"General Pericles, allow me to introduce Mr. Zakim"

Dear Dr. Bones,

I believe the moral of this afternoons’s rejected e-ddress is something about how really dismal the Dismal Science is, how blithely one digresses away from it in practically any direction. But decide for yourself:

Political Genius: Obama assigns Romney the 1% Bob_Neer | Mon, May 21, 2012 9:08 PM EST (...)

(...) On the other hand, all those harmful taxes do go somewhere: it’s not, as some would wish us to believe, mere confiscatory and punishment. It’s infrastructure. It’s regulation. It’s the part of the government that helps the wealthy get even wealthier… so wealthy they can afford to not know, nor care, what exactly they pay in taxation. When I see NASA send a rocket up, I think taxes. When I’m in Boston and the glorious Zakim bridge hoves into view, I think taxes. Often this view is seen from the public transportation system. More taxes. I have one son a freshman in high school, and my other son will be a freshman next year. I’m impressed with the teachers and am thankful my taxes contribute to their salaries. In my less Christian moments I imagine that the taxes I paid in 2010 purchased the bullet that ended Osama bin Laden. That’s the return I require from my taxes. petr @ Tue 22 May 12:37 PM

To gawk at bridges &c. like some rube tourist (( fold here )) is all very well for those incapable of anything better, but scholars and gentlemen find invisible monuments and unheard melodies sweeter far, ¿nicht wahr? Take PRODUCTIVITY, for instance: ¿Is that not a more respectable and adult sort of public work to admire than what Plato in Gorgias calleth ... lemme see ... "harbours and dockyards and fortifications and tribute-moneys and the like trash"? [1] Happy days. _____ [1] Stephanus 519a ADDENDUMB. The pet google, herself no mean productivity enhancer, found what Paddy McTammany was looking for embedded in something I was not, namely the Political and Moral Essays of Joseph Rickaby. (¿Who?) A little further on the honourable and learnèd Rickaby warned his 1902 customers not to swallow ‘trash’ whole: "St. Paul was not the man to cry down a Jewish education (cf. Acts xxii. 3), nor Plato the provisions for national defence. But they looked beyond these things to things immeasurably nobler ...." And so forth and so on. Speaking of War Department Exceptionalism, so to christen it, Paddy is pleased to have learned just now that Governor Romney gazes upon the Pentagon with emotions akin to those of Gray at Eton College and Mister Poster at Charlestown Crossing: ... [T]he NATO alliance must retain the capacity to act. As president, I will work closely with our partners to bolster the alliance. In that effort, words are not enough. I will reverse Obama-era military cuts. I will not allow runaway entitlement spending to swallow the defense budget as has happened in Europe ((¿huh?)) and as President Obama is now allowing here. This gem, too, came ensconced in the head of a toad, some bicycle-challenged perfesser called Daniel W. Drezner.  DWD cannot be much of a Republicanine, for he keeps mumbling discouraging words about the Romneyan Vistas: The basic point is that in an alliance containing a single superpower, the rest of the alliance members will tend to free-ride off of the hegemonic actor. In essence, Romney’s op-ed doubles down on that free-rider logic. If Romney commits to boosting U.S. defense spending, exactly what incentive does this give our NATO allies to boost theirs? On a related (I hope) topic, Paddy is no economist, but guesses ignorantly that War Department outlays may dispose of the chicken-egg question as between "wealth creation" and "job creation." It sure looks to me as if there is nothing to prevent Uncle Sam conscripting all the Bad Poor and equipping us with blunderbusses and whatnot, thereby creating zillions of jobs (and ‘defense’ contracts), yet no additional wealth worth mentioning. Ideally all these expensive goodies would never be put to use, which means--¿doesn’t it?--that the expenditure involved would not altogether qualify as ‘consumption’, let alone as sacred Investment. Mais que sçay-je? I am not sure I even grasp what ‘wealth’ is, the way that word has been bandied about in this thread.

This set-to serves better than most to present Tweedledumb and Tweedletea as about equally sadly lacking in that Intellectual Bottom product of which the little lady drooled.   Paddy and Eye, plus maybe the Great Crow, may want to recur to this thing someday, so here are a couple of extracts from the great egg-chicken-jobs-wealth fandango:

The distinction between private wealth creation and govrnment job "creation" One point I hope Romney makes is that wealth creation is the key to job creation. Not government spending, or “fairness,” or CETA job training. Progressives talk endlessly about government “investment” in all sorts of things, but for every dollar spent by government, whether on public salaries, subsidizing the movie industry, or “infrastructure,” a dollar is removed from more efficient private sector investment. The private sector requires RETURN. The public sector does not. Government investment/spending has its place — fundamental research, public infrastructure, national defense. It thinks their investing in electronic gaming start-ups and biotechnology is better or more efficient than letting the private sector do it. But it never (or rarely) is. bostonshepherd @ Tue 22 May 10:14 AM

Wealth creation is *absolutely not* the key to job creation Unless you believe that history is wrong. If wealth creation were the key to job creation, we’d now have full employment and a vibrant economy. Instead, we’ve had an awful economy for a decade or more, and a catastrophe for the last four years. And all the while the 1% got richer, richer, richer, richer. More wealth created, fewer jobs. As it was in the 1920s and so many times before that. The last time we had a depression, in the 1920s and 1930s, we got out through massive government spending and had 40 years of prosperity for all Americans. History has shown that’s the only way forward. mannygoldstein @ Tue 22 May 11:18 AM

Happy days.
--JHM