I saw over the weekend Mistermix‘s post on E. D. Kain’s love for Gary Johnson. I dutifully read the linked the referenced Kain posts and the adoring Friedersdorf profile to which Kain linked.*
I’m with Mistermix — I too would love to see a president wave his magic wand and end wars, both foreign and domestic, but I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that Johnson could achieve any of that. But my objection to Johnson runs deeper: E. D.’s (to me) credulous love for this candidacy seems (to me) to capture exactly the wrong way to approach that moment of communion in the voting booth…
…and to explain what I mean by that, I’m going to recycle some stuff from last August on my personal site, The Inverse Square, written in response to an early post of E. D.’s here, mostly dissing Newt (fine by me) that also touted Johnson. At that point, I hadn’t heard of the guy at all, so I went so far as to look at Johnson’s Our America site (a test -the-water production anticipating a national run)…this, abridged from the original, is what I found:
Mostly, there is nothing surprising — just typical magic pony stuff. He wants the tooth fairy to pay for college education, Philip Morris (sorry, Altria) to cure cancer (joking, in case it isn’t obvious)…and he wants the environment to be wonderful without doing anything about actual environmental problems.
As I say, nuthin’ to see here except for the familiar emptiness of GOPer’s policy competence. In the end, without having the time required to fisk the whole site, I just went for a bit of sampling. To that end, I listened I read and listened to Johnson’s discussion of the Federal Reserve.
Mostly he tried to avoid any controversy, and certainly any hint of the crazy that the thought of the Fed evokes from some of the libertarian/black helicopter crowed. But, of course, you can’t keep a true believer down, and his anti-Fed whackery prairie dogged into view at the end of Johnson’s video presentation.
There he noted scornfully that between 1913 (the Fed’s founding) and now, the value of a 1913 dollar has dropped to 5 cents. I.e.—the portrait of Washington you have in your pocket would buy you what a 1913 nickel in 1913would . (per a comment on my original post — this is the result of a terrifying annualized inflation rate: roughly 3%/year.)
Johnson’s trenchant analysis at that revelation: “Yikes.” (Quoted in full.)
Is this nonsense? Of course it is.
Why?
Because it omits the critical measure of per capita income changes from then to now.
In the haste of an afternoon at the office, I haven’t yet dug up the full time series, but just looking at it from 1950 to 2004, US per capita income has risen, in constant 2004 dollars, from $17,077 for men and $6,333 for women to $30,513 and $17,629, respectively, over that 54 year period.**
The point: Americans have grown substantially wealthier despite nominal decreases in the value of a dollar.
The deeper point: libertarian fixations on the Fed, on the numerology of money, bear no relation to reality.
Most sentient folks even vaguely literate in economics understands that mild inflation is vastly preferable to deflation. Inflation hawkery in the absence of actual inflation, is one of the real threats to job creation and long term economic growth; deflation is a real danger. See,e.g., KThug for much more, along with many other sources (DeLong offers a good clearing house for this stuff as well) —but again, everyone here pretty much knows this stuff I think.
In that context, nominal dollars will fall in value relative to their historical predecessors. (You want to see this in spades? Check out this web calculator that allows you to figure out the value of the pound sterling back to 1264. FWIW, a pound then would be worth about £520 by the retail price index measure, and £11,800 using average earnings as the exchange rate. See also this page for a range of resources on this question.)
But Gary Johnson either does not, or chooses not to mess about in this real world of buying and selling and growing wealthy over time.
Yikes, I say.
In this context, Johnson’s tag line at his proto-campaign site — “Good Government is Easy” — is one of those hurts-too-much-to-laugh-I’m-too-big-to-cry moments of vapid folly from someone who wishes to be our leader.
….
That’s (slightly modified) what I had to say back then. Now, I’ll just add that E. D. is making a real mistake, IMHO, in falling into that old trap of loving pols who make one feel good about this principle or that. You have to check under the hood. We’ve too much recent experience in the have-a-beer-with approach to presidential selection to run this risk again.
