Martin Longman had the right reaction to last week’s Republican debate, Why We Can’t Have Sanity. It’s not about the crazies at the debate; it’s about the one guy there who seems to hearken back to the Republican Party when it wasn’t totally crazy: John Kasich. He did indeed come out of the gate strong with his (implicit) attack on Ben Carson with his absurd notion that a 10% tithe is all that we need to find the government. But as Longman pointed out, “There’s a bigger problem than the one that Kasich outlines. And that problem is that even Kasich is out of his fucking mind…”

The issue at hand is the “balanced budget amendment” that is so loved by the economically illiterate. The fundamental problem with it is that it is a recipe for making the business cycle even worse than it is. But people like the idea of it. In 2009, even Obama used this incredibly stupid analogy, “All across America, families are tightening their belts and making hard choices. Now, Washington must show that same sense of responsibility.” It’s a moral argument not an economic one. And it isn’t just wrong; it is evil. It does exactly the opposite of what should be done.

Paul Krugman puts the issue this way: my spending is your income. So in the macro-economy, my not spending money causes you to have less money to pay down your debts. This is the paradox of thrift. And it has only be understood since about the time that we’ve had economies. So consider what would have happened in 2009 if the government had indeed balanced its budget. That would have meant a huge reduction in spending because so many people were out of work that tax receipts were low. The reduction in spending would have thrown even more people out of work. This, of course, would have required that the government spend even less money, throwing more people out of work.

Conservatives and libertarians will claim that this is okay. The money that the government is not borrowing would be available to the private sector to borrow. In a depressed economy, the private sector does not want to invest. This is more or less the definition of a depressed economy. But you don’t have to think about it this way. Ever since 2009, the government has been able to borrow at incredibly low rates — often at lower rates than the inflation rate. (That right: investors were paying the government to hold on to their money!) Right now, the US government can borrow money for 30 years for just 2.86%.

What all this means is that the private sector is not borrowing money. If it were, then interest rates would go up. And because of the paradox of thrift, if the government cut its spending in a depressed economy, there would almost certainly be less private sector demand for money, and interest rates would go down even further. The only argument that conservatives have in this case is that the private sector would be so encouraged by what the government had done that they would have “confidence” and start spending. But this just doesn’t happen. Look at Europe over the last five years.

The other side of this is that when the economy was doing well, the government could spend more. Obviously, this is a recipe for disaster in terms of what things would be spent upon. Clearly, there are more needy people during a bust. During a boom, there isn’t. So what would the spending go to? I’m thinking ExxonMobile. Regardless, more government spending during a boom would just accelerate the boom and probably be inflationary.

So the balanced budget amendment would do exactly the opposite of what the government should do from an economic standpoint. But people like John Kasich push it because it sounds good. So he can come off as the reasonable candidate, even though, as Longman pointed out: “a constitutional amendment to compel Congress to pass a balanced budget is the stupidest goddamned idea in existence.” Of course, it is an idea that all the other Republicans are in favor of. And one that New Democrats like Bill Clinton also love. But this is an idea that the press will never counter because all the right kinds of people are for it.

On this day in 1896, National Geographic printed its first ever image of a bare female breast. That’s of some interest because when I was young, that seemed to be the whole point of the magazine: to provide boys with the opportunity to see what breasts looked like. It was only later that I realized that it actually did some of the best photojournalism ever. The last time I checked, it was still a great magazine.

But I do find the disconnect strange. It is certain that the people at National Geographic understood this. There is no question but that most societies don’t have the breast phobia that we do. So breasts are not usually hidden away. And it would be deceptive to present these women covered up. But I suspect that the reason that the society was okay with it was almost entirely racist. It was all right to have partly naked people because they were somehow less than human — in the sense that the apex of humanity was Victorian dress and behavior and mores.

For the record, the image is of a Zulu bride and groom on their wedding day. They don’t look any more happy than people getting married today. I really do think that people should get rid of photographers in their weddings. I don’t think I’ve been to a wedding where a photographer was not staging reality rather than chronicling it. At least this couple was made miserable for a good cause.

Early this month, I wrote, Global Warming and the Insanity of the GOP. In it, I discussed this recent series of articles from Inside Climate News that documented how Exxon’s own scientists had been warning the company about global warming 40 years ago. What did they do? “Exxon and the other oil companies responded in exactly the same way that the tobacco companies had responded to the research that showed it caused cancer: denial.” That’s not hard to understand. But even I have a tendency to forget just how big the incentives are in this regard.

If you are my age, you remember back to the 1970s and the gas lines. That had nothing to do with actual physical gas shortages. The government had simply implemented price floors. But it didn’t stop people from talking about oil shortages and so on. The truth is that we are not looking at physical oil shortages any time in the near future. We are still discovering huge oil fields. For example, in 2000, the Kashagan Field in Kazakhstan was discovered. It contains an estimated 38 billion barrels of oil — 13 billion recoverable. That represents upwards of a trillion dollars. And that’s one oil field, discovered quite recently.

