Arnold running for Governor of California

[FlamingSheep]

I was watching the West Wing, and this "Special Announcement" marquee came on underneath the show. You'd think there was a snowstorm warning or something.

I know nothing about American politics, but I'm interested in what this means.

Does he have a chance (I would think he'd win)?

Can he be a future US President (Demolition Man comes to mind)?

[bmulligan]

I heard that he was making an announcement on Lay Leno's show tonight, not that he's already announced a decision. You do get that show up in kanuckland don't you?

[Dirt]

Beware the Governator.

He can't be President. He's Austrian. Like Hitler!!!!!!

[FlamingSheep]

I heard that he was making an announcement on Lay Leno's show tonight, not that he's already announced a decision. You do get that show up in kanuckland don't you?

Unfortunately, no. I guess we Canadians can't complain; we are getting cable with polar bear bone TV antennae after all.

I don't know... I was watching NBC, and it said "Arnold Swarzeneggerenneggerzaerager running for governor"...

later, they showed a commercial for Jay Leno and Arnold was running out waving a US Flag. Hrmm.. I guess i should have said SPOILERS FOR TONIGHTS JAY LENO.

[JeffL]

He's making the announcement, but since they tape that show earlier in the day, it leaked that he's surprised everyone and announced he IS running.

That should make things interesting...

[TimElhajj]

I was watching the West Wing

Wha? West Wing is back. Is it a new season or reruns? I wouldn't mind seeing the reruns because I didn't start watching it until just last year or so. I am so out of the loop.

[FlamingSheep]

I think it's a super rerun. I don't normally watch TV, but if I see a show like the West Wing, I stick around for a bit.

[Charles]

Unfortunately, no. I guess we Canadians can't complain; we are getting cable with polar bear bone TV antennae after all.


Where the hell do you live where you don't get the Tonight Show? Basic cable anywhere that I know of will get you at least one channel that shows it.

[Machfive]

Davis is going to get Terminated.

Or rather, whoever's stupid enough to go up against Arnold will be. He's gonna rock the vote so hard, it won't know what hit it.

Maybe he can do something about Cali's awful firearm laws while he's fixing everything that's become fucked up about that state in the last several decades.

[TimElhajj]

I think it's a super rerun. I don't normally watch TV, but if I see a show like the West Wing, I stick around for a bit.

Alright, Sheep. Your post caused me to check my Tivo and I can in fact find reruns from all the way back in 99 on Bravo channel. Apparently Sunday is some sort of wacky marathon, with like 4 hours of back to back shows.

[Woolen Horde]

I don't think I'm going out on a limb here in saying that California is going to fall to the GOP side of things.

After Arnold declared, California Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante declared he would run. Bustamante is a Democrat, and you can see that with Arnold in the race, the Dems know that Gray Davis is doomed and they're now abandoning him. But Arnold has a lot more name recognition than Bustamante, and his positions on the issues will appeal to a lot of people: he's pro-Gay rights, pro-choice on Abortion, and pro-gun control. So it's not like he's going to present himself as a far right winger... he's gonna present himself as a moderate Republican with boatloads of name recognition and movie-star charisma.

And with Diane Feinstein out, the Dems just don't have anybody who could compete.

[Woolen Horde]

That said: here's one candidate who might place second in name recognition...

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/06/candidate.coleman/index.html

[voltaic]

Plus Bustamante is a punk. I've learned that about him and Gray and I moved here (Sacramento) only two years ago.

[Kool Moe Dee]

Ha! Take that, Minnesota! :twisted:

[Ignatius P. Reilly]

http://www.homevideos.com/photosaction/total.jpeg

[Jason McCullough]

Arnold's pro-gun control?????

[cyborg]

Of course - he's always been in full control of his firearms :twisted:

[Ron Dulin]

So, the candidates are:

Arnold
Gary Colemen
Angelyne
Some stripper
Gray Davis

?

[Shawn Metcalf]

I'll buck the trend here and predict that Gray will survive the recall election. Gray is a solid campaigner, and the essential thrust of what will probably be his message - that a successful recall will mean another election every year, forever - is just getting started.

Besides, I've seen them there robot movies Arnold's in, and he always gets killed at the end.

[Rywill]

So, the candidates are:

Arnold
Gary Colemen
Angelyne
Some stripper
Gray Davis

?
Don't forget my man Larry Flynt. Legalized prostitution, baby! He's got my vote. Also, local morning-show DJ Kevin Ryder is running on the "Party Party" ticket, with one plank: legalize pot. I just don't know where to cast my Libertarian vote!!

[XPav]

I heard Gallagher (watermelon man) was thinking of running.

[Ron Dulin]

Don't forget my man Larry Flynt.

Believe me, I couldn't if I tried.

[Ron Dulin]

I heard Gallagher (watermelon man) was thinking of running.

How can we be sure it isn't Gallagher II (http://www.whatzup.com/Archives/cover051100.html)?

[Jason McCullough]

After hearing some of his announcement today, Davis is in serious fucking trouble. He could fend off Issa, but it sounds like Arnold's kind of got the non-partisan thing going on. Will Davis's slime machine be enough to fend him off??!?!?!

Oh, and the wacked-out conservatives that nominated that nutbag Simon last time are *not* going to be happy with Arnold. Could be interesting.

His love of Milton Friedman is creepy, though.

Favorite bit (http://www.msnbc.com/news/949333.asp?0bl=-0) so far:


Last year’s re-release of the film that first made him a star in the United States, the acclaimed 1977 documentary “Pumping Iron,” also brought scrutiny when it was noted that Schwarzenegger, then preparing to defend one of his bodybuilding titles, was seen smoking marijuana in one scene.

When the film was re-released last November, Schwarzenegger said he supported leaving that scene in, telling The Associated Press that to have taken it out would have compromised the filmmaker’s vision.

“I did smoke a joint and I did inhale,” he told the AP. “The bottom line is that’s what it was in the ’70s, that’s what I did. I have never touched it since.”

!

[DennyA]

Here's the wonderful, wonderful irony.

Issa just dropped out of the race. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29341-2003Aug7.html) The big wuss was apparently fighting back tears during his announcement. Oh, so sorry your little ploy didn't work for ya, Darrell.

Favorite quote of the dropout speech?


"I will continue with my wife's support to fund the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis and when it's over we will return to Congress to support President Bush's effort for Middle East peace."
Middle East Peace? What, by not starting a third war there? :-/

So he's not going to do his job until after the special election?

[Jason McCullough]

Haha, the Issa thing is hilarious. Crying that his little plot didn't work out.....

[Woolen Horde]

Davis is in huge trouble. His primary strategy to survive was to prevent other Democrats from running, thus fragmenting the Democratic vote. That appeared to work when DiFi said she wasn't running, but after Arnie jumped in, damn near every other major Democratic elected official in the state just jumped in.

I don't think Bustamante could win, but I do think he could fragment some Latino votes that would have gone to Davis.

The insurance commissioner is running too, and he's a Democrat and he will siphon off votes.

And Arnie is going to maneuver hard to appeal to moderate Democrats and Reagan Democrats.

Frankly, this is Arnies best shot at public office. Because if he had waited to the general election, he would have been destroyed in the primaries by the Right-Wing, Orange County Zealots who have made Gray Davis' job of getting re-elected easy because they nominate Right Wing Wackos that make Davis by far the lesser of two evils. Arnie *is* pro-gun control, pro-choice, and pro-gay rights.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/934778.asp

Frankly, Davis is so far gone it's not even funny. Can't say he doesn't deserves it, though. He is the king of campaign sleeze. The only reason he keeps getting elected is because he gets worst opponents than himself. And the galling thing is, after 2002, his supporters were quietly putting together a Gray Davis for President campaign. Bush and Rove would have crushed a Gray Davis candidacy like the US military pulverized the Iraqi military.

[Rywill]

It's funny--or maybe not--but this really is a great scenario for someone like Schwartzenegger. Very short campaign, lots of candidates, you only need a plurality of votes to win. Someone with his name recognition and likeability could actually bring it home in a race like this. As icing on the cake, he gets to sit there and go "The system is broken. I'm going to clean house." and there's too much noise / not enough time for people to get around to pressing him on "What does that mean, exactly?"

EDIT: that article describes him as being "fiscally conservative, but socially liberal," which is the textbook description of a libertarian. Pro-gay-rights, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-school, pro-immigrant, anti-tax. And not dependent on anyone else's money, and apparently willing to admit but brush off allegations of things like marijuana and steroid use. I'm scared to say it, but I think I'm actually going to look into this guy more carefully, if any more info is available. Jesus.

EDIT AGAIN: Never mind, voting for him would be completely loony. I like his beliefs, but he just doesn't have the experience to run something like California.

[Stroker Ace]

does anyone NOT root for the weirdos to win elections in states where they don't live?

this is the best thing since jesse ventura won in MN!

:lol:

[Tyjenks]

does anyone NOT root for the weirdos to win elections in states where they don't live?

this is the best thing since jesse ventura won in MN!

:lol:

I'd take anyone over ours, Stroker. Bob Riley is a Republican and a tax-happy moron. The worst of both worlds! Actual quote:

"It is our Christian duty to vote for this tax bill Sept. 9th."

With all due respect for the lord, "Fuck your proposal, Gov. Riley".

[Stroker Ace]

I work for Bob's most vocal opponent (in a sysadmin role), not naming any names though. Watch some anti-Riley ads and see if you can't figure it out.

[Tyjenks]

I work for Bob's most vocal opponent (in a sysadmin role), not naming any names though. Watch some anti-Riley ads and see if you can't figure it out.

Sweet, do they need a bookkeeper. :wink:

[Stroker Ace]

Actually, our old one had a stroke after a month on the job and then had the gall to blame it on us. So yeah, her desk has been empty for 1-2 months...

Of course, most everyone who works here has gotten in through knowing an associate of the company. I'm afraid i can't vouch for you yet. :P

[Ben Sones]

EDIT AGAIN: Never mind, voting for him would be completely loony. I like his beliefs, but he just doesn't have the experience to run something like California.

I'd argue that Jesse Ventura wasn't experienced enough to take on the governorship, either, and yet he did a fine job. Granted, California is a bigger state than Minnesota, and has more serious problems. But maybe putting somebody in charge who isn't a part of the political machine is just the sort of change the state needs. I'd like to see more people in office who aren't career politicians, frankly.

[VegasRobb]

Rywill,

Why not just run as the Libertarian Party's candidate? :)

Whoever mentioned the Davis' "Slime Machine" has it right. Arnold is going to get torn apart in the media. Adultery, Bankruptcy, etc. I'm not sure if his American Dream platform is going to take him through.