*I haven’t been reading Friedersdorf’s new blog, which I see DougJ likes — but this piece on Johnson is a prime example of what gives me hives in political writing. A couple of thousand words on what an interesting, unusual guy Johnson is, and nothing on what he actually did, what he claimed as the likely results of his actions, what actually transpired, and what he is proposing now as a potential president. I’m glad Friedersdorf had a fun interview with the man. I just wished he’d actually told me something of more substance than that the guy reminds him of Phil Jackson
**See. Despite evidence to the contrary, I can occasionally grasp the concept of a constant dollar.
Image: William Hogarth, The Humours of an Election: The Polling, 1754-1755.
Linda Featheringill
If you want to have capitalism, then you need some sort of central bank that does the things that the Fed does. The culture cannot long survive in the violent boom-and-bust of raw capitalism.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Just a quick note and then (unfortunately) I’ve got to run. During Gary Johnson’s tenure as gov of New Mexico he became known to the locals mostly for vetoing an unusually large percentage of the bills that came out of the Roundhouse (the local nickname for the state legislature). In other words, being against things rather than in favor of things was pretty much his daily modus operandi. I have no idea if he would repeat this pattern if elected POTUS or not.
Roger Moore
Talking about inflation over spans of more than a few years is also fraught with problems of what exactly it is that you’re buying. Prices on different classes of goods change at different rates, as the example of vastly different values by real estate and wage inflation shows. Beyond even that, the quality of goods has changed a lot over time, so even if you could come up with a nominal goods basket to compare purchasing power in 1913 to today, it still wouldn’t work right. A 1913 car is not a 2011 car, and a 1913 house is not a 2011 house- even if you’re comparing the “same” house on the same lot in 1913 and today.
TomG
2. ThatLeftTurnInABQ – he probably would, and that might end up being a good thing. Or not. I’m not totally sold on Johnson, however, I do think that he’s better than any of the current alternatives on that side of the political aisle.
Villago Delenda Est
This, right here, all by itself, disqualifies Johnson from any consideration at all.
It’s hard. VERY hard. You can make it look easy, but that’s because you’re ignorant of what actually happens, and the effort that goes into that appearance.
The reason it’s so hard is that it is so very, very difficult to get people to agree on a lot of things. Especially when it comes to resolving conflicts between one person’s “rights” and another person’s “rights”.
JFK once said we’re not doing this because it’s easy…we’re doing it because it’s hard.
Libertarians ignore the hard and concentrate on the easy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: But a good broadsword is always an excellent value. Well worth its price in woad.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@TomG:
I have to agree, while placing that statement in the category of praising with faint damms.
The thing is, I don’t think his governing style can be scaled up from NM to the US. Just leaving the lights on on the White House porch while he goes off to compete in Ironman Triathlons, and letting every bill die that doesn’t come out of Congress with a veto-proof majority isn’t going to produce some sort of state of Zen-like calm in DC. Instead it would trigger a vicious struggle for power at the Cabinet level that would make the Pentagon-State Dept. relationship during the GWB admin. look like a friendly reunion of the surviving cast of Monty Python by comparison.
MNPundit
I see ED Kain is not listed on the contact list, I haven’t been here in a long time. Did he leave? Can someone link me to a goodbye post or something?
Oh, he still seems to be here, just not wanting to talk. Stay classy buddy.
TomG
#7 –
and you know what? You very well could be correct!
Honestly, my interest in anarchism and decentralized socialism and left-libertarians really has put me off of much cheerleading for anyone. I’m not even certain that I ought to be defending Johnson. But I’m watching to see how the rest of the Republicans react to him. He isn’t as easily dismissed as Ron Paul (to make the obvious comparison). After all, he DID get re-elected in a mainly Democratic state, didn’t he?
Omnes Omnibus
@MNPundit: He still posts occasionally. He is still frequently wrong and/or superficial in his analyses, but he has gotten a lot better about engaging in the trenches.
kdaug
Stoled.
Maude
@MNPundit:
In one of his posts, not long ago, E.D. put his email address.
bystander
Gary Johnson has, apparently, two selling points; he is, ostensibly, anti-war and in favor of legalizing marijuana. Who knows how effective he could be in realizing either policy goal. Certainly, I can’t guess, although it might be nice to have at least a 4-year break from POTUS throwing some small crappy little country … against the wall, just to show the world we mean business. I could relish that hiatus all by itself.
