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| Political Books |
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| Religious Books -- Not Fundamentalist! |
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The Fundamentalist Xtians should not be allowed to hijack the language of Christianity. They are at least as much heretics to Christianity as the Arians and Gnostics of early Christian days.
Biblical inerrancy is not possible.
The books both above and below show the limitations of language and the impossibility of Biblical Inerrancy.
How can language be misused? Using General Semantics, this book was Written to explain Nazi propaganda and still used as a textbook
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| Books - Popular Math, Post Enlightenment & Science |
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This book explains why the above books on Christian Fundamentalism are politically important in America today.
Modern Society measures risk & predicts possible futures. The book below is a higly readable history of insurance, statistics and modern financial instruments.
Compare this to religion, in which it is presumed that the perfect society was known in the past and all that is necessary to do is to return to that perfect society.
Fascinating, highly readable and fun book on modern mathematics and its limitations. If you are interested in ideas, this is your book!
This is a collection of Hofstader's Scientific American articles. Again, a very fascinationg and highly readable book, requiring no mathematical background. (Buy it used - it is one of the books that will keep disappearing.)
Older, very fascinating book on mathematical ideas. Did you know there are three kinds of infinity?
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| Monday, May 09, 2005 |
| New study - Democrats better for economy |
We all know that Democratic Presidents are invariably better for the economy than Republicans. Every time anyone pulls the statistics out and analyzes them, the story comes out the same. But Kevin Drum has gotten some new results in addition.
A second point is that Democratic Presidents do better for the economy every year except the year of the election. Republican Presidents have better economies in the year they are elected.
OK. New one to me. Still, I think that Republicans are intellectually tied into "trickle down economics", largely because they believe that hierarchies are the more efficient form of economic organization and that bigger business organizations are better. The two are connected to the idea that social success occurs because the elite makes it happen, and the elite makes it happen more if they are rewarded financially to a greater extent. Because of this Republicans work harder to understand and practice leadership than they do to understand what really makes each business successful. So they operate on the idea that it is more important to select and motivate leaders than it is to look out to the masses of people and find out who is doing the best job, then bring them into the business. [Yeah, yeah. Oversimplification here. I am actually presenting the two endpoints of a continuum.]
Democrats on the other hand are more interested in how the workers operate. They then select, train and reward the actual workers rather then leaders. Looking at Kevin Drums numbers, this would spread the rewards out to more than just the leaders, and would get a lot more input on how to do the job better from the people who are actually doing the job. The effect of this would be to increase economic productivity while spreading the rewards to most workers. Exactly the effects Kevin describes.
But why do Republican Presidents get better economic performance in election years? My best guess is that they pander to a much wider range of people during those years and do things to get elected that their conservative philosophies would not consider effective economically. That's the only idea I have, and I feel that it is weaker than the party characteristics I described above. I just don't have any better idea.
Anyone else have any ideas? Comments are working here. Try them out. |
posted by Richard @ 2:59 AM   |
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| 1 Comments: |
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Yeah, here's an idea: economic impact is anything but immediate. Maybe, just maybe, Clinton's technology boom (the driving force behind the good economy) had something to do with the groundwork laid by 12 years of Republican presidents in advance of him? And maybe, just maybe Bush 43's recession, which, by the way, began before he took office, had something to do with what happened under Clinton as well as the natural end of that tech bubble?
Hmmmm... unless, of course, you believe that a President has immediate impact on the economy, which I find very tough to swallow.
In fact, let's go back and take a look at the first four years of FDR's presidency... NIGHTMARE economy, not improving. You give him some time (and a World War) and the economy turns around—but it was anything but immediate.
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Name: Richard
The single most important essay that I have published here is Rule of Law vs. Arbitrary Command.
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Yeah, here's an idea: economic impact is anything but immediate. Maybe, just maybe, Clinton's technology boom (the driving force behind the good economy) had something to do with the groundwork laid by 12 years of Republican presidents in advance of him? And maybe, just maybe Bush 43's recession, which, by the way, began before he took office, had something to do with what happened under Clinton as well as the natural end of that tech bubble?
Hmmmm... unless, of course, you believe that a President has immediate impact on the economy, which I find very tough to swallow.
In fact, let's go back and take a look at the first four years of FDR's presidency... NIGHTMARE economy, not improving. You give him some time (and a World War) and the economy turns around—but it was anything but immediate.