From: mbb@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (martin.brilliant)
Newsgroups: nj.politics
Subject: Re: pres. election/ignorance of the dem. field
Date: 9 Apr 92 20:51:07 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbfsb.1992Apr9.205107.2270
Organization: AT&T

From article <1992Apr9.133654.23479@njitgw.njit.edu>, by dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap):
> ....
> I took economics classes.  Deficit spending has a wonderful effect in
> the short run.  It's disaster in the long run.  It was dumb under FDR
> in the 30's, it was dumb in England in the 30's, and it was dumb for
> Reagan in the 80's.

Of course the economics classes taught that Keynes did not advise
continual deficit spending.  He advised deficit financing in slow
times, and surplus financing in boom times.  That wasn't dumb, it was
just not knowing that deficit financing is addictive.  Deliberate
deficit financing hadn't been tried before.

> Clinton wants to cancel all defense spending and give it to welfare.
> That will ruin our technological edge forever.  Of course, in a time
> of peace, there isn't much need for defense, but the money should be
> used to encourage other hi-tech growth.  How about making it legal for
> defense contractors to use their skills in commercial R&D?  Keeping
> the funding levels where they are.

I disagree.  There's nothing magical about defense contractors.
Defense contractors don't know how to profit in a commercial market.
The defense industry is kept alive through the cooperation of the
Department of Defense.

Their technical skills are in their engineers, not their managers.  If
you can make the domestic economy more attractive for commercial
innovation, and less attractive for defense contractors, the engineers
will change jobs and do constructive instead of destructive things.

Face it: the main reason we continue to maintain our horrendously
expensive defense establishment, and tobacco establishment, and health
care establishment, and big-car establishment, and welfare
establishment, is that we don't know how to make the economy
attractive to new enterprises that might replace them.

The Republicans in Washington don't know how to do that.  I don't know
whether the Democrats do or not.  But I can see that the Republicans
are protecting those who benefit from the status quo, and not doing
anything to help the vast numbers of people who are suffering in the
status quo.  I'm just hoping a Democrat might do something different.

> While I agree that some people need supplimental income to survive,
> massive payments to welfare recipients will not improve the economy
> one iota.  Giving welfare checks is like giving a man a fish - it'll
> feed him for a short time and leave him starving tomorrow.  Giving R&D
> money to corporations is like teaching him how to fish - it creates
> new jobs and markets that these people can be hired into.  That will
> be the only saving of the economy.

I agree up to the next to the last sentence.  Giving money to a
corporation is also giving away a fish.  Corporations are set up to
make their own money.  Somehow, you have to teach corporations to fish
for themselves, but nobody seems to know how to do that.

>>> I'm voting for Perot.
>>
>>Any real reason, or just becasue he's kind of trendy now?
> 
> I've hheard a lot about his job in managing EDS.  While I think he was
> a bit tough on his employees, he treated them well.  He also managed
> to make it a hugely successful company.  If he can get anything passed
> through Congress (may be impossible as an independant regardless of
> proposals) I think he'll be able to make things work properly.

Mussolini made the trains run on time.  The basic theory of Fascism
was not totalitarian oppression.  It was that government and
corporations could work together to make a better world if they were
not hampered by liberals.  The vision above, of defense contractors
doing commercial work, government giving money to corporations, and a
corporate executive running for President, is consistent with that
theory.  I have no specific knowledge of how Perot thinks, but the
whole picture scares me a little.

							Marty
marty@hoqaa.att.com		hoqaa!marty
Martin B. Brilliant		(Winnertech Corporation)