Nice selection of candidates and it seems to get nicer ever hour. You'd think Gary Coleman would need the $3500 that it costs to file, perhaps he paid for it out of campaign funds? :)

[XPav]

I'd argue that Jesse Ventura wasn't experienced enough to take on the governorship, either, and yet he did a fine job. Granted, California is a bigger state than Minnesota, and has more serious problems. But maybe putting somebody in charge who isn't a part of the political machine is just the sort of change the state needs. I'd like to see more people in office who aren't career politicians, frankly.

Term limits have started constant revolution of "non career politicians" into the California State government. They're the real people that fucked up everything royallu. With such short term limits, no one on board now was around during the last budget crisis, and since everyone's going to be gone in a few years, there's no reason to cooperate on anything.

Plus, since all the seats are in safe districts, anyone can vote on anything they really want, and they'll still get reelected.

In short: inexperienced legislators accountable to no one. Gee, I wonder why we have problems... LETS RECALL THE GOVERNOR, that'll solve everything.

Fuck Darrell Issa. Just wait until whoever wins the recall election has to immediately face another recall election. We need to send a killer cyborg back in time to shoot the people that added the recall amendment to the CA consitution.

[Anders Hallin]

this is the best thing since jesse ventura won in MN!
Next up running for governor: The Predator

[Mike Cathcart]

I'm rooting for Gary Coleman. I'd really like to see Gary end up Lt., though. Then Arnold could challenge other Governers to Lt. Governer tossing contests.

[Stroker Ace]

this is the best thing since jesse ventura won in MN!
Next up running for governor: The Predator

http://www.film.warka.pl/images/mctiernan/predator.jpghttp://www.jeje.nu/arnold/predator/predator.jpghttp://www.fast-rewind.com/predator2.jpg

[XPav]

I'm rooting for Gary Coleman. I'd really like to see Gary end up Lt., though. Then Arnold could challenge other Governers to Lt. Governer tossing contests.
Gary Coleman says he's not going to campaign now that Arnold is in the race.

[Rywill]

I'd argue that Jesse Ventura wasn't experienced enough to take on the governorship, either, and yet he did a fine job. Granted, California is a bigger state than Minnesota, and has more serious problems. But maybe putting somebody in charge who isn't a part of the political machine is just the sort of change the state needs. I'd like to see more people in office who aren't career politicians, frankly.
That has a visceral appeal, but I just don't think so. Minnesota is one thing; California is another. California's economy is the sixth-largest in the world; the budget deficits are terrible; our power deregulation plan got all screwed up; we have a foreign border; etc. I don't think it's a job that can be done just based on value judgments. You need to have some experience running such a large entity, and a good understanding of the issues coming in. I don't think Arnold has either of those things.

Maybe it's okay to let some newb run a small company, but you're not going to make him CEO of General Motors. Same deal with CA, IMO. It's too bad--his values are pretty much exactly mine, and if he had any experience I really would consider voting for him.

[Woolen Horde]

That has a visceral appeal, but I just don't think so. Minnesota is one thing; California is another. California's economy is the sixth-largest in the world; the budget deficits are terrible; our power deregulation plan got all screwed up; we have a foreign border; etc. I don't think it's a job that can be done just based on value judgments. You need to have some experience running such a large entity, and a good understanding of the issues coming in. I don't think Arnold has either of those things.


Uhhhhh.... Minnesota has a foreign border too. It's called CANADA!

[Jason McCullough]

That has a visceral appeal, but I just don't think so. Minnesota is one thing; California is another. California's economy is the sixth-largest in the world; the budget deficits are terrible; our power deregulation plan got all screwed up; we have a foreign border; etc. I don't think it's a job that can be done just based on value judgments. You need to have some experience running such a large entity, and a good understanding of the issues coming in. I don't think Arnold has either of those things.

You can also use this argument to explain why Bush, whose only electoral experience was the powerless Governor's office in Texas, is amazingly unqualified.

I've turned around a bit on the "unqualified candidates" thing; it's not like we're electing people to be accountants. That's what aides and civil servants are for.

[Rywill]

Uhhhhh.... Minnesota has a foreign border too. It's called CANADA!
You mean U.S.A. North?

[Rywill]

You can also use this argument to explain why Bush, whose only electoral experience was the powerless Governor's office in Texas, is amazingly unqualified.

I've turned around a bit on the "unqualified candidates" thing; it's not like we're electing people to be accountants. That's what aides and civil servants are for.
I agree; Bush is spectacularly unqualified. I don't agree with your reasoning, though. I think Bush's lack of qualification, and its negative effect on his value as a president, is made painfully apparent in the way he handles things like foreign policy, dealing with reporters, the budget, etc. Part of it, I'm sure, is just that Bush is the biggest baby since the Golden Grimoire Baby, but I think a big part of his problem is that he doesn't understand stuff very well.

That leaves you with pretty much two options: 1) have the uninformed guy make a value judgment between various options given to him by his staff; or 2) have the guy's staff make the decisions and him just rubber-stamp them or have minimal influence. I think scenario 1 is bad because even if you have good values, it's difficult to choose between two options that you don't fully understand (even if someone briefs or outlines it for you). For example, I trust my values 100%, but I don't think I'd be qualified to decide how to fix the budget crisis without months and months of study, and we probably don't have months. I think scenario 2 is obviously bad, in the sense that you might as well not have elected the guy in the first place; all decisions are made by unaccountable aides (although I guess the argument is you can effectively vote the aides out by voting the guy out).

[Case]

Uhhhhh.... Minnesota has a foreign border too. It's called CANADA!
You mean U.S.A. North?

No, he means the 51st state.

:D

[Toddy]

You guys are about to elect a has-been actor to govern your most populous state (again!) and you're making fun of us? Sheesh. Cue the calliope music already and STFU. ;-)

[FlamingSheep]

Insults to both Arnold and my country... my poor heart can't take anymore.

[ElRavager]

fuckin' a arnie is gonna kick some ass! too much time spent with the vicious back and forth finger-pointing and bad-mouthing between republican/democrat zealots (they're all greedy pandering politicians), meanwhile the country goes down the shitter regardless of idealogy.. while in the background the zealots keep pointing fingers, the politicians keep looking out for no.1, and the special interests pull the strings.. I wanna see Arnie show up with with some heavy gear... "I'm cleaning house."

http://www.film.warka.pl/images/mctiernan/predator.jpg

[Jason McCullough]

You can also use this argument to explain why Bush, whose only electoral experience was the powerless Governor's office in Texas, is amazingly unqualified.

I've turned around a bit on the "unqualified candidates" thing; it's not like we're electing people to be accountants. That's what aides and civil servants are for.
I agree; Bush is spectacularly unqualified. I don't agree with your reasoning, though. I think Bush's lack of qualification, and its negative effect on his value as a president, is made painfully apparent in the way he handles things like foreign policy, dealing with reporters, the budget, etc. Part of it, I'm sure, is just that Bush is the biggest baby since the Golden Grimoire Baby, but I think a big part of his problem is that he doesn't understand stuff very well.

That leaves you with pretty much two options: 1) have the uninformed guy make a value judgment between various options given to him by his staff; or 2) have the guy's staff make the decisions and him just rubber-stamp them or have minimal influence. I think scenario 1 is bad because even if you have good values, it's difficult to choose between two options that you don't fully understand (even if someone briefs or outlines it for you). For example, I trust my values 100%, but I don't think I'd be qualified to decide how to fix the budget crisis without months and months of study, and we probably don't have months. I think scenario 2 is obviously bad, in the sense that you might as well not have elected the guy in the first place; all decisions are made by unaccountable aides (although I guess the argument is you can effectively vote the aides out by voting the guy out).

Oh, that's the difference then: I don't see Arnold as uninformed. He has a degree in something or another economics-related, and likes Milton Friedman, so he's not clueless like Bush. I really think Bush doesn't understand that deficits won't magically fix themselves, just like Reagan didn't understand it. Reagan was embarassingly bad at policy, but at least he had a coherent, explainable philosophy to make up for his failings, and fantastic political skills.

Arnold's no expert, but he's not in the Bush league. :D

Maybe "no slack-jawed yokels" in a better description.....

[Rywill]

<rimshot!>

Be kind to your waitresses, folks.

I confess that I was just assuming Arnold is clueless, what with him being a big-time movie star and bodybuilder and having that Austrian accent and all. If it turned out he somehow knew something about running a state, I'd be pretty impressed. Having an economics degree, while awesome, isn't really the same thing. But hey, I didn't even know he had that, so who knows?

[XPav]

Here's one thing I heard someone else say about Arnold's plan for fixing California's budget problems...


"First, as my vater would say, ve annex ze Sudetenland"

Horrible joke. I'm going to burn for that.

[Woolen Horde]

Let's see...

Arnie was a millionaire before he even started making movies... thanks to business and real estate deals.

He has an MBA.

He's married to the Kennedy clan, which has rubbed off on him.

He's fantastically rich, he even owns a 747 that he leases to an airline.

He came to America unable to speak English, and he literally did the Horatio Alger thing and turned himself into a movie star, a millionaire, and a Kennedy. Voters will just eat that up.

I'd take that over W., who coasted into Yale on his family's influence and money, coasted through Yale, dodged the draft by joining the Air National Guard and then "skipped" an entire year of service he can't account for.

And so what that he smoked pot in the 70's? At least he doesn't try to hide it. And Gore was quite a pot smoker in college, from all accounts as well. At least Arnie didn't snort coke like W., who doesn't even have the balls to admit it. But Everyone Knows He Did It.

[cyborg]

^The only black mark on Arnie really is his dealings with women... but then that didn't stop Clinton and Arnie seems to take a leaf out of his book when it comes to what constitutes sexual relations...

[JeffL]

I've turned around a bit on the "unqualified candidates" thing; it's not like we're electing people to be accountants. That's what aides and civil servants are for.

But who is qualified to run the United States? If you go on purely experience? It's not like being governor of podunk Arkansas is any great shakes over being Governor of Texas (and yes, I lived in Texas for years and know that the Lt. Governor has the real power there.) I'd argue that in the history of our nation, there is little to no correlation between relevant high level administrative experience and the quality of the presidency. I'd make the case that the correlation is much better with the person's political skills and savvy, decision making abilities, innate intelligence, and ability to manage.

