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This guy just doesn’t get it. In an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, John McCain told him that America’s economic problems are “psychological” and just a little of his patent-pending straight talk would do wonders for the Republican Recession.
That’s right folks, McCain thinks the cure to our economic woes are the bad jokes and patter he shares with his base in the media.
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Well, considering the “value” of anything in America’s economy is based on faith and people’s willingness to believe something has worth, he’s may not be far off. Psychology plays a large part of it.
I’m tellin’ ya, you just aren’t seeing the subtle genius of this guy!
Um, I’m psyching myself up to go find a beer heir worth enough money that I can lift myself positively out of poverty and even run for office on the connections of…this is obviously a key to the American dream I was not aware of.
I’m sure many people in America are as unprepared for financial happiness as I am, having an in-built suspicion of marrying for money, or taking quid pro quo for political favors from, let’s say, certain bankers…lobbyists…to stay in government-finded semi-luxury.
Obviously, I’d have to get past the blocks that cause my repugnance to these things.
Yawn and your answer is to give the government monopoly power over everything. Both parties are retarded.
Vixen, if that’s your notion of success, forget McCain. John Kerry should be your role model. He married an heiress worth millions, then traded her up for a widow worth twice as much. He also managed to get out of Viet Nam after only a couple of months, unlike McCain.
And as far as our economic problems being psychological… you got a better term to describe them? Physical? Economics is 99% psychology. It’s an entirely synthetic creation, conceived by and existing only in the mind of man, built around abstract concepts that not defy the fundamental laws of physics. It’s one of the few places where just wishing hard enough can work miracles, just like reviving Tinker Bell.
No, it’s not all in our heads, but a significant portion of it is. How the hell else can you reconcile a 5.1% unemployment rate being a sign of an economic catastrophe today, while a 5.3% rate a decade ago was a sign of a boom? How else can you have some people scream about runaway defense spending as a solid number, while when it’s measured as a percentage of GDP it’s among the lowest in decades?
McCain seems to grasp that a good chunk of our economic problems are, indeed, “all in our heads,” and he seems to be trying to invoke the Placebo Effect to help things out a little. I’m sorry if improving the economy hurts you politically, but shit happens.
J.
“Vixen, if that’s your notion of success, forget McCain. John Kerry should be your role model. He married an heiress worth millions”
So did John McCain.
“He also managed to get out of Viet Nam after only a couple of months, unlike McCain.”
Wow, normally you just twist the truth, Jay. But this is an outright lie. Kerry served two tours and actually REQUESTED duty on the swift boats. On his second tour, he reported for duty in South Vietnam in mid November 1968 and was transferred (after his third combat wound) at the end of March 1969.
Getting out of Vietnam is what Bush did by using his daddy to pull strings for him. Both Kerry and McCain are war heroes. And I’ll bet you didn’t vote for either one when they were running against Bush.
“How the hell else can you reconcile a 5.1% unemployment rate being a sign of an economic catastrophe today, while a 5.3% rate a decade ago was a sign of a boom?”
First of all, that rate all by itself isn’t a sign of anything. Second, both numbers are part of a trend. A 5.1% unemployment rate CAN be a sign of a catastrophe if the previous rates were lower. And the 5.3% rate CAN be the sign of a boom if the previous rates were higher.
“How else can you have some people scream about runaway defense spending as a solid number, while when it’s measured as a percentage of GDP it’s among the lowest in decades?”
Another outright lie. As recently as a decade ago, the percentage of deficits of GDP was zero, as the government was running a surplus.
What I can’t reconcile, however, is how Republicans ever seriously claimed the mantle of fiscal responsibility or small government.
“And as far as our economic problems being psychological… you got a better term to describe them?”
So claiming voters are bitter is elitist, but telling them their problems are all in their heads? Why, he’s just trying to help us by invoking a placedo effect. Good lord, I can’t imagine you could even type your comments with a straight face.
Megamoze said:
I can’t imagine you could even type your comments with a straight face.
He can. It happens to be the face of Norman Osborn.
Jay, I don’t believe that $3.40 a gallon — and quickly heading towards $4 — gas prices are simply psychologically bad… For lack of a better word (I’m too lazy for verbosity right now) it’s bad-bad. People are going to look at gas costs, and rising food costs, and think “Holy shit!” Now, of course, everyone has a psychological response to a situation, but one’s response in economic conditions where gas is $2 a gallon and food costs aren’t rising is going to be different from one’s response to the current situation. Just because responses to reality are psychological doesn’t preclude that reality from existing.