But, amid the sturm and drang of of the upcoming election cycle, I found this, posted by someone else to be salient:
That which flows from our military adventures is often quite evil. And, were a candidate, resolute – and, they could convince me of the same – against military solutions as the default first approximation, I would have to look at that candidate – hard. There are all manner of things that can be argued, but the the devastation to our domestic economy and our international standing from our tendency to ready – fire – aim seems inarguable. Once our military is involved – as someone else characterized it – we can bank on the zip tie syndrome; you can only go one way – tighter and tighter until you have to cut it.
I agree that there is a whole lot to not like about Gary Johnson, and a fair degree to find absolutely worrisome. Maybe there is no one in the loyal opposition who can credibly make the anti-war case. But, if there were….
MikeJ
@bystander: I thought the military intervention in Kosovo worked pretty well. I thought the navy shooting pirates off Somalia worked well. Hell, I thought the military did a good job of surrounding bin Laden until they were ordered away from him.
tkogrumpy
Just for giggles, here is a grocery shopping list on the back of a picture of my mother taken the year I was born 1940. lb. butter 10 cents, starch 10 cents 1/2 doz. oranges 13 cents 1 luckies(cigarettes)15 cents, cake mix 5 cents. I’ve been plugged into Gary Johnson’s facebook page about 6 months. His followers are a mixed bag of free market absolutist Ayn Randoids and kids looking for the easy answers.
gex
@tkogrumpy: In which group would we put EDK?
Bob
@gex: Ouch!
gex
@Bob: Frankly, I never could see a difference between those two groups, provided you are willing to call immature adults “kids”.
b-psycho
Some way more than others. Coincidentally, the ones with the closest ties to the banking system have gone gangbusters the whole time, worth of their “work” be damned.
Why criticism of central banking isn’t more popular on the Left in light of the obvious Financialization of Absolutely Everything & its effect on the distribution of wealth, I have no idea.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know about all that. He (EDK) told me to “fuck right off” on a post a while back.
That kind of hurt my feelings. A little.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The reason Benjamin Franklin liked inflation and conservatives and libertarians hate it is because it requires the wealthy to spend their money to make more because otherwise their current money becomes worth less in the future.
PeakVT
Most sentient folks even vaguely literate in economics understands that mild inflation is vastly preferable to deflation. [….] In that context, nominal dollars will fall in value relative to their historical predecessors.
Here’s how I would put it: as long as the economy is growing, the supply of money needs to grow. Otherwise, deflation will automatically occur as the same amount of money chases more and more goods. But because a central bank doesn’t know exactly how fast the economy is growing at any one point, it has to increase the money supply at a rate high enough to ensure that deflation never occurs. Thus inflation. Of course, inflation can be too high, but 3% is nowhere close.
wmd
Johnson worked with the Drug Policy Foundation to do some tangible things:
Narcan is available to addicts for treatment of overdose.
Taking an OD victim to the ER doesn’t result in a police investigation.
Needle exchange.
Bruce S
Gary Johnson is a “nullification” nutcase. Thinks that applying a wingnut principle whereby no state has to abide by a federal law it’s legislators don’t like “solves all of our problems.”
Didn’t we have a bit of a scuffle over this concept – one which left over 650,000 dead ?
Gary Johnson is a great guest on the Bill Maher show. As was Christine O’Donnell…
That’s where it begins and ends with this clown.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
well, if nothing else the anti-fed thing gets lefties talking about how the standard of living has improved over the long haul.
false flag my man, false flag.
hard to defend the fed, then go attack the upward direction of money flowing to the top 2 percent, and how the middle class has stagnated under reaganomics…
i mean you can certainly argue the differences between the two points, but not in a way that anyone will listen to. all they will hear is you claiming the middle class is dying on one hand, and that you are touting their rise on the other.
as to johnson, just another in the long line of cons for thoughtful cons, who “if they had their way the party would back this guy”. of course these cons, thoughtful as they might be, will beat the drum for the standard bearer, and lock step when its lock steppin time, regardless. when you support conservatives, even if they have “ideas”, ultimately you are supporting the mainline gop, because they all rally back to momma, eventually. not buying johnson or his ideas any more than pierre dupont and whomever else has filled that role in years past.
suzanne
@Corner Stone:
Do you need a hug?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Levenson I do not fucking believe you read EDK’s post. Or the comments.