Of course, particularly in the case of presidents within one's lifetime, judging who is a great president and who is a lousy president is so swayed by political stands that it's difficult to make correlations. As a good example (and I don't want to start the actual debate here) there are many who say that Reagan will go down as one of the great presidents the nation has had; most Democrats will vehemently oppose that view. And there is also just an indefinable "something" that makes a great leader - Carter, who I admire, was a highly moral man, very high integrity, incredibly intelligent, experienced in government, in sum he had most of the characteristics you would want in a national leader. Yet he was amazingly ineffective as a president. He was unable to work with Congress (Carter has stated that the reason for that was that he wanted to be "the people's president" and refused to play the games the Senators and Representatives expected from the President,) the economy was in shambles when he left, he was paralyzed by the Iran hostage dilemna, he just couldn't (by his own admission) accomplish anything he wanted to accomplish (although he should be remembered for his Middle East diplomacy. Yet you would have thought he would have had all of the tools to be one of the great presidents.

I think it just takes a very special person to be able to do the job of President of the United States well, and it goes far beyond what you can tell from a resume.

[Rywill]

Just to be clear, when I said "clueless" I didn't mean "stupid," I just meant "has no idea how to do this job." I'm sure Arnie's a very smart guy (although it looks like he's even smarter than I would have guessed). I still don't think he should be governor. Bill Gates is a smart guy, Albert Einstein was a smart guy, I wouldn't want either of them to be governor of California. I don't think it's a job that's amenable to on-the-job training; no matter how smart you are, if you don't come into it with a good grasp of the process and issues already in hand, you're probably going to be in way over your head. (That's just a guess, of course.)

[bee cubed]

if i lived in CA, i'd vote for him.

the problem with politics today is that it is run by big money and special interest groups. most politicians are slimeballs, more concerned with getting re-elected than they are with actually taking care of the things that they are in office to do.

obviously, i'd pick a profession politician for office, no matter how slimy, over some idiot crazy. but the even better choice would be an intelligent outsider, who hasn't been overwhelmed/corrupted before moving into office.

...

as to the whole experience, thing... lots of jobs look incredibly difficult from the outside. i bet that the governor of CA or the president or most of his advisors couldn't just jump in and start doing the jobs that many of us do.

i firmly believe that an intelligent, hard-working person can learn almost any job in a reasonable length of time, if they are given the proper resources. if arnold is willing to put in the time to research/understand the issues facing the CA government, he could be exactly what the state needs.

[Jason McCullough]

What process? If you get technical, it's nothing more than 24/7 glad-handling to get people to pass your bills. Your aides write the bills, and your contributers/idelogical backers come up with the ideas in the first place.

It's great when you have someone who's his own policy aide and a fantastic politician to boot (Clinton), but it tends to be a rare combination.

[Brian Koontz]

Uhhhhh.... Minnesota has a foreign border too. It's called CANADA!

I think of Minnesota and Canada as being nearly the same.

Other than the body-hacking, couldn't Fargo have taken place in Canada?

[Rywill]

What process? If you get technical, it's nothing more than 24/7 glad-handling to get people to pass your bills. Your aides write the bills, and your contributers/idelogical backers come up with the ideas in the first place.
Well, I guess I'm not the cynic that you are. Which is too bad, because by your logic, it doesn't matter who the governor is and I could just vote for whoever's name appears first.

[Jason McCullough]

Say what? There's real differences between worldviews on the candidates; that's what you're voting for.

[voltaic]

Real differences my ass. People like Rywill and myself are registered members of various "third parties" because there ain't no fuckin' difference between members of the Republi-crat party. I'm voting for Arnie just because he isn't a politician. That's the position I want my vote to mean.

[bee cubed]

I'm voting for Arnie just because he isn't a politician. That's the position I want my vote to mean.

agreed. we need to have more intelligent, dedicated non-politicians in office. unfortunately, a candidate really needs all three qualities and few candidates have them.

[JeffL]

I'm voting for Arnie just because he isn't a politician. That's the position I want my vote to mean.

agreed. we need to have more intelligent, dedicated non-politicians in office. unfortunately, a candidate really needs all three qualities and few candidates have them.

I do believe that the dominance of career politicians, those who count on being in power forever, is the core problem with our system today. They are all far more interested in gaining and maintaining that power rather than getting what needs to be done, done.

I'm a big fan of term limits all through the government. I know the downside, but I think the upside of knowing you only had the job for, say, 8 years, would far outweight the negatives.

[Jason McCullough]

"I disagree with both major parties" isn't equivalent to "there is no difference between them." :D

[XPav]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tmate/2003/tmate030807.gif

Quack.

[Andrew Mayer]

Real differences my ass. People like Rywill and myself are registered members of various "third parties" because there ain't no fuckin' difference between members of the Republi-crat party. I'm voting for Arnie just because he isn't a politician. That's the position I want my vote to mean.

Since you're voting for a Republican it means you're voting Republican.

Are you voting for or against the recall?

[voltaic]

"I disagree with both major parties" isn't equivalent to "there is no difference between them." :D
True enough. And while there are differences in the platforms, at the end of the day just about every contender in either party is the same as every other contender in both.


Since you're voting for a Republican it means you're voting Republican.
But what I want my vote to mean is that I don't want to vote for a politician. As I said in my original post, politicians are all the fuckin' same regardless of the platform or ticket they are running on. I don't vote for or against a party, I vote for a person (which usually means I vote against both major parties).

XPav, you Bay-area-living-in-bastard, what are your thoughts? Besides voting for the duck I mean. :wink:

[XPav]

I want to see if Gallagher runs before I make my choice.

Seriously though, I want to see if any candidate has any plans for fixing the budget problems. Arnold isn't an automatic out for me, because he is quite the social liberal.

We'll just have to see.

[Jason McCullough]

I'm not following how Arnold isn't a politician, though - he's cagey about his issue positions, cagey about his plans, blah blah blah. Even Ventura turned into one by the end of his term; there's a reason they act the way they all do.

I'm sure if a libertarian party popped up they'd act exactly the same, just have different policy prefs.

[Andrew Mayer]

As I said in my original post, politicians are all the fuckin' same regardless of the platform or ticket they are running on.

Your "disenfranchised chic" only manages to help exactly the people who sold you that stick of baloney in the first place. It's much better for them if you believe that there's "no difference" so you won't be able to do anything when one group actually does start picking your pocket.


I don't vote for or against a party, I vote for a person (which usually means I vote against both major parties).

Fair enough. But it's childish to believe that your vote is going to "change the system". How about voting for the candidate who is going to have the greatest actual effect in the direction you want?

[ydejin]

Real differences my ass. People like Rywill and myself are registered members of various "third parties" because there ain't no fuckin' difference between members of the Republi-crat party. I'm voting for Arnie just because he isn't a politician. That's the position I want my vote to mean.

How in the world can someone still maintain that there is not difference between Republican and Democrat with Bush at the helm? That Republi-crat stuff all sounded nice when Nader was running for President. But let's face it, Nader was indirectly responsible for Bush winning the election and now we have a maniac at the helm. Do you really think that Gore and Bush are equivalent.

[Brad Grenz]

A maniac, a corpse and a consumer advocate walk into a bar...

[ydejin]

A maniac, a corpse and a consumer advocate walk into a bar...

You know Brad, when you put it that way, it makes me start thinking I should have voted for Nader :)

[Brad Grenz]

I did!

[Qenan]

"It is our Christian duty to vote for this tax bill Sept. 9th."


Man, that's weird.

[Shawn Metcalf]

I'm not following how Arnold isn't a politician, though - he's cagey about his issue positions, cagey about his plans, blah blah blah. Even Ventura turned into one by the end of his term; there's a reason they act the way they all do.

More than that, I'm not following how anybody who holds political office isn't automatically a politician just by definition.

Arnold's not a politician? Well, he's running for the highest political office in his state. That makes the whole question of whether or not he's a politician pretty moot; even if he's not one currently, he's trying to become one.

[JeffL]

I'm not following how Arnold isn't a politician, though - he's cagey about his issue positions, cagey about his plans, blah blah blah. Even Ventura turned into one by the end of his term; there's a reason they act the way they all do.

More than that, I'm not following how anybody who holds political office isn't automatically a politician just by definition.

Arnold's not a politician? Well, he's running for the highest political office in his state. That makes the whole question of whether or not he's a politician pretty moot; even if he's not one currently, he's trying to become one.

I think what some people are trying to say is that he isn't a career politician, i.e., someone who's spent the majority of their life with their only job being politics. FWIW.

[Jason McCullough]

So they prefer the citizen-politician model? Ok, but that's not the vibe I normally pick up when people start complaining.....

[Supertanker]

I do believe that the dominance of career politicians, those who count on being in power forever, is the core problem with our system today. They are all far more interested in gaining and maintaining that power rather than getting what needs to be done, done.

I'm a big fan of term limits all through the government. I know the downside, but I think the upside of knowing you only had the job for, say, 8 years, would far outweight the negatives.

I think this is precisely the opposite of our problem in California. Term limits are one of the root causes of our budget problem. The experienced politicians have all been tossed out of office, and the number of new candidates constantly required has enabled the extremes of both parties to gain significant power through their ability to provide early political support. Being from the extremes, these candidates don't compromise with each other, resulting in stalemate. It has also vastly increased the power of lobbyists. We are quickly returning to the days of Artie Samish.

We had a budget crisis before, and it was solved by powerful, career politicians on both sides whipping their parties into line, sitting down & hammering out a deal. Willie Brown & Pete Wilson, your state needs you!

With only a couple terms to serve, none of the current office holders have to solve the problems, they just have to survive the crisis.

I'm waiting for Arnold to say something other than a platitude. His comments about fixing things are just hot air. Gray Davis couldn't save himself by getting a budget through the Legislature while the recall drive was going on. What does Arnold think he's going to do with the same powers, but instead being a member of the minority party? He's on track to be a significantly weaker governor than Davis.

[voltaic]

I'm not following how Arnold isn't a politician, though - he's cagey about his issue positions, cagey about his plans, blah blah blah. Even Ventura turned into one by the end of his term; there's a reason they act the way they all do.
The clarification posted below by jeff lackey was correct. Career politicians. I don't mean anyone who ever holds any office at all. Yeesh. And for the record, your point about Jesse Ventura is true, he became one, but he wasn't one just for winning an office.


I'm sure if a libertarian party popped up they'd act exactly the same, just have different policy prefs.
That has nothing to do with what I said. The party isn't the issue, the person is. As I said, for me this generally means I don't end up voting for the two main parties.


Your "disenfranchised chic" only manages to help exactly the people who sold you that stick of baloney in the first place. It's much better for them if you believe that there's "no difference" so you won't be able to do anything when one group actually does start picking your pocket.
They both pick my pockets. Read the news and some history books and get back to me.


Fair enough. But it's childish to believe that your vote is going to "change the system". How about voting for the candidate who is going to have the greatest actual effect in the direction you want?
Whoa there big daddy. Where did my post proclaim some kind of glorious system-wide change, or even the desire for it? How about voting for the candidate who most closely matches how you think things ought to be? Seems to me that's what voting is for. Voting for someone who will have the greatest actual effect requires a crystal ball and deep pockets.


