Is the US equipped for democracy?

Maybe Jackson wrote it, but Don Henley made the record. Jackson Browne did work with the Eagles a good bit

 

My bad, Don Henley wrote it with a session musician. I think Styx and Jackson Brown had similar themes at the same time in the early 80s.

 

Soooo.... let me get this right, you think Mr. Roboto and Somebody's Baby are equivalent.
OK, carry on.

 

Well they both suck, sooo ...

 

They both should have backed up about 6-7 years and stuck with that. I'll take Renegade and Doctor My Eyes any day over the others.

 

Styx blows.

 

Amazingly, 16 year old students can understand the meanings of these words.

 

Styx did have some good songs, but Mr Roboto wasn’t one of them.

 

If you can find it, try to get a copy of Don Felder’s book “Heaven and Hell; My Life With The Eagles”. It’s a great read if you are a music fan of the 70’s and 80’s. The paths that were crossing in those days is fascinating.

 

Related - studies show that Republican beliefs about the economy and their economic expectations actually cause inflation. I agree with Drum that the effects seem too substantial as a matter of logic. But still, another data point that we are not really equipped for democracy

But that's not all. The authors say that these inflationary expectations actually turned into inflation:

We find strong positive and significant effects of inflation expectations on inflation itself.... A one percentage-point increase in 1-year or 5-year inflation expectations lead to a 1.3 or 2.3 percentage point increase in inflation, respectively.


They figure that inflation would have topped out around 5% and would currently be at 1.7%.

I'm not sure what to think about this. The results seem too big to be true, and the authors take some shortcuts that might be iffy. That said, I don't have the econometric chops to evaluate the paper properly. I'd sure like someone else to do it, though. If the paper is right, we're paying a huge price for the Trump/Fox-induced economic panic that continues to infest Republican voters.

Study suggests Republican panic caused recent inflation - Kevin Drum

 

Way back when I taught AP Economics that was referred to as “consumer expectations”

 

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
— H.L. Mencken —

 

Wow a racist elitist had bad things to say about democracy? How odd! Kind of funny you favorably quote a guy who would have thought you were a mouthbreathing idiot for your virus stance and religious beliefs!

 

Great line

 

The United States is not a pure democracy, but our constitutional republic is considered a form of democracy because it vests significant power in the people to elect our political representatives.

 

It is so weird that after decades of promoting democracy, Republicans have switched to de-emphasizing democracy and promoting the republic part of our democratic republic. Is politics really so much of a team sport that we can't celebrate one of the things that makes us great, just because the name of the rival party contains it?

 

Mencken bravely fought off hay fever during the Spanish Flu …

“he kept working on his book yet felt muggy, suspecting he may be fighting off illness himself, though in his case it was probably hay fever.”

H.L. Mencken on 'Numskull' Presidents, the Spanish Flu, and the Depression

 

Kevin Drum

It is quickly congealing into conventional wisdom that Joe Biden's big economic problem is not the current inflation rate, which is fairly moderate, but the fact that prices are still higher than they were a few years ago. People have memories of those lower prices, so they're unhappy with the current higher ones. It's only BLS nerds who care about the precise level of the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average.

Fair enough, I suppose, except that prices never go down after an episode of inflation. In particular, here's a comparison of inflation now with inflation 40 years ago during the Reagan presidency:

These are both three-year periods that end in April of the election year. In Reagan's case, prices were 15.9% higher than they were 36 months before. In Biden's case they're 17.4% higher.

In other words, almost identical. But Reagan turned this into Morning in America, while Biden is suffering through a vibecession. Why the difference? I think there are two reasons:

• The media was far less partisan in Reagan's day. Today, Fox News and its allies have been relentless about focusing on high prices. This is why Republicans are far more unhappy about the economy than Democrats.
• Reagan's bout of inflation started under Jimmy Carter and the public didn't blame him for it. They just gave him credit for bringing it down. Conversely, our current epsisode of inflation started under Biden, so he's not getting much credit for bringing down something that people think was his fault to begin with.

Why Biden isn’t getting credit for crushing inflation - Kevin Drum