Extra Credits
Published on 22 Nov 2018This series is brought to you by World of Tanks PC. Check out the game at https://redir.wargaming.net/z3ehuthn/… and use the code ORLIK for extra goodies.
Poland is threatened in 1939 not just by the Nazis, but by its own precarious geography between Germany and Soviet Russia. Edward Rydz-Śmigły spreads the Polish cavalry and tanks as thin as he has to around the border…
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November 23, 2018
Defense of Poland – The Battle of the Border – Extra History – #1
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“These are deficits of choice, not necessity”
The federal government released its fall economic statement the other day. The contents would not really have been a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention since the last election, as Andrew Coyne explains:
The 2018 fall economic statement begins with a puzzle. Economic growth, it trumpets, is strong — the strongest in the G7 in, er, 2017. Unemployment is at a 40-year low; capacity utilization is back to pre-recession levels; profits are up; wages are growing faster than they have in eight years.
All this good news has produced a bumper crop of revenues to the federal treasury: an average of roughly $5.5-billion more annually over the next couple of years than was projected in the spring budget. Yet deficits are now projected to be … higher than expected — at $19.6 billion and $18.1 billion, respectively, about 10 per cent over forecast.
What explains this surprising result? Simple: as it has done throughout its tenure, the Trudeau government took the revenue windfall, and spent it — every last dollar and then some.
This is what the government calls “carefully managing deficits over the medium term.” It used to talk about reducing or even eliminating deficits. Now it seems devoted to doing whatever it takes to keep them in the $20 billion range, in perpetuity.
To be sure, the current set of projections, like its predecessors, shows deficits declining majestically in later years. But somehow in the here and now they never do. Once upon a time, this was supposed to be owing to a shortfall in revenues, the fruit of the Harper government’s supposed obsession with austerity.
By now this is not even pretended. The last Harper budget projected revenues for the current fiscal year at $326.9 billion, enough for a small surplus. The latest estimate has them at $328.9 billion — yet the deficit stands at $18.1 billion. Even allowing for a couple of billion dollars in accounting adjustments, it’s clear what is going on. These are deficits of choice, not necessity.
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The Aggregate Demand Curve
Marginal Revolution University
Published on 18 Apr 2017This wk: Put your quantity theory of money knowledge to use in understanding the aggregate demand curve.
Next wk: Use your knowledge of the AD curve to dig into the long-run aggregate supply curve.
The aggregate demand-aggregate supply model, or AD-AS model, can help us understand business fluctuations. In this video, we’ll focus on the aggregate demand curve.
The aggregate demand curve shows us all of the possible combinations of inflation and real growth that are consistent with a specified rate of spending growth. The dynamic quantity theory of money (M + v = P + Y), which we covered in a previous video, can help us understand this concept.
We’ll walk you through an example by plotting inflation on the y-axis and real growth on the x-axis — helping us draw an aggregate demand curve!
Next week, we’ll combine our new knowledge on the AD curve with the long-run aggregate supply curve. Stay tuned!
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QotD: Inactivist bumper stickers
I’ve received several hundred suggestions for inactivist bumper-sticker slogans and, as befits the situation, I’ve been slow to read them. Still, I like some of them quite a bit:
Visualize me ignoring you.
How about “let’s not.”
Don’t honk if you can’t be bothered.
Don’t Act, NOW!
If not now, whenever.
Leave well enough alone
Slacking: It’s not just for kids.
YOU Save the Whales!
Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint.
Ask Not.
Future Site of Political Statement.And so on.
But there’s a problem. Many readers segued too easily from celebrating inactivism to championing outright sloth. For example, “Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint” is a fine inactive motto. But “They can have my channel changer when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand,” while very funny is off point. “Don’t Mess With Stasis,” doesn’t quite rhyme but it’s got the right idea. “Think globally, act loafally,” meanwhile, has the wrong idea — except insofar as it mocks people with stupid bumper stickers.
The funny thing is that inactivists are actually very active people. I would bet that — this is a broad generalization-the folks who find inactivism politically appealing probably work harder and are more successful then people who find conventional activism attractive. Inactivists didn’t boycott the Million Mom March simply because they had better things to do. They stayed home because they believe the Million Mom March was a vast, peripatetic parade of propaganda. Inactivists don’t fail to mobilize solely because we’d rather watch a rerun of Matlock than chant for vegetable rights and peace at city hall. We actually don’t believe in vegetable rights. We want our carrots to remain as chattel.
I agree that sloth is funny. And I suppose that’s why so many people want Homer Simpson to become the inactivist spokesperson. I laugh whenever I hear Homer Simpson speak admiringly of Teamsters: “Oh, I always wanted to be a Teamster. So lazy and surly… mind if I relax next to you?” And his campaign slogan when he ran for garbage commissioner was pretty good. “Can’t someone else do it?” The best line from that episode was when he told Springfield voters “Animals are crapping in our houses and we’re picking it up! Did we lose a war?” But still, Homer’s wrong when he tells his kids “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try.”
Jonah Goldberg, “Let History Come To You”, National Review, 2002-07-24.
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