How in the world can someone still maintain that there is not difference between Republican and Democrat with Bush at the helm? That Republi-crat stuff all sounded nice when Nader was running for President. But let's face it, Nader was indirectly responsible for Bush winning the election and now we have a maniac at the helm. Do you really think that Gore and Bush are equivalent.
I didn't say any person is equivalent to any other. I said the parties. I think it's a damn important distinction. And you can hardly use a supreme tool like Dubya to prove any kind of points except that it doesn't take a genius to sit in the White House.

[JeffL]

I do believe that the dominance of career politicians, those who count on being in power forever, is the core problem with our system today. They are all far more interested in gaining and maintaining that power rather than getting what needs to be done, done.

I'm a big fan of term limits all through the government. I know the downside, but I think the upside of knowing you only had the job for, say, 8 years, would far outweight the negatives.

I think this is precisely the opposite of our problem in California. Term limits are one of the root causes of our budget problem. The experienced politicians have all been tossed out of office, and the number of new candidates constantly required has enabled the extremes of both parties to gain significant power through their ability to provide early political support. Being from the extremes, these candidates don't compromise with each other, resulting in stalemate. It has also vastly increased the power of lobbyists. We are quickly returning to the days of Artie Samish.

We had a budget crisis before, and it was solved by powerful, career politicians on both sides whipping their parties into line, sitting down & hammering out a deal. Willie Brown & Pete Wilson, your state needs you!

With only a couple terms to serve, none of the current office holders have to solve the problems, they just have to survive the crisis.



Those are excellent points, and that is the downside of term limits. My frustration is that, certainly at the federal level, career politicians are concerned soley with what will make the other side look bad as what has now been adopted as the best way to stay in power. Agreeing that the other side has a good idea and working together is very, very rare - there's nothing to bash come election time if you and your opponents are agreeing and working together.

The downside is precisely what you pointed out - inexperience. But I would hope that if you only have a couple of terms to serve you wouldn't merely try to ride out the terms, you'd be motivated to try to do your best to solve the problems. Why else try to get in office? (OK, that was naive - I know there are other reasons...)

[Andrew Mayer]

They both pick my pockets. Read the news and some history books and get back to me.

How about the newspaper? The Republicans are currently stuffing billions of dollars into their friend's pockets, and sticking us with the bill.

Last time I checked the Dems balanced the budget and didn't go on a spending spree.


Whoa there big daddy. Where did my post proclaim some kind of glorious system-wide change, or even the desire for it? How about voting for the candidate who most closely matches how you think things ought to be? Seems to me that's what voting is for. Voting for someone who will have the greatest actual effect requires a crystal ball and deep pockets.

How about paying attention to what they're saying and what they're doing?

Things will never match the way you think things "ought to be". Politics is the art of compromise... That's something you'll pick up reading those history books of yours.

Another, less expensive, way to gauge the effect someone is going to have is by paying attention to the actions and positions of their affiliated party.

[Jason McCullough]

There's a theory that term-limiting all political offices will just hand all the power to lobbyists - the only people who stick around for any length of time. Not sure, myself.

It's also *extremely* difficult to get enough money to run for office unless you're a) independently wealthy or b) a career politician; term limits everywhere would only exacerbate this. Yet another reason for public financing.....

[voltaic]

Last time I checked the Dems balanced the budget and didn't go on a spending spree.
Really? Sorry, I thought your boy Gray was a Democrat. Guess I better get back to hittin' them learnin' books.


Things will never match the way you think things "ought to be". Politics is the art of compromise... That's something you'll pick up reading those history books of yours.
<sigh> You're right, I give up. I will not vote with the child-like idea that my opinion matters and the way I think things should be matters. Instead I'll vote for the party who will simply do less damage. And I'll vote for the patry, not the person. My eyes are bovined, I'm ready to do whatever the TV commercials tell me.

Moo.

[Andrew Mayer]

Last time I checked the Dems balanced the budget and didn't go on a spending spree.
Really? Sorry, I thought your boy Gray was a Democrat. Guess I better get back to hittin' them learnin' books.


Things will never match the way you think things "ought to be". Politics is the art of compromise... That's something you'll pick up reading those history books of yours.
<sigh> You're right, I give up. I will not vote with the child-like idea that my opinion matters and the way I think things should be matters. Instead I'll vote for the party who will simply do less damage. And I'll vote for the patry, not the person. My eyes are bovined, I'm ready to do whatever the TV commercials tell me.

Moo.

Words in my mouth and a straw man argument in the same post... I know I must be doing something right.

You've created your own false set of limitations. There are other options between radicalism and bovine obedience. Think about it and create some.

As for Gray... That's a whole 'nother issue. Do you honestly think that our Democratic system shoudl be subverted every time the populace isn't happy with today's headlines?

We have elections every four years. It's worked for the last 200. If the guy commits a crime then impeach him. Otherwise give him the chance to do the job he was elected to do, then let him run on that record.

[voltaic]

You've created your own false set of limitations. There are other options between radicalism and bovine obedience. Think about it and create some.
I don't know what to say. I've never heard "I refuse to vote for a party and instead want my vote to show politicians that I'm tired of their party-line BS" called radical or limiting. Although upon reflection I'm OK with it being called radical.


As for Gray... That's a whole 'nother issue. Do you honestly think that our Democratic system shoudl be subverted every time the populace isn't happy with today's headlines?
I stated that both major parties are busy taking money out of my (and others) pockets. You took a jab at Republicans for mismanaging finances. I used Gray as an example to remind you that this isn't something just for Republicans but for, as I said, both major parties. Now you're talking about subverting the democratic process with headlines? Talk about a strawman.


We have elections every four years. It's worked for the last 200. If the guy commits a crime then impeach him. Otherwise give him the chance to do the job he was elected to do, then let him run on that record.
I agree. What does this have to do with me voting my conscience instead of party lines?

[Jason McCullough]

For reference on the "free spending Gray Davis thing": in 1990 California's state spending as a percentage of GSP (the state equivalent of GDP) was 5.9%. As of 2001 it was 6.8%. So a little bit less than 1% of income difference there.

I can't find it at the moment, but I remember seeing that CA's state spending was in the middle of the pack when you rank the states.

Here we go (http://www.calpundit.com/archives/001352.html): the history of state + local spending in CA.

[Sharpe]

Jason, the numbers I saw on the chart in the link are a bit different from what you posted. According to CalPundit, the 20 yr average is 9.67% of GSP, and for 2000 we hit about 11% (he doesnt have figures for 2001 and 2002 that I could see).

There is one important fact to note here: the 9.67% of GSP "baseline" is, I believe, high, when compared to a longer term history of California. Specifically, state and local spending (and taxes, especially property taxes) spiked upwards sharply in the 1970s, which prompted the "taxpayer revolt" and Proposition 13. So the figures from the early 80s (the peak prior to the current crisis) are out of line with what I believe the historical baseline to be.

It is my understanding that back in the 50s and 60s when California built / expanded two great public university systems (UC and Cal State), and built / expanded a massive amount of public works from highways to libraries, that total government spending was roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of the current level, as a percentage of GSP. Sadly I cannot find a source for figures - I am relying on my memory from college in the 80s.

My real frustration with the current CA budget crisis is that I have become convinced that our problem is over-spending, not driven by having too large an appetite for public works (hey, I *like* public works, when they are worthwhile projects) -- but by grotesque levels of inefficiency. I feel our problem is that state spending in CA, on several levels, has become VERY in-efficient.

In CA, we pay a huge amount, both in salaries and particularly in benefits for the production we get out of state workers. Having done workers' compensation defense for comparable public and private organizations, and having seen their personnel files, labor relations, and talked to workers and managers at both, I would say public employment in CA operates at roughly 50% of the efficiency of private employment (there are numerous reasons for this, but its a real mess). I'd say on average a private company gets roughly twice the results out of its workforce for every dollar of total employee cost, compared to public agencies. Thats a gross level of inefficiency.

Also, we have very in-efficient (many would say corrupt) procurement and contract-bidding procedures. I have teacher friends who say the vast majority of public money is not actually making it into the class room. There are school districts in tough neighborhoods that get 25% to 50% more money per pupil than the state average and yet cannot seem to maintain buildings, supply books to classrooms and so on. And the state average is not that poor - its my understanding our per pupil spending is in the top half nationwide.

That doesn't even get into the issue of costs associated with social programs and costs associated with the federal government's failure to control illegal immigration.

Bottom line: our state is poorly run right now. It's not all Davis' fault, but he has in my opinion failed to take necessary and reasonable steps to address the problems. The last two disastrous budgets, he did not use his line-item veto AT ALL. He has the constitutional power to fix our budget mess with the line item veto and he hasn't done it. He was also extremely slow (and ineffective) in responding to the power crunch. Add to that his whorish pattern of fund raising and favors, and his failure to level with the state last year (during the election) about the real magnitude of the budget mess. Davis has done an extremely poor job overall, bad enough to merit recall in my opinion.

Mind you, I used to like Davis. I voted for him twice. Before becoming governor he seemed like a level headed, practical kind of Democrat, the kind I like. But he just demonstrated a complete lack of leadership ability as Governor. He failed to work well with the legislature and he bombed miserably on the power crisis and the budget. Now I'm ready to rescind my vote for him and vote his ass out.

Who will I vote for in the recall? I am on the verge of doing something I've never done in my life: voting for a Republican. It's not that I want to change affiliations or that I like Republicans (I loathe Bush and I think the national Republican agenda is terrible on social, domestic and foreign policy fronts).

But in CA, we've clearly swung too far to the extreme, impractical and foolish part of the left wing. I don't have any fear that a Republican governor will destroy civil rights, wipe out abortion or ruin the state. Our liberal legislature will prevent that and the legislature is not going to change anytime soon. We had 16 consecutive years of Republican governors when I was growing up and I hate to say it, but things were better then than now :(. One specific thing a fiscally conservative governor can do in CA is use the line - item veto to control spending. The governor can also make some changes to public employment (but sadly, not nearly enough).

So at this juncture I'm going to vote for a fiscally conservative candidate, probably Tom McClintock, a State Senator with a pretty good record of fiscal conservativism who does not appear to be (on the surface) a raving right wing loony on social issues. Alternatively I might vote for Ueberoth (who's running as an indepedent) - he seems like he might have the combination of management and leadership skills we sorely need. There's a remote possibility that I would vote for Arnold if he articulates a reasonable and practical platform.

