After Hearing about The Romney Economic Policy.

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Mr. Glen Hubbard, obviously a Ph.D., was on the television today at CNN in the role of Mr. Romney’s chief economic advisor or spokesman at this point.  Several salient issues arose during his talk with the blogger / commentator Mr. Zakaria including the deficit and insurance woes that have been badgering candidates for a long time, including Mr. Obama, the current U.S. president.  Mr. Hubbard, in speaking about the budget issues delivered an excellent essay on the difficulties of carrying on as the society with the most civic, political and other freedoms anywhere, and his presentation appeared to be a kind of “you don’t get something for nothing” type trial balloon.  Sometimes indeed in the process of electing officials, the voters can be handed, and for various reasons, nothing for something, in which case there is much negative clamouring and scandal.  It does appear from his spokesman the Romney campaign wants to work out its promises to the American people without being unrealistic.  These were some of the issues Mr. Hubbard fielded this morning, and without claiming to analyze whatsoever the process of lightening the budget load, his explanation turned on revenue collection or spending reductions.  Depending upon what the people want, the candidate appears to be listening to how people want to approach austerity measures:  Through “cutbacks,” “budget controls,” “constraints,” and the like, or “new revenue,” and / or revenue collection.  The actual plan might be a combination of both, which would do something to eliminate widespread use of loopholes and weak points in both budgeting and tax policy.  The substance of the interview consisted of Mr. Hubbard presenting this, but not necessarily presenting anything beyond overall policy definitions, and the viewer was left with likes or dislikes as the case might be, along with policy and party choice as well. 

There is another issue, and that is unless any budgetary policy or tax policy is successful, mostly as a surprise or some overriding spontaneity, what will the U.S. populace do given the risk to public finances upon even at first the examination of policies as successes or failures?  There’s no answer to this, and while in the olden days, one Republican president instituted wage and price controls to accomplish monetary and fiscal goals alike, and this under a policy that was publicly unfavourable, it does appear such unusual approaches to the budget and trade, and the federal revenue issue, need be considered.  The wage and price controls were a palliative, but woke up a lot of people to attention about where the public finances of the U.S. were headed at the time.  By this writing, the author can not mention the advantage of budgetary controls over tax reform, nor vice versa, though these are not exclusive and maybe some policy – maker could determine some arithmetic identity without the present and ubiquitous gallows humour on these topics, and that would give any federal administration some hope of having an actual fiscal / monetary goal to accomplish apart from the abysmal picture some economists paint of public affairs and money these days.  That any such goal would be attainable in terms of federal finances will remain to be seen, and there are many pessimists about the current, related metrics as recorded, not to mention the prospective ones.  Austerity measures were mentioned in the talk on television today, and all forbid the U.S. having a reaction to austerity policies, either formally at election time or in the street, if they are indeed needed at this time.

Another topic at the talk with Fareed Zakaria was national health insurance and the compulsory provisions of this policy concerning coverage, and for which the president is being sued by the Catholic Church given certain provisions.  People like me know that the actual insurance problem as it is approached by policy – makers is quite intractable as there is only so much insurance that can go around.  People believe that their insurance is a kind of financial instrument at times and treat health insurance exploitatively as such on many occasions, and this is a sin.  Health insurance has to be paid for, unfortunately for everyone, and this financial issue and the role of health care in the U.S. economy really make such issues the subject of extreme opinions and educated and technical debates and discussions alike.  The idea of the Massachusetts health care system was discussed as portable to the entire country, and Mr. Hubbard suggested it is not – indeed the demographics (an important health care parameter, even determinative of actuarial and other aspects of insurance plans) of a state like Massachusetts are obviously dissimilar to those of West Virginia or Florida; and one can not bolt a standard from a Massachusetts public health plan onto California or Idaho, either.  This is what makes solutions to such issues incredibly difficult and the subject of adversities, including economic and social ones, business and cultural, etc.  One idea that has not been greatly discussed, at least not publicly, is a national public health system as an auxiliary to private care with pay – as – you – go and / or insurance coverage itself with a deductible or co – payment.  Such a system could be self – financing and profitable for the government and would stratify, equalize and reduce the financial burden of any federal system.  MediCare for older U.S. citizens is an example of such a system as weighted towards federal oversight, though any new system might be a health care / maintenance auxiliary to private insurance concerns.  By this writing, the author is surprised this was not discussed with regard to either the Massachusetts plan or the required health insurance as currently promoted by the president.  Without sounding litigious, Catholics because they have values accruing to very technical issues about women’s rights, women’s right to choose and decide, and abortion itself, and other issues that would be addressed by an umbrella federal health plan, do have, and I mention informally here, an argument with the law.  Catholic bishops and perhaps even the pope would do well to provide some decisive guidance here, and as of yet I have heard none.  Also, and as an endnote, neither Zakaria nor Hubbard brought up any economics argument or policy about what to do with trade.  This probably means both parties are in agreement about some policy as already implemented and will not contest each other on these grounds so far (maybe both main presidential candidates admire and accept the current status quo on trade and will just discuss this secondarily in any debate.)  The trade issue as examined by anyone at this point has to do with long – term labour productivity and benefits and the level they are at today.  Developed and developing economies that apparently have more productive labour forces also have less history in them on contests for higher wages and management changes in the modern sense.  This is why the so – called productivity statistics could be questioned – other countries are less in – touch with modernity than the U.S. is at this point (hush,) and any focusing on the labour market only in economic policies in Western economies causes things like prices, interest rates, bank and other rates, including growth rates and productivity measures themselves to first gather and then integrate improper bias that skews and could ruin business – this would be uncalled – for under the circumstances.

