Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Exactly. George W. Bush is many things. A pricipled advocate of free markets is not among them.

Notice the people MOST enthusiastic about Bush's reelection are the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell crowd...

Related topic, can someone explain again why Edward Prescott won the Nobel this year?

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/1019Prescott19.html

=== Nobelist Prescott lauds Bush policies

[...] on the economic front, especially when it comes to taxes and economic growth, the president's policies are more likely to bear fruit, according to Arizona's new Nobel Prize laureate.

"That's an easy one," said Edward Prescott, the Arizona State University professor who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize for economics. "When you cut tax rates, employment always goes up," ===

I've had undergrads who made more lucid arguments than that, not to mention more reality-based ones.

And of course, I am sure i read in the Financial Times (maybe the WSJ) about how US brands are not doing well in Europe. A reasonable cause would be the Bush sponsored anti_Americanism. I doubt losing market share is going to endear those CEOs to shareholders.

I can't wait to see the R's eat their own. Only a week to go. Or a few weeks longer than that.

D

Is it also possible that the trial lawyers that Donahue wanted to attack are not really a serious obstacle to doing bussiness?

I am not an expert on the issue, but GOP specializes in peddling solutions that provide a boon to a particular constituency that only GOP can secure. E.g. minority voters were supposed to fall in love with school vouchers. But they did not. The same may be the case with the tort reform.

Prescott was one of the 250 economists to endorse the 2003 "Jobs and Growth" effort; he's stuck with that horse. (Boskin is another, which is why his article is almost as anticipated as Zitzewitz in the current _Economist's Voice_.)

The rule isn't a bad one; it takes Real Effort to craft an exception that (choose any combination) (1) encourages people not to reinvest, (2) encourages people to invest in anything OTHER THAN labour, and (3) encourages them to maintain that malign neglect of the common weal for an extended period of time.

Economists in the 2020s and 2030s are going to look at the U.S. in the aughts and either laugh at the ineptitude of the attempt to translate theory into practice (best case) or write learned papers about repeating the mistakes of Great Britain 100 years previous, with balance of trade deficits "compensated for" by "superior IP" (worst case--really worst case if the papers have to be translated into English).

Again, we should not underestimate the support for George Bush. A loss of the Presidency would set back conservative social and economic plans for years. We must plan on working hard these coming days to have those plans set back.

There could possibly be ANOTHER reason why they call big business BIG BUSINESS. And by the way, are BIG BUSINESS more overweight than normal?

How much bacon do they eat anyway, is what I want to know.

You don't suppose that they don't donate anything near in proportion to what they have because they are just a bunch of CHEAP SUCKERS now do you? HAHAHAHA

Yep you can always count on Mr. DeLong to give the most COMPLICATED AND LONG WINDED explanations now can't you! HAHAHAHA

Try to be simple Mr. DeLong because it is ever so much more enlightening!! Your readers, especially this one, would really appreciate it!!

What's that big fancy-schmancy word for that simple explanation now Mr. DeLong? Come on, you might as well put that useless knowledge to some amusing purpose!! HAHAHA

Charles Murray is at a tail-end of the competence distribution among columnists, and it's not the right tail end.

It's called the 'reality based community'. That's why the WSJ news (non-editorial pages) is the best in the business. They need to know what's happening. It's the small businessmen (not all, of course)who are most stridently pro-Bush. Their markets are local, the effect of large macroeconomic policy disasters are harder for them to trace to the cause, and they think regulations cut into their profits. In short, they are free-riders but don't know it.

They may not be shelling out the bucks, but they still make great fodder for this GOTV video aimed at young voters:

http://in8.com/sweetliving/Resources/sweetliving.mov

- adam

Maybe like a lot of us they are scared to death of what four more years will do to their personal welfare.

Even their economic welfare.

SM,

Exactly. Had the economy been managed competently over the last four years, everyone would be better off-- including the rich and big business. Those of us-- and those of them-- in the reality-based community realize that.

Knut,

Almost exactly. You wrote,"In short, they are free-riders but don't know it," but I suspect that subconciously they do. They know they need their free ride to live as they'd like to, they can't admit it without trashing their tenuously-founded self image, and that gives them the ability to go through the most spectacular intellectual contortions in order to support their man. That's IMO, of course, but...