One last comment in this long post: the worst problem in CA is not actually the budget right now. The budget IS a mess but the more serious problem right now is that we are hemmorhaging business and good jobs at a gross rate - CA has developed a rep as the least business-friendly state in the union and between the regulation, taxes, work comp costs, and other costs of doing business, plus the cost of living (housing) the economy has some pretty scary prospects, despite our incredible assets of location, climate and universities.

Down with Davis! I was a fool to vote for him last time. Fickle bastard that I am, I will now vote him the F&*( out :) !

Dan

[Jason McCullough]

"Jason, the numbers I saw on the chart in the link are a bit different from what you posted."

Yeah, I think the other place i was looking at was using a different definition of spending. Anyway, same diff.

"There is one important fact to note here: the 9.67% of GSP "baseline" is, I believe, high, when compared to a longer term history of California."

But the lowest it ever got on that chart, following the Jarvis thing, was 8.5%. And CA's in the middle when it comes to state spending as share of income/whatever.

[Andrew Mayer]

One last comment in this long post: the worst problem in CA is not actually the budget right now. The budget IS a mess but the more serious problem right now is that we are hemmorhaging business and good jobs at a gross rate - CA has developed a rep as the least business-friendly state in the union and between the regulation, taxes, work comp costs, and other costs of doing business, plus the cost of living (housing) the economy has some pretty scary prospects, despite our incredible assets of location, climate and universities.

Any hard numbers to back up these assertions? I thought the last time I saw those numbers that the perception is nowhere near the realities...

Is there anybody on the ballot that you believe has the knowledge and the fiscal experience necessary to handle these problems? I don't think Arnie is the man...

I'd personally like to find someone who won't just bend over and allow the state to be subject to the kind of corporate rape that happened in 2000/2001.

[JeffL]

One last comment in this long post: the worst problem in CA is not actually the budget right now. The budget IS a mess but the more serious problem right now is that we are hemmorhaging business and good jobs at a gross rate - CA has developed a rep as the least business-friendly state in the union and between the regulation, taxes, work comp costs, and other costs of doing business, plus the cost of living (housing) the economy has some pretty scary prospects, despite our incredible assets of location, climate and universities.

Any hard numbers to back up these assertions? I thought the last time I saw those numbers that the perception is nowhere near the realities...

Is there anybody on the ballot that you believe has the knowledge and the fiscal experience necessary to handle these problems? I don't think Arnie is the man...

I'd personally like to find someone who won't just bend over and allow the state to be subject to the kind of corporate rape that happened in 2000/2001.

I know of at least 3 large companies whose execs have said in meetings I've been in that they were either moving out of CA or had contemplated setting up a site in CA and decided against it because of the txa structure in CA and other business-unfriendly regulations. That's purely anecdotal, of course, but these companies are mainstream enough (I doubt they'd want me to share what went on in a private meeting so I won't use their names, but think very large diversified product high tech companies) that I'd be surprised if they didn't represent the thoughts of others. FWIW.

[Tyrion Lannister]

Don't vote for Arnold. If he becomes governor he won't be able to make King Conan.

Two snakes like this!

[ElRavager]

Don't vote for Arnold. If he becomes governor he won't be able to make King Conan.

Two snakes like this!

haha I'd like to get into the crowd at one of Arnie's press-conferences.. "Arnold, what is best in life?" :x

(I heard King Conan got cancelled.)

[Jason McCullough]

One last comment in this long post: the worst problem in CA is not actually the budget right now. The budget IS a mess but the more serious problem right now is that we are hemmorhaging business and good jobs at a gross rate - CA has developed a rep as the least business-friendly state in the union and between the regulation, taxes, work comp costs, and other costs of doing business, plus the cost of living (housing) the economy has some pretty scary prospects, despite our incredible assets of location, climate and universities.

Here: (http://maxspeak.org/gm/archives/00001362.html)

http://maxspeak.org/gm/archives/cal_emp.jpg

Here: (http://maxspeak.org/gm/archives/00001358.html)

http://maxspeak.org/gm/archives/calgsp.jpg

If CA has growth problems, they aren't showing up in the data. Heck, CA is still outperforming the rest of the country.

[Sharpe]

I saw those charts linked by Calpundit - I think they were from Max Sawicki's web site. As far as CA outperforming the rest of the nation, I'm not so sure. The most recent overall growth figures were a wash. The job figures in those charts do show CA matching or slightly exceeding national figure BUT (there are two buts):

but the chart which shows growth doesn't say anything about cost of living which has been skyrocketing in CA (especially housing costs), and

but the chart which shows jobs doesn't factor in the value / wage level of the jobs. It is my understanding that we've been losing good high tech jobs and gaining unskilled labor jobs, which is not a net gain for the state.

Here is an LA times article about internal US immigration and CA:

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-census6aug06002431,1,177173.story

The relevants stats are that from 1995 to 2000, 2.2 million Californians left for other states and only 1.4 million other US residents came to CA, a net loss of 800,000. That's the first time CA has posted a net loss on internal immigration in a LONG time. Historically the CA climate and economy have been a big attractor of immigrants from other states - that is no longer the case, whic is IMO a sign of serious problems here in CA.

The article touches on, but doesn't really discuss the bigger problem: although CA lost citizens to other states, CA population actually increased from 32.7 million in 1998 to 35.1 million in 2002 (yeah the years dont match up - blame the LA Times).

If the years matched up we could say with precision that while CA lost 800,000 citizens to other states, it gained about 2.9 million from immigration. With the years not matching all we can say is that CA is still gaining a lot of pop from immigration. It's my understanding that roughly 35% to 40% of that immigration is legal and about 60% to 65% is illegal.

Bottom line: CA losing citizens to other states (which is a sign of job loss and rising housing costs in CA IMO) and is gaining lots of immigrants, who tend to be lower income, less skilled workers (on overall average).

I don't think that those are signs that state is moving in a positive direction.

Dan

[JeffL]

I was going to post some data, but Sharpe basically summed it up. I saw a summary report one company was looking at in deciding where to place a new site (about 20,000 high tech jobs) and they showed that U.S. citizens are leaving the state significantly faster than they are coming in, and illegal immigrants are moving in at a very high rate. Jobs are transitioning at an alarming rate from high tech and thus high wages to low wage unskilled labor roles; not surprising with high tech companies moving out and fewer deciding to move in. The state has a problem and it is moving the wrong way, and has been for some time, with regard to its overall economy - obviously larger high tech companies pay a lot of taxes and their leaving is a problem. I need to find the study and post the link here - there's a nice study a university did on the "sweet spot" of taxes on companies. Higher and companies leave and you lose their revenue 100% - lower and you don't maximize the revenue you can get from companies and still have them feel the environment is good for business. California was used as an example of a state that has gone way over that line in terms of onerous taxes and regulations.

It is a shame - I love California. I find excuses to visit my contacts out at U.C. Santa Barbara - I don't know if there's a more beautiful place in the country. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world. We had a biotech division in San Diego that we essentially closed down - and San Diego is a great city. I hope they find a way to turn things around.

[Jason McCullough]

But the chart which shows growth doesn't say anything about cost of living which has been skyrocketing in CA (especially housing costs)

I can't find cost-of-living numbers compared to income; if you have any, I'd love to see them. But "CA cost of living is high" doesn't have too much to do with your original criticism.


the chart which shows jobs doesn't factor in the value / wage level of the jobs. It is my understanding that we've been losing good high tech jobs and gaining unskilled labor jobs, which is not a net gain for the state.

Then why is income going up?

And "CA is being overrun by immigrants" has nothing to do with your previous objection - that the business climate in CA was horrible. How bad can it be if CA is actually outperforming the rest of the country on income and jobs?

You can't get a good picture of stuff like this by reading the headlines; all those "overseas tech worker" things don't add up to much. "20,000 tech jobs overseas" is 0.1% of the CA labor force.

[bee cubed]

at least it isn't pittsburgh. just about the only major US that has had population go down in the past 10 years...

[Rywill]

In a bold step toward making this an even bigger circus, Ahnold has hired renowned fictional-presidential advisor Rob "Don't call me Sam" Lowe as an advisor. (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/16/schwarzenegger.rob.lowe/index.html) Sweet!

[JeffL]

In a bold step toward making this an even bigger circus, Ahnold has hired renowned fictional-presidential advisor Rob "Don't call me Sam" Lowe as an advisor. (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/16/schwarzenegger.rob.lowe/index.html) Sweet!

I think Arnold has been looking at the previous poll numbers too hard and thinks he can do anything and still win. Surely he realizes that hiring Lowe as an advisor is going to look stupid. And did I have something in my ears or did I hear Buffet say in an interview yesterday that he thinks Californians need to pay higher property taxes? Sheesh.

[JeffL]

Then why is income going up?

You can't get a good picture of stuff like this by reading the headlines; all those "overseas tech worker" things don't add up to much. "20,000 tech jobs overseas" is 0.1% of the CA labor force.

You also have to be careful about selective stats. The salaries of Illegal immigrants (almost half of the illegal immigrants in the country are in California) are not included in the stats. (As an aside, the contributions of the costs of illegal immigrants to the $38 billion dollar deficit isn't insiginificant - as one small example, the state health budget is expected to face a $3 billion dollar deficit due to unreimbursed health costs for illegal immigrants.) Californa salary stats are also usually best examined when broken down; they tend to be very skewed by a number of people who make a VERY high salary (absurd example, to make the point: let's look at the average salary of Ahnold plus 29 people who make $1000 a year - hey, the average salary is a million dollars a year!) And the cost of living in areas where high tech jobs are located is incredibly high - ask some of the folks here who live in those areas. I had a job offer in CA that was quite a bit higher salary, but after a couple of job trips gathering data I realized the salary would have been more than washed out by the increased COL.

There's no doubt that higher salaried high tech jobs are leaving California at an alarming rate; every time I visit CA on a work trip it is a topic of discussion amongst the business leaders and city leaders that we meet with. They aren't debating whether it's happening - they know it is happening because they're dealing with it.

[Jason McCullough]

Jeff, I'll believe tech worker jobs are fleeing california when I see the numbers saying so. Industry leaders, everyone, and their dog insisted third-world manufacturing was driving down first-world manufacturing wages; it wasn't true.

What do illegal workers - who aren't, and have never been, included in the statistics - have to do with the economic health of legal california workers? What does unreimbursed health care cost for immigrants, which every state suffers from, have to do with anything? What does income inequality, which is just as bad elsewhere in the US, have to do with anything? What does COLA have to do with anything, when income went up even more, and CA's always had a high COLA?

If you want to mount a frontal assault on the entire system of measuring economic health, ok, but do that, don't make unfalsifiable assertions about the CA economy.

