Comments on: Stimulating!

By: Making sausage | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

Making sausage | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:22:59 +0000

[...] the development of the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 (HR 1)” here, here, and here. The bottom line is that the House version of the bill will reinvigorate basic [...]

By: Stimulus

Stimulus — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:15:19 +0000

[...] when a new broad funding package was announced targeted specifically at science and basic R&D, other scientists and I enjoyed a rare moment to rejoice. Various estimates put the package at $10-16 billion, a [...]

By: More on the Stimulus | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

More on the Stimulus | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:45:19 +0000

[...] weeks ago the US House released their nascent version of the $825 billion stimulus bill, which later passed in committee and was introduced to the House floor [...]

By: Opinions on the role of science and the stimulus package. « Shores of the Dirac Sea

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:35:05 +0000

[...] course, there is Cosmic Variance as well (and I know who these guys [...]

By: incog

incog — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:23:19 +0000

Disregard the self-centered Partisan comments here.

Remember that the people trying to make this world worse are not taking days off, so neither should we that are trying to make it better.

By: chemicalscum

chemicalscum — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:34:32 +0000

Economics is not a science not even a “dismal science” it is ideology, well at least in the case of the Chicago boys.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:55:41 +0000

If Democrats are the superior life form, why do they need to tax Republicans for child support?

Inquiring Independents already know.

By: Low Math, Meekly Interacting

Low Math, Meekly Interacting — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:50:24 +0000

Thanks for that link, ccous. It made me sick to my stomach, but I thank you nonetheless.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:59:52 +0000

@Doug

“In principle, I agree. However, there are multiple schools of thought in economics, mainly classical and Keynesian. After a rigorously unscientific survey, republicans tend to be classicists and democrats tend to be Keynesians.”

In some cases, some of the political views may derive from or be independent of the economics, but if the “economic theory” derives from the political preferences, then that economic “school of thought” would seem to be more in the nature of a rationalization than a legitimate formulation. I would tend to pay more attention to someone who seemed to be an economist first and foremost, rather than a politician or political commentator who claims to have suddenly developed a consuming interest in theory. I am also wary of pronouncements by those who seem to have a financial stake in political outcome – their opinions may be biased. I tend to put more stock in the opinions of university economics professors, for instance – people who have, quite typically, passed up the chance to make bigger bucks in more remunerative areas of the larger to community to devote their careers to doing the best they can to discover and analyze the truth of the matter, and whose reputations within their field depends largely on the cogency of their intellectual products as judged by their peers within the discipline.

By: ccous

ccous — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:15:40 +0000

Current US debt is 10.6 Trillion. Wikipedia has a nice breakdown of who holds this debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt.

I put all this information here as it seems that we forget the size of what we are doing. It appears that none of the 487 folks in control (435 in the house, 50 in the senate, + president of the senate + president) are applying problem solving skills to their decision making. It also appears that no one here is, or really, elsewhere.

I say someone has been using problem solving skills when I can point to each of the following steps as being done (meaning I can show the result of each step).

· Understand the problem by processing information about it.
· Analyze the problem by breaking the problem down into its component dimensions.
· Expand alternative courses to solve the problem.
· Define values to study the impact of the alternative courses.
· Evaluate courses of action based upon the most positive impact on our values.
· Improve courses of action.

(source: http://www.hrdpress.com/Productive-Problem-Solving-PPS)