Remember that Time Magazine poll a couple of years ago that found that nineteen percent of Americans believe that they are among the richest one percent, and that an additional twenty percent believe that they someday will be. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Ken Houghton-
How many of those economist in 2020 will be residing in China?

Having Robert Rubin as an economic advisor could reassure the business community that Kerry would not be bad for business.
Lets see: Rubin, Sperling and company v Grover Norquist and John Snow and company. Which stock would you buy.

True businessmen would rather gross $2 million and pay 40% in taxes in a booming economy than make only pay 20% in taxes but only gross $1 million in a bad economy. GOP true believers are suckers for the 20% tax rate every time.

Plus, Bush terror policy has made it more difficult to do global business. It is harder to get the best and brightest foreigners into the US. Travel to US is more of a pain. Plus Bush supporters are a bunch of parochial xenophobic fundamentalists. People with those attitudes are less suited to global clients.

Last time I was in Virginia I had dinner with my father and some of his business friends. Over crab cakes with chipotle sauce the patricians let if be known that they were not happy with the performance of George Bush and his fellow travelers. The patrician’s tastes began to turn when the new Republicans, through their vassal Governor Jim Gilmore, attempted to send the Old Dominion down Alabama Way with an unsound repeal of the car tax. To that they added No Child Left Behind to infringe upon the better judgment of the State Assembly.

For the past 20 years, these men have been building cigarette-manufacturing plants in China. They think the Bush people are entirely out of touch with international business reality except the reality of big oil. The patrician’s opinion of Bush is that he is bad for government and business. They have voted Republican since it became fashionable, but they are not going to direct one cent of corporate or private money to further the aspirations of the boy from Texas. Some may even vote for the patrician from Massachusetts.

Mr. Elson, whatever else Alan Murray is, he's not Charles Murray. Don't tar him with that brush.

Murray's not usually an idiot; I wonder if he's being wilfully blind? He could just pick up a phone and call some of his acquaintances, surely?

Crabcakes with chipotle sauce sound really good.

And was anyone else struck by the wierdness of this corporate-talk version of elections? "The business community has to recognize that the public-policy arena is a very competitive place," says Mr. Fuller.

And on the bad effect Bush has had on international business, I can only recommend the livejournal blog of one "Collounsbury," a mercenary businessman currently stationed in Jordan, I think, who spends most of his time screaming about how the Bush Administration's policies are screwing his chances of cornering the steel market in the Middle East. Or something like that.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/collounsbury/

Mr. Elson, whatever else Alan Murray is, he's not Charles Murray. Don't tar him with that brush.

Alan Murray's not usually an idiot; I wonder if he's being wilfully blind? He could just pick up a phone and call some of his acquaintances, surely?

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a314ea36-277a-11d9-a0dd-00000e2511c8.html

Martin Wolf describes the transformation of "the Republicans from the traditionally isolationist party of big business, country club conservatives and midwestern farmers into the potent mixture of economic libertarians, nationalists, Christian fundamentalists and social authoritarianism we see today."

It shouldn't be too hard to locate the proximate cause of the business community's reticence in supporting Bush as growing uneasiness with the company they're keeping. Fiscal conservatives rightly view Bush as "reckless" (in the words of the FT) which should concern anyone who values economic stability, if not sustainability.

To the extent that Bush is viewed in thrall to the elements of "Christian fundamentalists and social authoritarianism" (not just playing their traditional role as convenient lapdogs), corporate America -- decidedly "reality-based" or at least market-based -- might think that GOP conservatism is anything but. Radical even. And that can't be good for business. Who let them in and how're they in charge now? You might say business leaders could be having fundamental misgivings on their traditional alliance with the religious right and second thoughts on another Bush admin.

It also explains why some Repubs are "switching" to the Demo ticket this time around, because they feel that a Kerry admin would make a Republican congress *act like Republicans again*. I find that very telling about how internal tensions within the GOP are currently threatening to break it apart.

Err... you're right, linkmeister. I feel silly :^).