Edit: Here's (http://www.calmis.ca.gov/htmlfile/subject/indtable.htm) CA's industry employment numbers. The changes between January 2001 and August 2003:

565,400 Civilian Labor Force
194,900 Civilian Employment
370,500 Civilian Unemployment
-285,600 Total Nonfarm
-281,700 Goods Producing
-3,400 Natural Resources and Mining
17,400 Construction
-295,700 Manufacturing
-3,900 Service Providing
-48,800 Trade, Transportation and Utilities
-111,800 Information
48,000 Financial Activities
-145,600 Professional and Business Services
102,200 Educational and Health Services
51,400 Leisure and Hospitality
9,700 Other Services
91,000 Government

Positive is an increase, negative is a decrease. Here's the changes in the numbers as a percentage of final August 2003 employment:

Civilian Labor Force 3.21%
Civilian Employment 1.18%
Civilian Unemployment 31.76%
Civilian Unemployment Rate
Total Nonfarm -1.98%
Goods Producing -11.79%
Natural Resources and Mining -14.59%
Construction 2.21%
Manufacturing -18.73%
Service Providing -0.03%
Trade, Transportation and Utilities -1.79%
Information -23.54%
Financial Activities 5.54%
Professional and Business Services -6.92%
Educational and Health Services 6.72%
Leisure and Hospitality 3.64%
Other Services 1.92%
Government 3.73%

There's a huge decline in information jobs, but there's an even bigger decline in manufacturing and mining. How much of it is the recession/stock market crash, and how much is overseas outsourcing? Beats me, I'm not sure how to back out that number.

[JeffL]

Jeff, I'll believe tech worker jobs are fleeing california when I see the numbers saying so. Industry leaders, everyone, and their dog insisted third-world manufacturing was driving down first-world manufacturing wages; it wasn't true.


Hey, what do I know? I'm just talking with VPs and Ps of large companies who have transferred major operations out of California to other states. City council folks from large cities in CA. Plus talking to the folks in my own company who used to work in high tech jobs in California until we closed up the shop and moved it to other states. And companies that have decided to put their new sites in other states than CA. Heck, I guess you may be right, they all may just be lying to me. You know, that anti-California conspiracy. I'll be sure and show them your stats.


What do illegal workers - who aren't, and have never been, included in the statistics - have to do with the economic health of legal california workers? What does unreimbursed health care cost for immigrants, which every state suffers from, have to do with anything? What does income inequality, which is just as bad elsewhere in the US, have to do with anything? What does COLA have to do with anything, when income went up even more, and CA's always had a high COLA?

If you want to mount a frontal assault on the entire system of measuring economic health, ok, but do that, don't make unfalsifiable assertions about the CA economy.

What's an unfalsifiable assertion?

Every state does not suffer from the unreimbursed health care costs that CA is suffering (as stated, $3 Billion over the next couple of years.) Almost half of the illegal immigrants in the nation are in CA - spread the rest of them out over the rest of the country. Texas, which is next, isn't even close.

What does the cost of living have to do with anything? You were talking about how great the wages were in CA. That number in isolation doesn't mean much. Do a google search and find the curves for the income distribution in CA and compare it to other states.



There's a huge decline in information jobs, but there's an even bigger decline in manufacturing and mining. How much of it is the recession/stock market crash, and how much is overseas outsourcing? Beats me, I'm not sure how to back out that number.

Remember that a lot of the manufacturing jobs lost in California were high tech companies.

Look at your stats, as isolated as they are. Unemployment is up, non-farm jobs are down, goods producing jobs are down double digit, NR and Mining are way down, manufacturing is way down. trade and transport is down, information is way down, professional services is down.

Taxes, regulations, cost of living, and a variety of other factors are making California a much less desirable place for large high tech companies. We pulled most of our Biotech out of San Diego for just that reason (and San Diego has always been a Biotech mecca - it's why we originally put them out there years ago - and I hate that we moved them out, because I love San Diego.)

But maybe you're right and everything I've heard and discussed with these people are wrong. Maybe I'm just seeing the absolute worst there is to see.

[JeffL]

Jeff, I'll believe tech worker jobs are fleeing california when I see the numbers saying so. Industry leaders, everyone, and their dog insisted third-world manufacturing was driving down first-world manufacturing wages; it wasn't true.

Meant to respond to this - you're right, the third world manufacturing didn't drive down our manufacturing wages - it eliminated them. We couldn't drop wages or costs enough to compete in a very large number of areas, so the U.S. and other 1st world companies have simply closed shop or cut way back. One of the key reasons for a couple of waves of huge layoffs that occured in the last decade was directly tied to the inability of a U.S. company to compete with a third world company that is happy to get a dime on the dollar for the same goods. It has caused a fundamental change in American companies (those that survived.) Many are still struggling with the change. For example, one large U.S. company led the world in manufacturing and selling magnesium across the world. When the Iron Curtain fell, Russia bought the technology on the open market and built manufacturing and was thrilled to get 11 cents of western currency for what the American company would have to get a dollar just to break even. In months, a company that had been the world leader since WWII had to shut down their operations.

You just can't compete in manufacturing products that a 3rd world country can produce, often with nationally subsidized capital. And a huge amount of jobs have been lost as a result. It was probably predictable, but U.S. industry has never been real nimble in reading tea leaves.

Not just manufacturing jobs - just read an article in Silicon Valley.com about all the jobs that have moved out of Silicon Valley to India (amongst others.) The unemployment rate in Santa Clare for IT folks has jumped to 15%, about double the average in that county.

[Jason McCullough]

You and Sharpe said CA was "losing businesses and good jobs". I responded that the income and employment data contradicted that; CA's still outperforming the country as a whole, so I have no idea how both statements could be true. You then said you knew of some companies that were leaving; I pointed out the numbers involved were miniscule compared to the labor force.

Sharpe said the chart doesn't include COLA; I responded I couldn't find data, but CA's always had a high COLA. Sharpe said the income chart doesn't factor in wage levels, but it does.

You then pointed out illegal immigrants aren't included in the data; I pointed out it doesn't matter, as they've never been included in the data. You can't say "immigrants are driving down wages" if the measured non-immigrant wages are as high as ever, and increasing.

You then pointed out CA has high costs paying for illegal immigrant health care, but a) this is a miniscule proportion of GDP and b) has next to nothing to do with your original argument.

It reads like you're just trying to think of everything bad about the state and throw it out there, not actually make a reasoned argumentive chain showing that CA actually is losing businesses and good jobs.

It's not actually unfalsifiable assertions; it's just not backed up.
"CA is losing good technical worker jobs, but the only thing I have to back this up is a few companies I've talked to. No, I don't have any data proving this." The economy is far too large to talk in terms of even dozens of companies.

On the COLA thing, here's CA's CPI data (http://www.dof.ca.gov/html/fs_data/STAT-ABS/sec_D.htm). The CA CPI matched that of the country as a whole in 1997. From 1997 to 2001, the nation's CPI went up by 10%, while CA's went up 13%. That doesn't strike me as all that bad.

[Jason McCullough]

Jeff, I'll believe tech worker jobs are fleeing california when I see the numbers saying so. Industry leaders, everyone, and their dog insisted third-world manufacturing was driving down first-world manufacturing wages; it wasn't true.

Meant to respond to this - you're right, the third world manufacturing didn't drive down our manufacturing wages - it eliminated them. We couldn't drop wages or costs enough to compete in a very large number of areas, so the U.S. and other 1st world companies have simply closed shop or cut way back. One of the key reasons for a couple of waves of huge layoffs that occured in the last decade was directly tied to the inability of a U.S. company to compete with a third world company that is happy to get a dime on the dollar for the same goods. It has caused a fundamental change in American companies (those that survived.) Many are still struggling with the change. For example, one large U.S. company led the world in manufacturing and selling magnesium across the world. When the Iron Curtain fell, Russia bought the technology on the open market and built manufacturing and was thrilled to get 11 cents of western currency for what the American company would have to get a dollar just to break even. In months, a company that had been the world leader since WWII had to shut down their operations.

You just can't compete in manufacturing products that a 3rd world country can produce, often with nationally subsidized capital. And a huge amount of jobs have been lost as a result. It was probably predictable, but U.S. industry has never been real nimble in reading tea leaves.

Not just manufacturing jobs - just read an article in Silicon Valley.com about all the jobs that have moved out of Silicon Valley to India (amongst others.) The unemployment rate in Santa Clare for IT folks has jumped to 15%, about double the average in that county.

Do you think without foreign competition the unemployment rate would be much better? After the biggest stock market drop ever, concentrated entirely in the chief industry of Santa Clare?

On a more general point of trade, who cares if we can't compete in manufacturing products? As long as income keeps going up, it doesn't matter. We have some distributional issues, but they have nothing to do with foreign competition.

[JeffL]

It reads like you're just trying to think of everything bad about the state and throw it out there, not actually make a reasoned argumentive chain showing that CA actually is losing businesses and good jobs.


OK. You're right. Even though the data you showed show unemployement in almost every sector going up. Even though the business leaders I talk with have meetings discussing the issue and it's discussed at conferences. The business climate in California is as great as ever and just getting better.

[JeffL]

On a more general point of trade, who cares if we can't compete in manufacturing products? As long as income keeps going up, it doesn't matter. We have some distributional issues, but they have nothing to do with foreign competition.

OK - do you really mean this? "Who cares if we can't compete in manufacturing products?" You really mean that the way you said it? Do you understand how the value chains in industries and most companies work? Do you understand the breadth of what "manufacturing" means and it's impact on our industries?

[Jason McCullough]

There is a recession going on, and different sectors always have different rates of unemployment increases in one. The employment data is perfectly consistent with a recession heavily concentrated in the technical sector. It is possible that some or all of those job drops are due to overseas outsourcing, but I rather doubt its a noticable amount. Unfortunately, I can't find anything online on how to estimate job transfers across borders; let me know if you find something.


OK - do you really mean this? "Who cares if we can't compete in manufacturing products?" You really mean that the way you said it? Do you understand how the value chains in industries and most companies work? Do you understand the breadth of what "manufacturing" means and it's impact on our industries?

The industries with the highest value-added per worker in the United States are cigarettes and oil refining. Value-added in manufacturing as a whole is only average.

Seriously, the "decline of US manufacturing" has little or nothing to do with economic performance. Krugman's Peddling Prosperity (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393036022/qid=1061145062/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-5268748-4204706?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) is a readable introduction to how the conventional wisdom is wrong on all this.

[JeffL]

The industries with the highest value-added per worker in the United States are cigarettes and oil refining. Value-added in manufacturing as a whole is only average.

Seriously, the "decline of US manufacturing" has little or nothing to do with economic performance. Krugman's Peddling Prosperity (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393036022/qid=1061145062/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-5268748-4204706?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) is a readable introduction to how the conventional wisdom is wrong on all this.

