A More Compassionate Free-Market System

Pelosi Advocates 'A More Compassionate Free-Market System'

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/pelosi-advocates-more-compassionate-free-market-system

(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Friday that comprehensive immigration reform and a higher minimum wage would do more to lift Gross Domestic Product than the "tax scam" passed by Republicans.

She said those factors would produce "a more compassionate free-market system."

Pelosi spoke shortly after the Commerce Department announced that real gross domestic product increase at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter, down from 3.1 percent in the first quarter.

The Commerce Department noted that consumer spending, the "engine of the U.S. economy," surged at an annual 4.3 percent rate in the second quarter, as spending on goods rose at the fastest rate since the first quarter of 2006.

But Pelosi said bringing "everybody" into the system -- meaning people who came here without legal permission -- would do wonders.

At her final news conference before the August break, Pelosi noted that President Trump said he would achieve 3 percent GDP.

I do think that our GDP will rise when we have -- when we raise the minimum wage and people have more purchasing power because these are people who will spend, inject demand into the economy and therefore our GDP will rise.

I think if we had comprehensive immigration reform, where everybody is brought into the system in the way that is most productive -- economists tell me, you want to grow the economy, have comprehensive immigration reform. And how we not just have trickle down to grow our economy, but how we have bubble up.

That's a difference of opinion between our two parties. I think what you saw was that the tax scam that they put out there has not produced the growth that the president was boasting would happen. And that it hasn't produced the revenue. Hence we've had to lift the debt ceiling earlier than maybe people had expected. So that didn't work. It didn't pay for itself, and it isn't growing the economy to the extent that the president said it would.

And so I think we have to instead of giving tax breaks to the top 1 percent -- 83 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent -- we should have a more compassionate free-market system which rewards work and brings many more people into the prosperity of our country.

That consumer confidence, that spending, that injecting demand, I think, will accelerate the growth of our GDP.

To Democrats, "comprehensive immigration reform" means a pathway to citizenship for many of the people living here and still coming here illegally. The Democrat-controlled House has passed a bill raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but it is not expected to pass the Senate.

Hypothesis

All reasonable people with my background will realize that "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and recognize that laws against "price gauging" are bad "in the long term".

The issue of The Economist about CONSERVATISM

Charles Krauthammer said he thought worst mistake conservatives made was abandoning the academy.  Worldly Philosophers taught that economists who never leave the academy never loose "their stupidities of youth."

Myron Lynn Good (possibly quoting Winston Churchill) said, If you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart; if you aren't a conservative when you are old, you have no head.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. (See Jay W. Forrester paper.)

Your Only Halley’s
75 years; once in a lifetime

The timescale for the helix.  Technology allows living conditions to improve.

Dr. Brown, my father-in-law, blamed the French for Secular Humanism.

The US Army has lots of liaison officers - an Army person with whom to communicate.

p.9 says "Like classical liberalism, conservatism is a child of the Enlightment."

My political leanings draw upon my my family background, my exeriences, my teachings, and my readings.  A couple of Halley's removed from the US Civil War.

My experinces include reviewing drafts of https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Can-Happen-Christ-Science/dp/1481168126/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376295353&sr=1-1

When I checked (just now) you could be the first to review this book.

Dr. Brown and I had "the system view" in common.

Last night I tried to relocate the 4th line from the bottom of p. 9 and did not.  On the line it say, "For classical liberals, like this newspaper,".  3 lines below, begins "Both reject the Utopian impulse to find a government solution for every wrong. Both resist state planning and high taxes."

We left the DC Area in 1997 in part because I believed Newt Gingrich would be Speaker of the House after we got rid of Slick Willy in the next Presidential election.  At the time, I couldn't stand the sound of Newt's voice.

Newt is very good thinking government solutions which require less money from the taxpayers.  That means Big Brother can be involved in more of your life.

On p. 10, "Conservatism tempers liberal zeal;..."  My major professor at Wisconsin and Charles Krauthammer say age tempers liberal zeal.

p.17 last complete para left column: "Why I am not a conservative", Friedrich Hayek - I agree with all of the Hayek I understand.

top of middle column:  the nicely turned phrase of Roger Scruton, a British conservative writer, "as a hesitation within liberalism" over the French Revoution.

I had a deficit in my understanding of the French.  The first course [Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida] by Lawrence Cahoone addressed that need.  No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life by Robert C. Solomon
filled that need.

Middle column next para: "Much of what is best in later was built on Burke's response: his scepticism about radical change and his belief, human nature being what it is, the passions of the people must be checked by authority and good judgment. Liberals - including Hayek - often felt that new order would spring into being spontaneously from new freedoms.

I guess the Bushs are liberals.

later in the column:

(1797) by Joseph de Maistre

RH column:  it reads like the work of an 18th-century Rush Limbaugh.

Bottom of column:  It did not need ideological commitments to small government or balanced budgets.

