shooting PEW PEW tanks KABOOM and jet planes NEEEEEEAROW DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA, we're just not that into it. So my advice to the unemployed is: stock up on grey face paint, start acquiring a taste for human flesh, and practice your stumbling shamble, cause it looks like that's the only way to get anyone's attention around here.