I've read more than introductory books; this is the world in which I have worked and managed for over 20 years. Trust me - American industry has had to make major changes in response to 3rd world industry moving in, and a lot of people have been fired and companies shut down as a result. I've called people into my office, good people, and had to fire them as a result of being a manager in a Fortune 50 company that has had to let about 30,000 people go due to the changes from such globalization. I have good friends in the same roles at other large U.S. companies that I've shared a beverage with as we discussed how much it sucks, as they have had to do the same thing. Somehow I don't think the people who were fired care a lot about what Krugman's theories say. Not all of the changes are bad; companies are having to move to a market concept in which you make more money from knowledge than the product of that knowledge. Unfortunately that is much easier said than done, particularly if, say, you have a capital base of billions of dollars.

It's easy to say that value added by manufacturing itself is "average" but the bottom line is that you have to sell something, and that something has to be manufactured in most industries. If someone offshore can make the same product for 1/10th your cost, you have few choices: you can either get out of that business (catastrophic if that is your core business, and companies have gone down as a result;) you can try to change your core business (witness how some companies, such as DuPont and Monsanto, have bet the farm on changing to a Biotech based company) which, if you've studied and led in businesses over the years, you realize is a VERY difficult and risky proposition; or you can fire all of your employees (line workers, engineers, EH&S folks, managers, etc. etc.) and contract the work offshore (this also typically has a strong ripple effect amongst your supplier and the community, particularly if it is a relatively small community and you're a large company.) There's also an assumption that you can simply move the manufacturing portion of your business to a cheaper location; that is not the case in many situations, where companies in the offshore locations have been set up to directly compete and have no desire to be your contract manufacturer - they want to drive you out of business and take the whole enchilada.

I'm not discussing this from an academic point of view; I'm living it every day. I've read all of the books and all of the books coming out are in a queue to my office. People writing books are the ones who are really making out (particularly as they review their books, as some of the companies they described as examples of excellence not many years ago are out of business today! :( )

[Jason McCullough]

Jeff, yes, as time goes on more and more manufacturing will leave the country, but if history and theory is any guide, they'll be replaced by service jobs which pay the same or better.

You can sell services just as easily as stuff that pops out of a factory. The US would be perfectly fine if every manufacturing job left the country.

[Machfive]

at least it isn't pittsburgh. just about the only major US that has had population go down in the past 10 years...

Detroit keeps declining, too.

[JeffL]

Jeff, yes, as time goes on more and more manufacturing will leave the country, but if history and theory is any guide, they'll be replaced by service jobs which pay the same or better.

You can sell services just as easily as stuff that pops out of a factory. The US would be perfectly fine if every manufacturing job left the country.

That is an incredibly naive statement.

[MikeJ]

You can sell services just as easily as stuff that pops out of a factory. The US would be perfectly fine if every manufacturing job left the country.

Can't the service jobs also be exported?

[JeffL]

You can sell services just as easily as stuff that pops out of a factory. The US would be perfectly fine if every manufacturing job left the country.

Can't the service jobs also be exported?

Of course, and many in the service category are moving offshore.

It's just a silly statement. It's the equivilent of saying the vast majority of companies in the U.S. could go out of business and it would be no big deal, we'd just replace them with service jobs.

[Brian Koontz]

I'm going to have to turn some heads here and side with McCullough. I'm not worried since I'm sure I'll be disagreeing with him soon enough on some other topic.

A job is a method of employment. When you change jobs you are being employed in a different fashion.

Lets say a manufacturing plant closes. 10,000 people out of work. Ouch. Some of them move to other plants in the same company. Some of them get other jobs in town. Some go into another industry or go back to school for training toward another type of job.

Lets say that manufacturing plant closed because it was bleeding money. Unprofitable. Ugly. A money sink. Now those 10,000 people may or may not become more effectively employed, but at least they aren't doing what is KNOWN to be negatively contributing. They are going from a bad situation into either a bad or good situation.

The general idea behind losing jobs being GOOD is that the lost jobs are poor jobs... that is, unprofitable jobs. So if every manufacturing job was lost and the people moved into more profitable service jobs the economy would improve. Smiles would occur. Jeff Lackey would be fired for economic incompetence and McCullough would become President of the United States.

Ok. Anyway... you get the picture. I'm already burning the McCullough part of that picture. Watch your fingers.

[Jason McCullough]

It's just a silly statement. It's the equivilent of saying the vast majority of companies in the U.S. could go out of business and it would be no big deal, we'd just replace them with service jobs.

Businesses fail *all the time*, entire sectors disappear, yet other ones rise to take their place. The proportion of jobs in manufacturing has fallen 10% since the 1960s; does it look like the country's gotten poorer to you over that time? The unemployment rate hasn't gone up 10%.


The general idea behind losing jobs being GOOD is that the lost jobs are poor jobs... that is, unprofitable jobs.

Not really; the root cause of job migration is comparative advantage, not profitability.

[JeffL]

It's just a silly statement. It's the equivilent of saying the vast majority of companies in the U.S. could go out of business and it would be no big deal, we'd just replace them with service jobs.

Businesses fail *all the time*, entire sectors disappear, yet other ones rise to take their place. The proportion of jobs in manufacturing has fallen 10% since the 1960s; does it look like the country's gotten poorer to you over that time? The unemployment rate hasn't gone up 10%.



There's a huge difference in manufacturing dropping by 10% in 40 years and the statement that I reacted to: that America could lose all of it's manufacturing and it would be no problem, everyone would just move to service jobs and we'd all be better off. The idea that P&G, J&J, IBM, 3M, GE, Ford, Chrysler, GM, Hewlette Packard, Merck, DuPont, Boeing, Lockheed, International Paper, Abbot, Northrup, Bristol Meyers, PPG, Caterpillar, Alcoa, and on and on and on for hundreds and thousands of companies (and the companies whose survival depends on those companies) could shut down and all be replaced with service jobs is naive to the extreme.

[Jason McCullough]

So it's ok for it to drop 10%, but not 40%? Is there an economic theory behind this?

Yes, it'd cause problems as everyone switches around to new jobs, but the timeline would be like over 100 years.

[Chris Nahr]

The problem with this wonderful new service economy is that all those servicepersons need customers to sell their services to. Unless the services are offered globally (e.g. IT or financial services) you need a sufficient number of locals who create value by converting nature into material products which they can (with some intermediate steps) exchange for all those services.

Foreigners who are producing goods are not usually potential customers of the local service economy, and even if all the managers who profit from offshoring would set up byzantine households they probably won't be able to maintain a service economy all on their own.

[JeffL]

So it's ok for it to drop 10%, but not 40%? Is there an economic theory behind this?

Yes, it'd cause problems as everyone switches around to new jobs, but the timeline would be like over 100 years.

Your comment was it would be no problem if it dropped 100%.

The macroeconomics of a service based economy have been studied (and published) extensively. I'm looking at my bookshelf and can count.... 7 books on the topic, and I've got a large set of papers (or references to papers) on this. You've probably read the standards, such as Boden and Miles, etc. Most say pretty much the same thing: going to a service and knowledge based economy is a good thing, the sign of a progressive society, etc.

However, those who go into more depth state that a pure service economy based society has some fundamental problems in the real world. First, there are numerous products of manufacturing that do not lend themselves well to 3rd world technology. There are also numerous advances that will only come from world class manufacturing companies - R&D that would not take places if such companies did not exist. There are also other complications from a pure service based economy. Everything credible and of some depth that I have read concludes that a pure service based economy may be viable on a small scale (e.g., Hong Kong) but is not viable for a very large and diverse society. Someone has done some computer models of economic interactions - I don't recall who off the top of my head, perhaps you do - and shown that, when reduced to the practical, service businesses on a larger scale in a country like the U.S. or Canada need a base of manufacturing businesses. Certainly the ratio can and will change, but it cannot go to 100/0.

[Jason McCullough]

Ok, fair enough, but "the non-labor cost based nature of some types of manufacturing will keep them from going overseas" isn't the same as "when we lose manufacturing jobs we're, in general, screwed."

Chris, hypothetically you could have a country that trades nothing but software for food and manufactured goods. Stranger things have happened, historically; Saudi Arabia appears to only produce one thing.....

[Brian Koontz]

Not really; the root cause of job migration is comparative advantage, not profitability.

That's true, but that's very close if not over the edge into the realm of "splitting hairs" in a non-technical thread such as this.

[Jason McCullough]

It's not splitting hairs at all. A wildly profitable type of business in one nation that migrates elsewhere to be even more wildly profitable is perfectly consistent with theory and history.

[Jason McCullough]

Jeff, Brad Delong has a new bit (http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002014.html#002014) up talking about this far better than I can.

[JeffL]

Jeff, Brad Delong has a new bit (http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/002014.html#002014) up talking about this far better than I can.

That's an interesting analysis. I have always liked that he allows differing POV comments to be posted, and there are some significant rebuttals.

However, I've seen DeLong's analyses before where he bases an argument on "when we buy things from India, they want Rupees, not dollars, and the only way we get Rupees is selling things to India" so it forcibly balances out. I'm not where I can do the search here, but I've seen several rebuttals from others that that simply isn't how it works. I also asked a couple of our top financial folks (we are a global company and buy and sell many millions of dollars worth of "stuff" from other countries) and they look at me like the idiot I probably am. One, they say, many 3rd world nations where outsourcing is occurring MUCH prefer Western currency over their own. Secondly, they tell me, that's just not how international trade occurs - we don't go to the bank and exchange the $7 million we paid a company in Malaysia yesterday into whatever coin they use and then send that to them. If that were true, there would never be severe trade imbalances (and there are.) So that block of his argument seems unsound.

The other piece that seems to get ignored in this approach is what one key economist (damn, hate being away from the office) stated as "people are not fungible." He said a key flaw in many of these arguments is that people are simply numbers that can be moved from one type of job to another. Also that one type of job is of the same quality as another.

But it is an interesting argument. I keep looking for a good head to head debate between economists - they are much too civilized, and prefer to write and publish in relative isolation. ;)

[XPav]

Slashdot interviews Georgy!

http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/03/08/20/1331235.shtml?tid=103&tid=99

Important things like 'vi vs emacs' and SCO.

[Jason McCullough]

One, they say, many 3rd world nations where outsourcing is occurring MUCH prefer Western currency over their own. Secondly, they tell me, that's just not how international trade occurs - we don't go to the bank and exchange the $7 million we paid a company in Malaysia yesterday into whatever coin they use and then send that to them. If that were true, there would never be severe trade imbalances (and there are.) So that block of his argument seems unsound.