The unwillingness of businessmen to give money to 527s in the same fashion that they gave soft money to the parties--pre-BCRA--may not reflect a changed attitude towards the GOP. Rather, it reflects a difference in the leverage that 527s can wield relative to parties. During the pre-BCRA soft-money period the GOP could hold a gun to business' head and demand money. If it wasn't robbery or blackmail, it was at least extortion. 527s lack similar leverage, and so businesses are able to say "no" without suffering adverse consequences. At least in this election cycle.

Are they giving to Kerry?

Perhaps Big Business and The Rich realize that the Bush tax cuts are no tax cuts at all: Bush's fiscal policy has increased, not decreased, the net present value of future taxation.

Bush may have shifted the time profile of these taxes toward the future, but in the end, thanks to his reckless spending, we're all going to pay more in the future.

If businesspeople weren't giving to the Bush campaign, how did he end up with such a huge campaign fund?

The fundamental issue is that theocracy, discrimination, and hate are bad for business. Business thrives in an environment of openness, tolerance, and scientific knowledge, as has been proven by the example of, say, the California economy vs. the Mississippi economy -- an open tolerant science-oriented economy vs. an inteolerant hate-filled hotbed of religious radicalism. This is why businesses have trouble warming to Bush -- his anti-scientific faith based agenda of hatred of gays and liberals just isn't good for business.

George W. Bush built a big war chest for re-election the old fashioned way -- he asked his daddy's friends, and in turn gave his daddy's friends government handouts. But most businesses are quite justly wary of Bush, because his policies have been bad for business, unless you're Halliburton.

Let's face it, theocracy and war are just plain bad for business, unless you're into war profiteering like Halliburton.

-Badtux the Scientific Penguin

If big businesses have stopped contributing to Bush, could it be that they think Bush won't pay off?

You don't give the big bucks to failing candidates....

ogmb wrote, "Related topic, can someone explain again why Edward Prescott won the Nobel this year?"

Because of his paper which showed that stocks were properly valued on the eve of the 1929 crash.

Joe Doherty picked up on much of what Brad missed on why big business does not donate to 527s. To approach it from a different angle: business donations are not ideological. They are cash-and-carry. 527s can be very attractive to ideological donors, because they can be single-issue (e.g., re-defeat Bush.) However, they are not attractive to cash-and-carry donors, because there is no single recipient who will notice the contribution and reciprocate in terms of favorable legislation.

This is why, IMHO, 527s have a tremendous potential for democratizing campaign contributions. This will net help the left, but it is really the same kind of business at which the NRA has long excelled.

Soros and the 527s. :)

"American business leaders who support capitalism and limited government...."

I guess we haven't read Wealth of Nations.

And bakho, if you "gross" 2 million dollars, you are a very SMALL business.

Republican Pete Peterson talks to Mother Jones:

"He [George W. Bush]'s a charming person. There were about a dozen of us, largely fat cats from Wall Street, and I said, "Well, sir, if you're elected president, there's a moral issue and a philosophical issue." And he said, "What's this moral point?" And I told him about the German theologian, Bonhoeffer, who said that the ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. And I said, "Sir, as I look at these fat cats around this table, I wonder about the morality of what we're doing here -- because while we're getting tax cuts, our kids are going to get huge tax increases, because of our largesse."

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/10/10_208.html

..."because while we're getting tax cuts, our kids are going to get huge tax increases, because of our largesse."

And, even more frightening, our children will get a more polluted enviroment, wilderness areas full of ATV's, schools with "cleansed" textbooks, filty streets, clogged with gas using monster SUV's, and even littered with more trash, etc. than presently. America the beautiful, indeed.

Murray's an idiot because he forgot to look at the stock market. The Dow is 1,000 points lower since Bush took office. And that's true for all the major indicators. That means that the business community's collective wisdom is that the overall economic prognosis is worse. And it means that there wealth is a lot less.

No way they want that to continue. In fact the real question is why aren't they spending millions to fire their incompetent. A few are, but a lot are just trapped in the ideology that Republicans good, Democrats bad. (despite the fact that business historically does better under Democrats.)

refinance mortgage

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I guess there is nothing i can say but ask you to keep everything as it is

I guess there is nothing i can say but ask you to keep everything as it is

You ar the the one I love honey where are you now just come back we will live very happily