Please pardon typhographical errors.  THS 

Who is for whom ... ?

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Are things changing? Yes? (after a "wall street journal" editorial.)

The current democratic administration, insofar as the elections next year are capturing public attention at this point, has billed itself as one of thriving on change and the aspirations of the American public as a new kind of Americanism.  Unfortunately, the president and his administration have as well incorporated into their presidency a deeply unpopular set of economic circumstances, and a set of unpopular and even more costly wars far away from home.  These challenges in view of next year's contests do not reflect any of the policies around change of any of the previous most successful presidencies in recent memory, those of Reagan and Clinton.  Mr. Obama as President of what is currently the unrivaled world power in the U.S., in his assuming the presidency, sought to change many executive policies, including carrying out what was said to be a re - distribution of any creation of economic or other values in commercial activities, and a re - casting of our political and military reach to a more defensive posture abroad.  It is difficult to see how the President will be able to prevail in an election year when these two major themes of his time in office so far have met with limited success and are regarded by many as having been too "forward - looking" perhaps, too ambitious, and poor in their effort and execution.  Such priorities in view of many voters have to be re - evaluated as to whether or not they actually fit into the portrait of what it is to be American and for what reason, including what the limits of these plans were and how they have darkened the political skies at home and, again, abroad.  Instead of promoting a more affirmative and proud set of plans for his presidency, especially away from our shores, the President chose to rule in a kind of retreat from issues; something that does not fit with the American image or conduct in view of past defiance and taking challenges to the world, especially in times of economic stress and military conflict.  Ronald Reagan rallied the country during his administration in pointing to the fractious and economically chaotic times of the 1970's and restored the place of our state to primacy on the basis of fewer taxes and a dissemination of American values everywhere. 

In many areas of endeavour, technical people have the overall reputation of being dour and contrarian, cynical and skeptical of everything, and the current President in the carrying - out of his election plans as pledged can be assessed as inherently and obviously so, especially about the present and future of our country, the U.S.  This is perhaps because, at least in practice, the President has seized upon a relativistic and compromising set of ideas and rationales to promote his policies as having been and being successful as they are actually not so - something that takes away from the type of defiance and pride in view of the world's challenges that we as a nation - state need at this point.  That the values of freedom and liberty are being put down in a number of states where they have recently arisen indicates the current presidency might not consider some of the people involved to be capable or responsible enough to have political freedoms and that they would otherwise regress again into tyrannies within their borders once the challenges of upheaval are over, even in the event the forces of freedom prevail there.  For a president who is assisted by Mr. Biden and a number of others in Congress who are experienced in events and attitudes of foreign rulers abroad, this administration has not carried the day in its opportunities in the conflicts for freedom in the international world, and it does seem that officials under our chief executive either have the switch 'on' or 'off' in their perceptions about military issues overseas and in principle have the attitude that American is guilty of things in somewhat taking on the view of the central Islamic world.  It seems the President's officials even want to scapegoat America in view of those who believe the 'Arab Spring,' for example, is an exercise in Zionism in their ideas not to assist in the rebellions against despotism in the Middle East, and in view of sporadic military resistance of the tyrannies to protests and rebellions that is apparently seen as dangerous to us. 

The values of liberty, the uniqueness of the freedoms of our system, individualism and American specialness that have characterised and prevailed in previous times of challenge and conflict, especially during the 1980's, are lost on the current leadership that has a considerably shrunken world view of our country with an emphasis apparently on the creation of byzantine federal programs.  Domestic and international realities, in the kind of inward, and stagnant vision the leadership has and that of American culpability, as sold through media image - making, the literature and through other channels, do not reflect the hopeful message and new starting points politically the president promised during the last election contest.  It is entirely possible those marxists versed in the strengths of Chinese communism and Mao Tse toung thought, during the 1960's and 1970's, for instance, projected the same self - appointed image for American politics today in seeing a future of essentially caretaking and ineffectual western political regimes in view of the future upheavals in the world at this time, be they economic, ideological or military.  It is apparently clear to the citizens of embattled cities, townships and regions, especially within the territories of the Middle East that the hopeful strategy of America has been flawed by an increasingly negative set of views and judgments about payoffs and benefits, revenues and costs, and other utilitarian measures with respect to what was set down by our forefathers in former times.  That the preeminent world power in the U.S. has a leadership with these set of beliefs around calculation of political events and the risks of failure as it apparently has is a collective and several administrative and egregious wrong and needs immediate attention and redressment.  It is also clear the questions around America's "peak" have been asked at Harvard and by its people for a long time, maybe (as a kind of hedge) for a hundred years, and the danger we face today is that such elitist and detached thinking, however dangerous and against the fiber of our state, might be wishful.  This needs be examined in the next elections, and in all events resolved by voters in 2012.