Thursday, December 25, 2008

Art of Influence












The first painting, of Che Guevara, is a piece done by Gerard Malanga (1968). The second piece was created by Shepard Fairey (2008) (more can be found at flickr).

If you briefly look up, for example on Wikipedia or Google, images such as the above you get similar explanations - that is influencing art and iconic images. What is exactly the rationale for this form of influence; Subjective imagery over objective reality? How is it that those who retain these fanciful ideas for a normative society become such iconic cultural figures?

The intent here is not a direct comparison of character exhibited by these two persons, but rather a comparison of heroic images exhibited by artists who emphasize radical ideology over objective reality and history (that is the history of failed societies based on Marxist philosophy). Certainly the idolation of Obama is premature, to say the least. With that said, do emotional hopes cause some to look past objective reality while hoping for new results from previously failed, fallacious ideas?




Sunday, December 14, 2008

Win...Government's....Money!

Mr. Ben Stein has certainly been making his rounds within the news and radio circuit as of late. I must first admit, however, a bit of unfamiliarity toward Mr. Stein's economic proclivities. Therefore, I cannot say as to whether I should be surprised or not to hear that his latest economic speak has been pro Fed monetary pumping - extreme inflationary policy.

Ben Stein feels that the U.S. government finds itself in a situation where the only move to make is to "prime-the-pump". He advocates to start, immediately, without any reserve, printing masses of money before the U.S. economy begins to feel the effects from what he (and others) believes a current period of deflation. What's so bad about deflation, anyway? Mr. Stein additionally claims that we currently have no reason to fear, as a result of monetary pumping, hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation or not, where is the concern for the negative impacts all inflationary measures have on the American citizens (of course this impact has been felt throughout much of the world at one time or another under one leader or another)? We should certainly not want to increase prices - this being an outcome of printing too much money - for those who are already finding it more difficult to get by in hard economic times. Additionally, inflation is the worst kind of tax, and its effects carry with it an unequal impact on the citizenry - hurting those in the lowest income bracket the most, that is those who receive the new money last.

More Broken Windows


More economic plans on the horizon but will the impacts create net benefits?


Aside from the central planning tendencies implicit in the desires of the forthcoming administration, it appears that much of the thought process for their economic recovery has been built upon a fallacy. President-elect Obama's regurgitated notion that government "make-work" programs will steer the economy in the right direction is simply more "broken window fallacy".


In Frederic Bastiat's essay, That Which is Seen and That Which is Unseen, written in 1850, he describes the event of a shopkeeper who has his window broken by a little boy. It was perceived by the town people that the boy, as a result of putting a window glazier to work, created a net benefit for the town. The unseen, as Bastiat describes, is the loss of income by the shopkeeper that could have been spent on something else - possible more productive. The town, as a result, did not receive a net benefit from the broken window. Henry Hazlitt also greatly expounded upon this concept in his book, Economics in One Lesson.


The following government economic plan, as part of the American energy resolution scheme, represents a "broken window" fallacy:


“[W]e will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.” (link)


The first problem with this economic plan is that spending more government money cannot possibly save, in net benefits, American taxpayer dollars. If the government would like to help us, those in charge will need to cut total spending and taxes (e.g. corporate tax, income tax, dividend tax) to spur private productivity. It would seem evident that if we reduce the size of government the American taxpayer will spend less in housing those employed by government.


The second problem, and congruent with the first, is the idea that "make-work" programs can spur economic growth. Again, we cannot achieve net benefits as a result of any government reallocation of resources. Increasing employment in one sector of the economy, at the expense of another - possibly more productive sector, is merely a transfer.