If you look back to the early days of this site, a lot of what I posted was about economics or government economic policy. These days, it is rare that the topic comes up unless it is in references to communism. In fact, economics is no longer a big topic of discussion anywhere, even with the silly libertarians. It comes up, of course, but it is no longer the big issue. Up until recent, economics was the centerpiece of conservatism and their brief against their alleged opponents.
Thirty years ago, the big change in politics was Bill Clinton using the catchphrase, “It’s the economy stupid” to attack George Bush. From then on, official politics was about taxes and fiscal policy. It was all a show, of course, but it framed the political debate and turned economists into TV stars. The site Marginal Revolution was a big deal for a while because Tyler Cowen was a star economist. Today the site is covered in tumbleweeds because no one cares about libertarian economics anymore.
Even now with the economy having problems at the retail end, people are more focused on the less tangible stuff like CRT or Covid policy. The massive Build Back Better bill stuck in Congress gets little attention. Regime media talks about it as a magic elixir so the crazies have something to chant, but otherwise they have left it alone. Twenty years ago, Conservative Inc would have been organizing a campaign against it, but today they cannot generate much interest in the thing.
One reason for this is that people have come to realize that caring about the economy, tax policy or government programs changes nothing. Those who vote Republican have come to terms with the fact that none of the things they want in terms of taxes and spending will ever happen, so they have lost interest. The far-left still dreams of the socialist paradise, but it is mostly a show of piety. Medicare-for-all may as well be unicorns-for-all and they probably know it.
It used to be an axiom of politics that a good economy was good for incumbents, but the strong economy was of no use to Trump in 2020. He tried to talk about the stock market and jobs for black people, but no one cared about those things. What mattered was his personality and how the righteous felt about it. With Biden, the issue is his growing dementia and the weirdness of this administration. They built a fake Oval Office for him to do live shots for some reason. Why do that?
The lesson here is that if caring about something makes no difference, people will eventually stop caring about it. Caring about immigration, for example, does nothing to change policy, so eventually people will stop caring about it too. You can run through all the issues this way and before long you get to the point where caring who wins the next election no longer matters. That’s why politics is getting so personals. It is the only thing people can care about, so they care about personalities.
Even so, economics still matters. If the economy turns sour, people will care about economics, if only in a general sense. The Cloud People have big plans for the post-human economic order, so it is worth discussing. This week, the show is about some of the issues that come up in dissident circles related to economics. A little change of pace from the normal ranting and raving about the culture. A call back to the days of green eyeshade conservatism.
This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- 00:00: Opening
- 02:00: Supply Chains
- 17:00 Build Back Better
- 37:00 Money Trouble
Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon
Full Show On Spreaker
Full Show On YouTube
The best pencil is actually a mechanical. Staedtler, with a 2mm lead. It is the best because it is a drafting pencil – do you young ignernt wippersnappers know what drafting is?
Get off my lawn you little chits!!!
And have a good weekend.
🙂
I agree. I thought I mentioned it, but I use mechanical pencils and I have a Staedtler with me always. Best eraser ever made. I do everything in pencil.
I still love my pink pearl eraser from my drafting class days.
German engineering, obvs.
I guess if the economy is strong, people wont complain too much about the social stuff. We can forgive the two sets of rules.
If the Democrats could get all their bills passed this year, I’ve heard the total would something like $12 trillion. You would think somebody in the GOP would be shouting about that, but at this point I think they know that most “conservatives” who are not actually part of their grifting racket have given up on government .
The main areas where politicians have been delivering are whatever donors want and whatever the SJW have been told to be hysterical about such as men in dresses are women and all non whites are oppressed by Whitey. You can see this in their educational programs, FBI priorities (what leftist violence?), prosecution and torture of Jan 6th, harassment if mothers who don’t like CRT, censorship of bad whites, etc. The Democrats deliver for their base if it doesn’t conflict with the needs of the donors. Of course, they also always deliver for Israel but that is one of the main priorities of the donors.
1
It was a throw away line in your post, I realize, but it astounds me that the fake Oval Office hasn’t drawn more commentary. What a bizarre thing! One can’t help but conspiracy theorize – is it easier to green screen from there or something? Playing “if Trump did this” is a mug’s game, of course, but… imagine if Trump did that. Rachel Marrow would do a month’s worth of shows on it…
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“Rachel Marrow would do a month’s worth of shows on it…”
Interesting typo. She does look a bit like a marrow.
The Oval Office thing is bloody weird. When I read that line, I did think that it would have been picked up on far more. But in Cloud/Cunt/Carny/Prison World, it probably isn’t bizarre enough.
Stupid autocorrect. But yeah, you’re right — this is Clown World, so something that would be extremely fake and gay by the standards of even 10 years ago doesn’t even rate a shoulder shrug now.
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Amongst normal people, I suspect such things do still raise more than a shrug. Unfortunately, the sorts who love/trust Legacy MSM sources have already made a deal with the devil, and see it as all natural. Just normal, baby!
I guess that’s the point now: the naked and overt demoralization. You know, “I see the same thing in every LMSM outlet… it must be true”. Anyhow, it’s to be expected.