Similarly, the Lula Field off the coast of Brazil was discovered in 2006. It has almost 8 billion recoverable barrels of oil. That’s roughly half a trillion dollars. This is not just a tremendous amount of money. This is a tremendous amount of money that no one even knew about a decade ago. There is no way the people who work in the oil industry are going to stand aside and say, “We’ll pass on this money for the sake of the world.” They are going to use all the tools available to them to manipulate science, public opinion, and politics to keep this money flowing out of the ground.

This all takes me back to Chad Stanton and his idea of Impulse Control and Global Warming. We are constantly told that the problem with poor people in this country is that they lack impulse control. But global warming is a perfect example of how the rich have no impulse control. The idea of doing something for the long term is anathema to the capitalist way of looking at things. What’s the overall sustainability of the planet compared to a small number of people making a lot of money over the next quarter or year? This is the equivalent of eating your seed corn, except in this case, it is one or two people who eat it, so there isn’t even widely shared short term benefit for the long term tragedy.

It’s easy enough to focus on things like the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia, which was discovered in 1948. It remains the largest oil field in the world with production of 5 million barrels per day — roughly $100 billion per year. It’s just oil that is sitting around. But ExxonMobile and the rest are not just waiting to extract the oil that we know about. They are pushing forward to find ever more oil. And it is there to be found! And I fear that as long as there is big money to be made, they will continue to do so.

Jonathan Chait brought my attention to some exciting news, Snowball-Chucking, Science-Hating Senator May Crash Paris Climate Talks. Yes, it’s our old friend James Inhofe — back in the news to bring the Truth™ to the people of the world. That Truth™ is, of course, that global warming is a hoax and that he can prove it because it snows in the winter. Inhofe is thinking of going the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, “I’ll repeat what I’ve done several times before, which is to go over and be the bad guy, the one-man truth squad, and tell the truth, that they’re going to be lied to by the Obama administration.”

This is sounding kind of hollow now. After all, it isn’t just Obama who takes global warming seriously. The governments of India and China and pretty much every other place on Earth take it seriously. Inhofe probably acts as a kind of argument for doing something about climate change. It’s the same as crazy people marching the streets shouting, “The end is nigh!” They always make me feel that everything is okay. If they weren’t so obviously crazy, I might be worried. Of course, the people of the world might start worrying about America in a general sense, but I can’t say that is unreasonable.

Such a stunt sounds so much like what a bunch of born again Christians would do. He’s certain he knows the truth. There is literally no way he will ever be convinced. I have to admit, that I’ve been somewhat deluded these past few years. I’ve thought that in ten or twenty years, all these global warming deniers would be unable to resist the plain facts. But that isn’t true. James Inhofe will never accept that global warming is happening, just as George Will won’t. It really doesn’t matter how long they live or what they see.

I talk a lot around here about how reasoning doesn’t work the way that we think it does. In general, people decide on something and then use their mighty brains to rationalize why they are right. But it does seem that not all people are alike in this regard. Some people are more open to new information than others. In particular, there are ways to turn off reflection. Fideism is a good way to do this. And it really doesn’t matter if it is through a dogmatic religion or an ossified ideology. In this case, we are not even talking about conservatism or “free market” absolutism. In Inhofe’s case, it is just a rejection of anything that he sees as liberal.

So imagine twenty years from now and global warming mitigation is costing the world trillions of dollars ever year. Inhofe is already 80 years old. He’ll be dead. George Will is 74, so he’ll probably be dead. But there will be a lot of living global warming deniers from today. And they’ll have a reason that they were right all along. There’s always a reason. If you are determined to believe something, you will find a way. But it doesn’t matter, because the damage will have been done. What’s more, even if all the Inhofes and Wills beg for forgiveness, they will still be out there denying any new threat to our safety and preaching their convenient Truth™.

Hello folks! I guess I’m going to kind of live blog this thing. I have beer, so it’s okay.

Update

I ended up watching the rest of it. But I couldn’t continue commenting. It is all nonsense. But what most comes out is how complaining about the media is the biggest applause line. What is that all about? The Republicans don’t seem to care about any policy. It is all culture war stuff.

What’s more, there was all this nonsense about the candidates patting themselves on the back over their discussion of “policy” and “ideas.” There are none. It is all reactionary. They are against what the Democrats are for and they are for… They don’t say. And that’s because the only thing they really believe in is lowering taxes on the rich. Yet one of them will get roughly 50% of the vote in just over a year.

Paul Bibeau wrote a great, but deeply disturbing, article yesterday, I Actually Spent the Day Arguing With a Conservative About Whether Slavery Was Bad. Now this is the guy who writes ghost stories about Ronald Reagan, first person notes from a psychopathic Willy Wonka, and Tom Cruise as an immortal Übermensch. So you never know. But this article was straight reporting. And really, we all know its true because we’ve all interacted with these kinds of people. The internet is filled with them.

The argument was over at The Federalist — generally considered a place for smart conservatives. So if you think that Corey Robin is wrong and that conservatism isn’t just a reactionary movement against non-elites, think again. This kind of racism is at the very core of conservative thought. It’s just that it mostly stayed unspoken until the anonymity of the internet arrived. In this case, what most bothered me was this bit, “They got houses or cabins with food, and someone to draw water for them. Most of them were healthier than Africans at the time, and economically, they were better compensated than white workers.” The “they” in this case are slaves in America.