EDK and mistermix were basically concern trolling Obama’s war policy and using GaJo as a stalking horse.
Allan pointed out that EDK is bashing Obama in his twit stream, and I pointed out that EDK is bashing Obama at Forbes.
He keeps his mask on here. EDK is a fucking libertarian concern troll.
Nellcotes link.
My comment.
A huge problem with EDK’s blog this week is that the LoOGies are now mainstreaming islamophobia by giving JAFI Tim Kowal a front page spot.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
And here is Kay’s comment which I thought was really good.
WHY do we need three frontpage posts about GaJo?
Upper West
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: That’s 1950-2004. There was tremendous growth from 1950 to 1980, after 1980, not so much — stagnation for almost everyone except the top 5% and even more so, 1%.
During the ascent of the New Deal/Great Society the middle class grew tremendously. From Reagan on the GOP has tried to tear it down, all too successfully,
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Oh you dumb mothafuckahs.
What did I tell you?
SERIOUSLY?
Kain is going to support a union bashing AGW denialist libertarian anti-Roe tenther?
And you assclowns are all nodding your heads and chewing this cud through THREE FUCKING FRONT PAGE POSTS?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Corner Stone
@suzanne: God yes. I need a hug more than any handsome, vivacious, smart, funny white guy has ever needed a hug throughout antiquity.
Just trust me on this.
E.D. Kain
Tom – I think Johnson is probably too radical in too many ways to support. I do like his positions on drugs and on the wars abroad, but that is probably not enough of a reason to support him. Stillwater and Omnes both had good arguments in my last thread on the matter, and in other discussions with friends I’ve basically decided that it’s better to support issues rather than make drastic issue-based alliances with people who you fundamentally disagree with on too many issues. That being said, I do wish Obama and the Democrats would take the war on drugs seriously, and I wish we could get out of these damned wars. And if wishes were ponies…
E.D. Kain
@Omnes Omnibus: I may be wrong but I disagree about superficial. I am more than willing to admit when I’m wrong, but I take issue with superficial. You are, of course, entitled to disagree.
@Corner Stone: I was just trying to fit in. People kept telling me to tell them to fuck off and DIAF. I aim to please.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: That is a truly fascinating analysis. Please, tell me more.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: I did on your post. And you ran away like usual.
Its pretty simple.
Q: Why support a union-bashing anti-Roe AGW denialist tenther for president?
Don’t you support unions, choice, and child labor laws? Don’t you believe in AGW?
And GaJo is a non-starter. He has negative infinity chance of being elected.
A: Because you can use GaJo as a stalking horse to snipe at Obama on Libya.
Here’s another question for you.
Why do you have a JAFI as a front pager?
Triassic Sands
People are getting desperate. I have a friend who’s constantly touting the wonders of the latest fantasy candidate. There’s no effort put into any critical analysis of the candidate’s stupidity, just a quick latching onto any statement that sounds like it might (in Wonderland) offer a cure for a problem. We’re doomed.
asiangrrlMN
With you on this, Tom. No president can end the wars, real and drug ones, by him/herself. And, Johnson has vastly more negatives than positives, including ones stated above.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@E.D. Kain: How about Nellcotes argument?
Didnt you read that?
And GaJo is apparently a racist.
How did you miss this EDK?
racism is over in America
Hermione Granger-Weasley
yeah, run away you pompous dishonest little prick.
get Cole to ban me again why dontcha.
/spit
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Upper West:
granted. i understand the difference.
my point is try selling it. particularly debate style, but even in the daily messaging fight of a campaign. my point is, there ain’t nothing gonna happen with dear sweet old fed. its a fun issue to have around if you are a rightie, because responses to it provide useful frames to be applied to other conversations.
DPirate
So Tom is saying all is well because people are going to automatically triple their salaries over their working lifetime just to tread water.
What a wonderful world…?
Paul in KY
But, but, but…he likes to smoke the doob! He’s a libertarian fantasy, that’s why EDK has the hots for him.
Paul in KY
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Plus, he has a really bad toupee! Give em Hell, HGW!