I did share a nice piece of moral outrage with a coworker some days back. Said coworker has a niece with three kids, from three different fathers (the disgusting term ‘baby daddy’ was used – did this come from blacks? Dunno.), one of whom is bleck. Says coworker “I’m not racist but it’s just weird, I mean he looks different. My husband thinks it’s ridiculous.” Says she then further: “My parents (the blecklet’s great grandparents) can’t get over it. They keep saying ‘We just cannot warm to him like the other grandkids.’”. Crikey.
I said to her there’s no need for the “I ain’t no racist” prefix round me; and we both shared a look of disgust. Turns out we are horrific bigots. Horrific I tells ya.
And don’t get me started on the three kids with three different fathers. It is all so tiresome; and incredibly common – another sign of our demoralization. And another sign that many cannot be saved. Sad.
End rant.
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Soon we aren’t going to have elected representatives that can be considered even real by the standards of 20 years ago. We’re already almost there. Trump may well be the president with true agency, limited as it was.
Max Headroom 2024!
The photo making the rounds that reveals the fake oval office during the great potato penetration was not surprising to me at all. What stood out to me was the entire media corps playing along, taking the appropriate camera angles and such. Thats the insult.
There are no doubt fake sets of all kinds all over. But when the media is so captured by the regime that they wont report on small details, like from where they are actually reporting and why, well then the entire thing becomes a theater of the oligarchs and is suspect from top to bottom.
Of course by the time most people notice, Max Headroom has already been “voted” in.
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Apparently, rigging up Biden with earpieces and teleprompters is difficult in the real WH, so they created the fake one where they can animate him without people noticing.
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Make a pencil? How hard could it be?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LBnkuH1D5g
A funny cautionary tale indeed. I thought you were going to post one of those how it’s made video.
Related – on Economists…
Once again, another huge miss in the jobs report – 194k added compared to 500k expected. This has become standard every month, with economists predicting some huge jobs blowout, and the number coming in much lower.
You might think that these economists would take a long look at their models and try to understand what is wrong, what inputs are they missing, what assumptions are wrong. Nope, they just churn out the same output each month and apparently are not ashamed of how wrong they are.
In my business consulting world, if we continually churned out such terrible models for a client, the CEO would laugh at us and we’d lose them as a client.
Recently I watched an online forum with three “famous” economists from the business school I attended (yes, I am one of those MBAs), providing their economic outlook. Most of it was just regurgitated generalities and philosopher king bullshit – bullshit I now detect since I am more discerning than when I was younger. It sucks to realize that many of my professors were mostly full of shit. The one saving grace I have is that thankfully my old company paid for my MBA – I’d be very bitter if I had ponied up 6 figures for that crap.
Since March 2020, I’d say economists are only second to doctors in revealing how over-inflated are their reputations.
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As an untrained ‘conamiss I have a great way of determining the number of jobs that one can find online. That is, jobs that can be applied for on-the-line. You see, I go to the job aggregator sites and select the ‘list all jobs’ option. I get a list of all said jobs! And how many! I can even whittle it down by county!
It’s amazing. And no maff needed. Now, mark you, this is no way to tell how many jobs are going in the country as a whole, but when you compare the current number to one you got, say, six months ago, and six months before that, you can judge relative increase in this arena. Still, all with no maff!
“Since March 2020, I’d say economists are only second to doctors in revealing how over-inflated are their reputations.”
Indeed. The people who came closest to describing how reasonably regulated markets work (i.e. the healthiest sort) were, I think, the Awwwstrians. Ludwig von Mises did a decent job, in my opinion. He didn’t tend to use a lot of maff. The over-application of maff to fields that do not deserve it is a real problem. Many of the less rigorous ‘sciences’ do this; I suspect in an effort to look credible.
But it’s not just that it makes it look credible, it also makes it very impenetrable – and this is of paramount importance. Because it means very few can understand and review – thoroughly – your work. So you can’t be wrong! That said, I doubt modern peer review committees are even interested in deeply reviewing an idea in a paper – that is actual hard work. Worse still, imagine if it was a good idea that overturned something you believe in with all your heart?
There are fields where maff has been invaluable (excepting maff, where one would expect it to have value): fluid mechanics, acoustics, aerodynamics, shock physics, civil engineering, geo-technical engineering, soil mechanic, &c. But when it appears in the softer sciences, you may be being shafted. Shafted royally.
I must ask, what do they teach in an MBA? I am generally curious as to the answer, as well as your experiences in this program?
Don’t know about libertarians but the folks at the Mises Institute have called the shots pretty well over the years as we await the “crack up boom.” Also James Howard Kunstler’s “long emergency” has been spot on as the Hemingway-esque “gradually, then all at once” collapse rolls like a slow burn into an old forest.
That it’s all personality centered has become our “two minute” hate extending throughout the media day with Emanuel Goldstein having been replaced by King George spending his waning years, in the age before teleprompters, playing cribbage before afternoon tea.
Lew Rockwell’s site has been deplatformed by the way.