I guess "it" is conservatism.  Maybe that is when I became a liberal.

JFK was a Roman Catholic.  So is Donald J. Trump.

I think a nobel prize went to The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism
Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990)
in Cambridge: Polity Press, pg. 9-54

The USA wins with Italy on family and religion.

p. 18 left column

"resentment against 'elites'--notably, in Europe,those in Brussels -- and 'others' ....In France the ...

Middle column:

"France's Gaullists, ...,have been torn apart by a new liberal party, ...

In 1977, France did not participate in NATO's Military Council.  The WWII de Gaul was President/Premier.

Mid-column:

One thing all these movements share a devotion to pride

I have negative feelings for the emotion pride.  A fellow last Sunday he was proud of our church.  I would be likely to say, "I'm thankful for our church."

Terry Oswalt and I chose Neil de Grasse Tyson as our favorite Great Courses professor.  I remember we were taken aback by his pride in the first lecture we heard.

"Conservatives have respect for a universal human nature;"    See my October 2010 blog about human nature.

Indicators that I am a liberal:

I like Hayek.
I don't like Burke.
I don't like pride.
I learned that "human nature" leads you to do the Christian thing early.
It took me a long time to recognize "that the road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions" although the evidence is obvious.

America is great again

Missouri had "the troubles" for six or seven years before the Civil War.  The Battle of Wilson's Creek saved St. Louis for the Union.  One of news magazines featured a story about Missouri the Backward State.  Northern Missouri near Kansas City had Confederate leanings and Southern Missouri near Springfield had Union leanings.

Things were MUCH worse then.

Sean Hannity says journalism is dead.  Mark R. Levin has recently written UNFREEDOM OF THE PRESS.

I think we have TOO HIGH EXPECTATIONS for the press.  Mark Twain did not suffer this handicap.


1) THE COMIC MARK TWAIN READER: The Most Humorous Selections from His Stories, Sketches, Novels, Travel Books and Lectures

By: Neider, Charles (ed)

Great Thinkers - Great Theorems

Mathematics is filled with beautiful theorems that are as breathtaking as the most celebrated works of art, literature, or music. They are the Mona Lisas, Hamlets, and Fifth Symphonys of the field—landmark achievements that repay endless study and that are the work of geniuses as fascinating as Leonardo, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. Here is a sample:

Pythagorean theorem:  Although he didn't discover the Pythagorean theorem about a remarkable property of right triangles, the Greek mathematician Euclid devised an ingenious proof that is a mathematical masterpiece. Plus, it's beautiful to look at!

Area of a circle:  The formula for the area of a circle, A = π r2, was deduced in a marvelous chain of reasoning by the Greek thinker Archimedes. His argument relied on the clever tactic of proof by contradiction not once, but twice.

Basel problem:  The Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler won his reputation in the early 1700s by evaluating an infinite series that had stumped the best mathematical minds for a generation. The solution was delightfully simple; the path to it, bewilderingly complex.

Larger infinities:  In the late 1800s, the German mathematician Georg Cantor blazed the trail into the "transfinite" by proving that some infinite sets are bigger than others, thereby opening a strange new realm of mathematics.

You can savor these results and many more in Great Thinkers, Great Theorems, 24 half-hour lectures that conduct you through more than 3,000 years of beautiful mathematics, telling the story of the growth of the field through a carefully chosen selection of its most awe-inspiring theorems.

Approaching great theorems the way an art course approaches great works of art, the course opens your mind to new levels of math appreciation. And it requires no more than a grasp of high school mathematics, although it will delight mathematicians of all abilities.

Your guide on this lavishly illustrated tour, which features detailed graphics walking you through every step of every proof, is Professor William Dunham of Muhlenberg College, an award-winning teacher who has developed an artist's eye for conveying the essence of a mathematical idea. Through his enthusiasm for brilliant strategies, novel tactics, and other hallmarks of great theorems, you learn how mathematicians think and what they mean by "beauty" in their work. As added enrichment, the course guidebook has supplementary questions and problems that allow you to go deeper into the ideas behind the theorems.

Source:  https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/great-thinkers-great-theorems.html

Is Kant's "proof" still valid?

"Mathematics, Philosophy, and the Real World" seems to say that Kant's "proof" is no longer valid.



Lecture 27 Describes

Kant's classification scheme, which confines metaphysical statements such as "every effect has a cause" to a category called a priori synthetic.

Kant's "proof" cites Euclid's "parallel hypothesis" which which physicists no longer believe holds "in the Real World".

Command and Control lessons for our negotiations with North Korea

In command and control terminology, the dictator for North Korea must make a Command Decision.
It helps that the military has seen what Vietnam has done.

Command Decisions are top down decisions.  Description of top down versus bottom is the topic of an article at https://www.managementstudyguide.com/top-down-versus-bottom-up-decision-making.htm