As far as unemployment rates go, I think what’s more important — and not shown by the unemployment rate percentage — is what kind of jobs people have. From a personal standpoint, I know that throughout the Bush administration, I’ve been unemployed in various states of gainfulness. But I’ve been employed the whole time, and to the unemployment rate, that’s all it sees. The unemployment rate alone is not an accurate indicator of economic activity, which is something that pundits on both sides of the aisle should remember.
“you’re a man of the people”-cable news to 8 mansions McCain
tas said:
The unemployment rate alone is not an accurate indicator of economic activity, which is something that pundits on both sides of the aisle should remember.
Correct. Always remember those people whose unemployment benefits have run out, those who don’t qualify for benefits, the disabled, etc. They aren’t counted in the statistics; therefore, the true rate of unemployment is somewhat higher.
There it is, the new talking point. Nothing ruined the economy. You’re only imagining you don’t have a job and are in foreclosure.
Unemployment is much higher now than it was 10 years ago. If you are unemployed, after a while they figure you just gave up and remove you from the equation. Furthermore, underemployed workers count, and wages are lower. But that’s ok. The Republicans will come up with a new economic stimulus plan: vouchers for Wellbutrin or Paxil will be sent out instead of stimulus checks.
And since we’re talking psychological, we can pretty much sum up the “Bush Boom” as a delusion.
McCain has all of the geriatric charm of the soon-to-be addled Reagan and all of the smarts of GW Bush. Killer combination.
Gas = $116 a barrel, $3.50 a gallon…
It’s in your head
Real wages for all but the fattest of cats have fallen during a period of economic “growth” for the first time EVER…
It’s in your head
The Iraq war is draining the economy of billions, possibly (probably) costing upwards of 2 trillion (and we ain’t leaving, so that number is probably LOW)…
It’s in your head
Bridges are collapsing and our infrastructure is collapsing…if only we had a trillion to fix it…where, oh where could we have gotten that money…
It’s in your head
2 trillion in tax cuts for the rich and a push to eliminate the Estate tax, robbing the coffers of hundreds of billions more…
It’s in your head
A Bankruptcy bill that traps the middle class and poor and leaves planet sized loopholes for the wealthy…
It’s in your head
Cut benefits to Medicare and wounded vets, kill expanded funding for health care for kids while insurance companies start implementing a little dandy called “tier 4″ pricing to further bury the middle class…
It’s in your head
Credit crisis, mortgage bubble, airline collapse…
It’s in your head
Medicare drug benefits that block negotiations for bulk discounts with Big Pharma so they can jack up drug costs…
It’s in your head
Billions in corporate welfare…
It’s in your head
A national debt 3 times higher than all the national debt from the previous 224 years COMBINED (keep in mind that Reagan had managed to triple the national debt from the previous 204 years, also combined, so this is a nice little achievement for G.W.)…
It’s all in your head
The dollar in 2000 was worth more than the Euro (which was created to be a European equivalent to the dollar in value), now, 1 1 Euro = 1.58 Dollars.
It’s all in your head
Yes, there is a difference between a 5.4% unemployment rate with an average hourly wage of, say, $10 and a 5.1% rate with an average wage of $8.50 or something…and that’s how you can be booming on the one hand and busting on the other, much the same way you can have growing productivity but falling wages…&*%@#^! duh…
but forget that…
It’s all in your head.
Re comparing unemployment rates, don’t forget that Reagan decided that military personnel were employees; previously they had been set aside in a special category that was neither unemployed nor employed. So that policy change added a couple of million employeds to one side of the scale and improved the 10% unemployment rate of the time.
Also, “participation in the workforce” percentages are lower than they’ve been since the 1970s (when women entered the workforce in greater numbers). That figure is probably the best characterization of unemployment because it picks up all the “discouraged workers,” etc.
Bill, it’s in ALL our heads.
“Economics” is a collective fiction we’ve all pretty much agreed upon. It’s an entirely abstract concept. Remember the old joke — what do you get if you get two economists together? Three opinions.
There is absolutely nothing tangible about “the economy.” There are tangible things we associate with the economy, we have devised rules and laws and principles and ideas to reflect our constantly changing collective agreement, but it still remains an entirely abstract thing.