I’ve heard this exact same argument made multiple times by people around the internet. It is usually not made by people who think of themselves as white supremacists (although the guy in question didn’t seem to have a problem with the moniker). But for whatever reason (eg, they are racists) they find it necessary to apologize for slavery. The argument usually goes something like, “Slaves were incredibly valuable! Slave owners treated them very well!” This is at best extremely ignorant. But mostly, it is ideological commitment. They don’t want to admit that anything was wrong in the past.

Well, I did a little research. There are various estimates about the the health of American slaves. I wish all these people would read Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told. But our white supremacist friend claims that slaves were healthier than they would have been in African. I think it is worth while to look seriously at life expectancies. According to Our World in Data, the life expectancy in Africa in 1850 was roughly 26 (or perhaps mid-30s); in America it was 35. But of course, that number for America isn’t for slaves.

Luckily, I found the following nifty data from the 1860 US census. It provides a breakdown of slaves by age for 1850. (The 1860 numbers are similar, but there is a typo in the table, so I’m not using it.) Here it is:

Based upon this, we can see that slaves didn’t live long. They tended to die very young. Data from Louis Israel Dublin’s Length of Life (see the same website) indicates that in 1850, African Americans in Massachusetts had a life expectancy slightly higher than that of whites: just short of 40 years. In Maryland, the number for slaves was a bit lower: 38. But in Louisiana, it was 29. This is, of course, due to child mortality. Blacks in the south had a 50% child mortality rate compared to 25% for whites. Slaves were not treated well — especially compared to whites.

The most screwed up people I’ve ever known have always been those people who can never admit to being wrong about anything. It is only through admission of error that we can learn and grow. This happens with societies too. You would think after all these years, we would be beyond arguing if slavery was a good thing or not. But as far as I can tell, this argument is coming back. Slavery was unbelievably barbaric and cruel. Slavery is one of our two biggest sins. We didn’t do a favor for anyone. We enriched ourselves using the sweat and blood of others.

Matt Taibbi put last week’s Benghazi hearing into a broader context that I think is really important, Trey Gowdy Just Elected Hillary Clinton President. If you know Taibbi’s work, you know that he is no fan of Clinton. And he is none too happy that Trey Gowdy and company made even him sympathetic to her. In fact, this is exactly what I was thinking, “Actually many people would have lost it early on and grabbed Gowdy by his goofy silver fro-hawk somewhere in hour six or seven, a fact that made Hillary by contrast look patient and presidential, in ways her campaign had been unable to achieve all year.” I believe I wrote the same thing last week, although mine involved a knife.

But that’s just politics. That’s not the broader context. As much as Taibbi might have major problems with Clinton — far bigger than my policy disagreements — he doesn’t doubt her basic humanity. But that is the base assumption of the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Taibbi put it perfectly, “Hillary has a lot of flaws, but we’re supposed to believe that she doesn’t have a problem with dead Americans? Seriously?” Well, yes: seriously. Of course Taibbi knows that. And it isn’t just Clinton.

Taibbi mentioned the fact that certain people had a tendency to dehumanize Bush when he was in office. “This is the same kind of abject stupidity we saw in the 9/11 Truth movement, which believed unquestioningly that a whole bund of Bush administration officials was willing to see Americans murdered en masse in order to further some convoluted world domination scheme.” But as Taibbi well knows, this was a very small group with no actual power. And of course, they weren’t liberals — conspiracy theorists tend to be in some incoherent realm that is both extreme right and extreme left.

Today, we live in a world where the Republican base — created largely by Fox News and hate radio — believes that liberals are at best naive in allowing the evil doers to take over the US, or actively evil and treasonous in trying to do that very thing themselves. This is not, of course, new. We saw it throughout the Clinton presidency and it was simply recycled for Obama. Some people claim that we shouldn’t elect Clinton because it will just create more scandal mongering from the Republicans. This is indeed a naive notion. Regardless of what Democrat becomes president, there will be more of this. That’s because Democrats are traitors by definition in the Republican mind.

So that is what was most horrifying to watch last week. It wasn’t an attack on Hillary Clinton but on all liberals — and even conservatives who are not of the crazy persuasion. We are not real citizens or even perhaps humans. And this is what allows the Republicans to continue to get elected despite only have policies that benefit the rich and powerful. Their voters believe that voting for that kind of thing is better than the alternative where they lose everything. And they would be right, if that were the actual choice. Of course, it isn’t.

What’s most interesting is that the Republican base ultimately acts the way the conspiracy theorists do. A couple of months ago, I wrote about this, Conspiracy Theories and the Yield to Real Power. By focusing on fake threats, these people allow real threats to have their way. And that is what the Republican base does: better to vote in favor of real threats to their livelihood and freedom rather than vote for Hillary Clinton who literally wants to kill ambassadors — and by extension, other regular Americans.