On the "keeping western currency thing": Say we buy $100 worth of shoes from Vietnam. They send us shoes, and instead of asking us to send them an equivalent value in investment goods (factories) or consumption goods (software, whatever), they ask us to just send them $100. They then decide that rather than spending that $100 on investment or consumption goods, they just keep it, using it as a defacto replacement for their own internal currency (which they don't trust, for whatever reason). The effective result is that Vietnam is giving us a $100 interest-free loan; a loan is just a claim to assets at a future date, after all. Needless to say, this isn't a bad thing for the US. The benefit to us is small, though; I think Krugman estimated the gain from the US dollar's status as "reserve currency" at .1% of GDP or so.

On trade imbalances: there's two components to international trade, trade in investment goods (the capital account) and trade in consumption goods (the current account). These have to add up to zero by definition; when we buy a television from Japan, that shows up as a negative on our current account. Japan can then take the money we gave them and spend it on our consumption goods (current account), investment goods (capital account), or just sit on it (using the above "interest-free loan" model, this would show up in the capital account). You can have a large trade imbalance in one of the accounts, but it'll be offset by an equally large opposite number in the other account. The US has a large current account deficit (we import more goods than we export), but it's offset by a capital account surplus (more people invest in the US than we invest overseas).

I'm not sure what you mean by "that's not how trade occurs"; you can defer it for a while, but at some point you have to switch currencies (unless they're willing to take dollars as detailed above, which is actually pretty rare, as a percentage of total trade.)



The other piece that seems to get ignored in this approach is what one key economist (damn, hate being away from the office) stated as "people are not fungible." He said a key flaw in many of these arguments is that people are simply numbers that can be moved from one type of job to another. Also that one type of job is of the same quality as another.

But it is an interesting argument. I keep looking for a good head to head debate between economists - they are much too civilized, and prefer to write and publish in relative isolation. ;)

There's large adjustment costs as people move around in jobs in response to trade, yes, but that's not fatal. Unless we throw up tariff walls around the country, the jobs aren't going to stay here; it's best to just spend money on trade adjustment assistance. The concept has never really gone anywhere because so far, the areas getting squeezed tend to be conservative, and conservatives don't want to spend the money, whether their constituents need it or not. We may see a change if liberal areas start seeing significant sectoral shifts due to trade; dunno.

The "job quality" thing is interesting. Even if India produced literally every type of tradable good cheaper than us, we'd still have jobs; they'd just all end up in the ones we have the biggest comparative advantage in. The normal response is "yeah, we'd all end up flipping burgers!" Assuming that the biggest comparative advantage of one of the most highly-educated countries in the world is flipping burgers, though, is really wierd.

[JeffL]

Jason, this has turned into a reasoned and logical discussion. We really can't have that on this board, you know. ;)

I hear what you're saying on the Vietnam example, but for that to work we have to assume that the only place they can spend the money we send them is in the U.S. That's really a key foundation that DeLong uses a lot, and that others have debated. There's nothing to prevent them from spending that money in France or Germany or Chna or Japan. The way that money is exchanged for goods in international transactions allows it to be spent in a very liquid manner. Basically the bottom line is that if we spend $100 for fertilizer from Vietnam they can easily spend that money any place they like. From what I understand from our finance guys who do this every day with countries around the world, in amounts of millions of dollars, currencies are pretty liquid and easily transferrable.

As you might expect, I disagree that the issue of job transfers is as simple as providing money, and conservatives are the roadblock on that. I've lived in locations where large sums of money were being spent on Job Transition Training (and curiously enough they were conservative areas) - the issue again is that people just aren't that fungible. If everyone who loses their jobs and their opportunity to work in their areas of education, experience, and aptitude is 21, yeah, maybe it's a little easier. It sounds easy in the abstract, but on a large scale it is VERY difficult. The problem isn't those damned conservatives, it's the difficulty of taking a large number of people who have, say, 15 years of valuable experience and skills in, let's say, aerospace engineering and telling them "OK, we're going to make all of you salesmen". One, it likely isn't something that many of them have natural skills at, two they suddenly are being faced with starting all over again, in entry level jobs after having worked their way up to wherever they are, three, to do it properly (that is, to train them at a level beyond flipping burgers) usually takes years, not months, of training and they take a huge income drop during that time (and remember, these are people with car payments, mortgages, kids in college, etc.), five, the large numbers of alternate industry jobs aren't usually there. Again - sounds easy in the abstract, but watching it in practice reveals real and sometimes insurmountable problems.

Obviously large, major changes in an economic base can and do happen - witness the changes from agricultural to industrial bases. Your comment about whether we'd all still have jobs if India was able to produce and distribute every tradable good cheaper than us is interesting. The significant sustainable competitive advantage that we're all seeking isn't guaranteed to be as profitible as well paying in other industries as it is now. There is no historical precedent that says a nation has an equilibrium of wealth that it will always maintain, in fact there are obviously many examples of just the opposite. If we lost all of the industries in which we currently hold a significant sustainable competitive advantage, there's no guarantee nor economic basis to say that what replaced it would be as well paying or income generating as what we currently have - it could be better or it could be worse.

[Kyle Wilson]

I hear what you're saying on the Vietnam example, but for that to work we have to assume that the only place they can spend the money we send them is in the U.S.

Yeah, but that's a benefit to us. In an ideal world, American currency would be so intrinsically valuable that it would be our only export. Any time we wanted to buy something, we'd just fire up the printing presses, run off a few dollars, and hand them out to the desperate foreigners in return for food, cars, etc.

Alas, that's not quite the case, and we do have to actually keep working and making stuff that the rest of the world wants in order to afford imports.

[Jason McCullough]

We should have a drunken fistfight or something.


There's nothing to prevent them from spending that money in France or Germany or China or Japan.

So? If they give it to some other country willing to take US currency, what do we care? All that matters for the US is the supply of goods going in and out of the country; if they never trade in the cash for US goods, its always a benefit for us. They must really enjoy owning pretty pictures on paper.....

I agree that job relocation assistance isn't a magic bullet, but it's not like there's a lot of options:

1) Basically ban all international trade.
2) Accept it and try to mitigate the downsides of the results.
3) Accept it and ignore the results.

You can use the exact same argument on stuff like, oh, mechnization driving farmers into urban areas to work for factories, or just about any thing that results in employment by sector changing. Job shifts due to trade are actually peanuts compared to purely domestic shifts we've seen over the years.


The significant sustainable competitive advantage that we're all seeking isn't guaranteed to be as profitible as well paying in other industries as it is now.

This is equivalent to "wages are independent of marginal productivity", I think, which is a rather outlier opinion. American workers are really productive because they're highly educated and we have a strong, rights-protecting government, not because of anything to do with how smart people are in foreign countries. Economic activity isn't zero-sum.

Also, any country which really gets going in trade has their wages rocket way up, making the entire subject a bit of a moot point on the "their labor is so much cheaper than ours" angle. Japan, Korea, Malaysia (still ongoing).

[Rywill]

Not to un-hijack the thread, but I just wanted to note that all you nattering nabobs who have been criticizing Schwarzenegger for failing to get into specifics must feel pretty stupid now: he just announced (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/20/calif.recall/index.html) his economic plan, which consists of creaing "a positive business environment" in California, and eliminating the defecit without raising taxes or cutting education. So I guess that solves that. Man, I can't believe that rube Davis didn't think of this!

[XPav]

Bustamante's plan also seemed rather stupid.

Yeah, voting for Georgy, here I go.

[JeffL]

Ah - Ahnold is a genius. But it's not a lot different from most politicians: accuse the others of incompetence, say WHAT you'll accomplish but never say HOW you will accomplish it.

[Jason McCullough]

It's pretty much impossible to fix the CA budget without raising taxes; the spending they'd have to cut is all pretty popular.

[Anders Hallin]

So, I hear Sweden is going to have an election about joining the EMU and implementing the Euro, what's up with that?

[Rywill]

Although I like to tease Arnold, I will say this: Warren Buffet's assertion that California has got to ditch Proposition 13 was right on the money IMO. I'm as anti-tax as anybody, but that's a terribly unfair law. It's too bad that Schwarzenegger immediately backed away from the statement. Or maybe it's too bad that Californians get so up in arms about it that he'd never get elected on that platform.

(For those who don't live here, my understanding is that Prop 13 severely limits the amount that property taxes can increase in a year--I believe to 1%--as long as the same owner holds title. However, the state can freely reassess property at change of ownership. Thus, longtime owners such as older homeowners and, particularly, businesses see a big gain, but people who move or jump into the housing market do not.)

[Ben Sones]

Cue calliope music:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/20030820/od_nm/politics_california_porn_dc

[Alan Au]

Can we just have "no governor" instead? Back when it was Davis vs. Simon, that seemed like the most attractive option.

Actually, Georgy sounds pretty good compared with some of those other n00bs.

- Alan

[Rywill]

Cue calliope music:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/20030820/od_nm/politics_california_porn_dc
The extra-awesome part is how her campaign guy had to go check with her to see whether she would have sex with donors for money.

[Andrew Mayer]

It's too bad that Schwarzenegger immediately backed away from the statement.
More accurately, he's doing the cha cha (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20030821/pl_nm/politics_california_taxes_dc).

[XPav]

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/arnoldoui1.html


AUGUST 27--Arnold Schwarzenegger once told a magazine interviewer about participating in an orgy with other bodybuilders, noting that "everybody jumped on" the woman involved and "took her upstairs where we all got together." The California Republican added that not every muscleman participated in the gang bang, "just the guys who can fuck in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think that they don't have a big-enough cock, so they can't get a hard-on."


When Manso asked whether he used "dope," Schwarzenegger replied, "Yes, grass and hash--no hard drugs. But the point is that I do what I feel like doing. I'm not on a health kick.

A bit amusing, but that was like 25 years ago. Arnold smoked dope and had sex with lots of women. We live in California. Yawn. :roll: Its not like he missed military duty because he had a coke habit.
:lol:

[XPav]

I'm voting for Georgy.

http://www.georgyforgov.com/images/georgy_desk.jpg

and you don't these people will beat you up.

http://www.georgyforgov.com/images/bikersgroup-1-wr.jpg

[Lizard_King]

Although I like to tease Arnold, I will say this: Warren Buffet's assertion that California has got to ditch Proposition 13 was right on the money IMO. I'm as anti-tax as anybody, but that's a terribly unfair law. It's too bad that Schwarzenegger immediately backed away from the statement. Or maybe it's too bad that Californians get so up in arms about it that he'd never get elected on that platform.


It's also a shame that Californians believe that a problem created largely by popular initiatives and plebiscites (I believe it's almost half of CA's budget that consists of that stuff, including prop 13) can be solved through (surprise!) even more popular initiatives. It IS too bad that Schwarzenegger has shown himself to be craven in that respect already.