Let’s take the price of oil. The oil itself being sold today at $110/barrel (or whatever the current price is) is utterly indistinguishable from the barrel sold ten years ago. It has not changed. What has changed is its value.
And “value” is simply “what someone is willing to pay for it.” Ten years ago, it was a lot less. Ten years from now, it might be less, more, or the same. But the oil itself will not change.
Here’s an example. I bought a monitor for $130. I then put it up on EBay. Someone bought it from me for $170. The monitor did not change in the least from when I bought it until it arrived at the person’s door, yet its value increased almost one third because I was willing to find it and buy it at the lower price, and the person who bought it from me was willing to pay a premium for the privilege of not having to track it down at the lower price. The monitor’s value increased simply because that is what someone was willing to pay for it.
So yes, it’s all in our heads. It’s in all of our heads. Because it simply doesn’t exist anywhere else but in our heads, and it can’t exist anywhere else.
Sometimes I think that economics are too simple. The more intelligent someone seems to be, the harder it is for them to grasp the basics and fundamentals — probably because they can’t accept that it’s as simple as it really is. The real problems arise when people who think they’re smart start believing their own BS and try to make economics follow their rules, instead of simply observing it as an adjunct of human psychology.
J.
But here’s the rub: let’s say you buy oil from Mr. X for a certain amount and then resell it to me in some refined form, i.e. heating oil or gas. While your monitor example is a perfect window into the stupidity of online auctions (people routinely bid items up well past retail, possibly for the “thrill” of being a winner), my example is one of constrained supply vs relatively inflexible demand. I can reduce my driving somewhat, but I still have to get food, go to work, pick up the kids, and so on. Fully 80% or so of my driving is commuting. For 5 years I tele-commuted, so we got by with one car. Now I have to travel 30 miles each way to work, that’s about 2 gallons a day ($7.50 or so), just to get to work. The same goes for heating. I can control how much I heat my home and when, but when the temperature drops to a certain point, the heat’s coming on. Maybe I can switch to wood burning or something in the future, but that will have to wait until I own a home again rather than renting. Now think about the increases in fuel cost for airline travel, transporting goods (like food), and other inflexible costs, and you see a direct economic impact that can’t be wished away at all.
Wall Street’s rise and fall may be predicated largely on psychology, but that doesn’t change the fact that what happens there ripples out to the rest of us. If a company suffers major losses and is eventually de-listed and goes out of business, people will have really lost their jobs, investments, and more. If there is a run on a bank and I sit tight while everyone else cleans out the coffers, I’m not going to wake up the next day with my nest egg intact. The system is, unfortunately, completely rigged this way. Banks only ever have a fraction of the funds entrusted to them or lent out as credit, effectively insuring something like the Bear-Stearns debacle. I certainly didn’t tell anyone to invest heavily in risky bundled sub-prime mortgages. I wasn’t the chairman of the federal reserve who cut rates to prop up the economy while pushing ARMs as a gift to eager but otherwise unqualified home buyers, and I’m not the one dumping tens of billions back into the pot while slashing interest rates AGAIN to …well…prop up the economy. All of which is driving down the dollar and wreaking havoc on bonds and foreign investment. On top of that, I’m not the one suppressing any real growth in wages while doling out tens (sometimes hundreds) of millions to CEO’s who trash the companies they are supposed to be leading before taking the golden parachute for yet another healthy payday.
All of human behavior can be boiled down to psychology. That hardly matters when events move from the ethereal to the material and jobs are lost, homes foreclosed, or wars started.
“Sometimes I think that economics are too simple.”
No, dude. It isn’t economics that’s too simple. It’s you. The idea that “economics” is all in our head and that if I just adjusted my mental attitude I would be able to afford $4/gal gas is just idiotic. Of course the economy is tangible and has tangible effects. If I don’t want to pay $4/gal for gas, I can always jump on the bus. Not the greatest option in Los Angeles, but an option nonetheless. Whether or not I have a positive mental attitude about it, taking the bus instead of driving constitutes a significant material change in my lifestyle. It is, in other words, real. It isn’t a choice I would make just because I wanted to (although plenty of people do). It is something I am forced to do because I cannot afford $4/gal gas.
The factors contributing to $4/gal gas are also material and tangible. Why? Because oil is a tangible, real commodity. It is also finite and its supply is dependent on real, material conditions. Its value is based on the real material needs and demands as weighed against a real, material supply. Positive thinking and a happy attitude doesn’t change the relationship between supply and demand. Reducing the demand for oil in the face of limited supplies requires real, material changes in the very structure and equipment of entire industries. Making those changes requires a shift in mental attitude, that’s true. But few people or institutions make those changes simply because they don’t feel like paying more for gas. They only make the necessary changes when they have to pay less for gas, that is, when they can really no longer afford it.
The willingness to pay more for a computer monitor because you’re lazy, is a personal choice. Not being able to afford $4/gal gas isn’t a choice. It’s a material fact.
The people complaining the most about the cost of gas are, ironically enough, the same folks who are preaching to us about global warming. $4 a gallon for gas is the best news “environmentalists” could ever hope for!!! That pesky old economic whatchamajiggy-thingamabob called the Law of Supply and Demand means that the only way to reduce gas consumption is to raise prices.
You guys wanted it: you guys got it. Now quit your bitching!
That would be true Farris, if our economy wasn’t 99% dependent on oil. Take the last energy crunch. We had a president committed to reducing our dependence on oil through conservation and investment/research into alternatives. Then we got Reagan. Now we are 25 years behind where we should be.
And JayTea, no matter what the cost of your monitor, if I don’t have a money/credit or a job I can’t buy it even with the professional help of a psychiatrist.
Can we call McCain’s plan the Tinkerbell Stimulus plan? If we all clap, the economy will get better.
I just want to add–economics is psychlogical, but money, or value, is not. Food is not. Fuel is not. People may be employed, but not make enough to enjoy sufficient food or shelter. They may not have the health care they need–that is not psychological, that is the situation, that they, even if they are positively willing to find a job, get the job, keep the job, find themselves in. They are trying, and doing what they can–it’s the cost of living going up while their wages aren’t that’s doing them in. They can’t happy dance out of that. I’m concerned about real wages, and real expenses, and how people are being nickel and dimed out of comfort and into desperation–that is not psychological. Hunger is not. You can say, well, people should get better jobs–
Right. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you have no savings tiding you over–and try asking for time off to go to your job interview.
I *would* describe a bad economy as being a physical problem–physically have no money in your wallet, you could be physically hungry or sick or just physically fed up and tired and need a physical roof over you and your family’s physical heads. Physically cold turning down the thermostat because you physically can not write the check to the gas company, and physically revolted when people tell you to be positive about how your hard work isn’t meeting your fast needs.
Economics is an abstraction of real-world issues. You do not eat or live in or fuel your car with abstractions. And that is psychologically despressing, but is not merely psychological.
Besides which, the psychology that JayTea is talking about is far different than the psychology McCain is talking about. Underlying and fundamental components of the economical model are far different than McCain’s everything is fine, people just don’t believe that. McCain’s is essentially an expression.
I love it when people who took an Econ class or two in college explain that the market for gasoline operates on a simple supply-demand curve, and can’t understand why no one else gets it. Gas is a highly inelastic, speculatively-traded commodity. It’s not *#@&^ butter. Go read a book instead of getting your talking points from Drudge.
“How the hell else can you reconcile a 5.1% unemployment rate being a sign of an economic catastrophe today, while a 5.3% rate a decade ago was a sign of a boom?”
Indeed, a “decade ago” the unemployment rate was 5.1% -down from the 7.5 at the time Clinton’s first innauguration. Furthermore, the unemployment rate was at 3.9% in Dec of 2000 and 4.2% in Jan. of 2001.
17.7 million new jobs.
As for Bush? Again, an unemployemnt rate 4.2% in Jan. of 2001. Now? 5.1 percent. Not one net job. Not one.
Ignorant, Jay? No. An ignorant person is one who without the benefit of all available knowledge on a subject nevertheless opines as if fully informed, thus exposing their ignorance. You’re merely stupid, which is worse, because you form patently ridiculous views based on freely available information.
Economics is 99% psychology.
That’s funny, I always thought there was quite a bit of math involved.
Shopping with Jay must be a hoot.
“I’d like 10 gallons of unleaded, please.”
“That’ll be $35.59″
“Oh, I don’t believe in that.”
You gotta stop reading The Secret, jay. It really doesn’t work.