Charlie Rose

finaleyes  09/27/2011 01:46 AM Report

The center-left needs a messaging agent, like Frank Luntz is for the right. Then they need to stick to that message. And the message needs to be that the new republicans are trying to destroy this country, not just the government, but the country. And that's called treason. How can you value a constitution if you want to destroy the institution it constitutes? I know it doesn't seem democratic to walk in lock step to a message—yes, it feels a little fascistic—but it certainly seems to work for the republicans.

BruceF  09/22/2011 05:43 PM Report

Hi Charlie,

I think you should get George Will to debate Simon Schama...regarding the different economic philosophies and whether government can be a force for good as in has been in America life and history. I think they would provide a lively debate, and represent their sides eloquently.

Regarding the markets being able to regulate themselves, I remind everyone of a time between the great crash of 1929 and the election of Franklin D Roosevelt: when President Hoover was at loss of what to do, with the belief that the financial markets and the economy would rebound, and ultimately recover through the normal course of the business cycle.

Another point in time was the 1937 and 1938, when concerns about and fusses raised about deficits then, prolonging the suffering of the 1930’s, by questioning Keynesian economics--a comparative historical moment than can shed light on our current debate about jobs and deficits.

JohnGelles  09/21/2011 05:28 AM Report

So a debate begins under the resolution:

Resolved: Political democracies must employ a full employment budget if deficits in supply and demand are to make sense to ordinary people. A deficit in supply measures poverty to be condemned. A deficit in demand is both the cause of a deficit in supply and the result of a deficit in brains that contribute to systems that evolve.

MY SIDE takes the affirmative.

YOUR SIDE takes the negative and affirms that the natural order of human society rewards the few and condemns the many whom the system enslaves so that the species will survive. Greed is good. Competition is its own reward. Winner takes all but scraps enough for losers to procreate and replace their kind.

MY SIDE (AFFIRMATIVE) ARGUES:

1. The evolved systems we have vary from place to place and time to time. They all have some (but not always overwhelming) incomprehensible counter-productive law and taxes; persistent gross poverty, violence and corruption; and failure to promote the general welfare and protect freedom of speech and thought and freedom from want and abuse.

2. If we would minimize what we don't want and maximize its opposite, we must reform language, law and unnecessary inequality. Start with full equality and encourage all excellence that is its own reward. After you win the race there is no need to drink all the wine.

[I see this debate as growing too long and too lonely. It's time to go back to sleep.]

JohnGelles  09/21/2011 04:26 AM Report

Topic: ECONOMIC GROWTH; LIVING AND ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS; LAW AND ECONOMICS IN SUPPORT OF WORK, SUPPLY AND DEMAND IN A FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM.

Comedians are comedians. Logistical engineers are engineers. Speculators are speculators.

If you want a decent debate you better conduct it here and now.

Half-posterior jokes will not add light to the on-going debate between "austerity" and "enactment of a full employment budget".

You may say, no one is calling for a full employment budget. If you do, you're right. And if you're right, that is the problem!

EyesOnYou  09/21/2011 02:43 AM Report

Charlie that was a call for you to grow a pair and be more like David Frost. Drop the fluffy nice guy and get down to real business. It should be well promoted special. Someone has to convey the urgency to the masses.

The Founding Fathers made an effort to enlighten themselves. Today's America likes it dumb and dumber.

fritzk  09/20/2011 05:26 PM Report

agree that media has failed to bring truth to our political discourse. suggest bill maher v. dennis miller in a seven episode free for all one to two hours each in length.

it may be 22 kinds of tough to do, but no one interested in politics is interested in hearing the candidates canned tripe or media's pretense of moderating these sideshows and no-one who doesn't follow politics is likely to become suddenly interested in a re-run of the status quo.

the stakes are too high to allow ruin resulting from either a silent majority OR a shrill minority.

Miller and Maher are pretty hot stuff when there's no-one to interrupt their roll and there are no two people farther apart in their political rhetoric who have more wit, so let them have at it since they have so much less to gain from pandering than candidates do.

ChongSunWah  09/20/2011 12:10 PM Report

If There Is A Debate The Title Will Be

Is Government Hindrance To Economic Growth Or Economic Growth Is The Responsibility Of Government?

griffinfinity  09/20/2011 07:58 AM Report

Simon was terrific. I only wish I had put sawbuck on him 'cause he came out of the gate like gangbusters and never looked back...

JohnGelles  09/20/2011 02:33 AM Report

http://ustaxreform.us/a-crs.htm

sorry -- hope this link does what was promised.

JohnGelles  09/20/2011 02:31 AM Report

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11899#comment_82660

Link above re-lists many links to Charlie Rose recent shows where interviews tried to reach the cause and cure for the current deflation.

JohnGelles  09/20/2011 02:17 AM Report

We need millions of jobs more than there presently are. We need wealth to support the middle class to replace the confidence that class felt (before the deflation) -- when their homes were easy to refinance as a perpetual source of purchasing power and their retirement accounts seemed to promise a lot more than social security payments in their "golden" years ahead.

Such confidence lived on anticipation of automated production of all that money should buy and on cheap imports as well.

Now that confidence is gone because the jobs and wealth are gone that made the difference between life before residential real estate deflation, say in 2006 or 2007 where you live, and today.

Who to blame? What to do?

Simon Schama nervously blames no one in particular and has no idea of what to do -- but he does BELIEVE that government alone can do what war did for us in 1942.

Of course he is right. And REMant remains as wrong as wrong can be.

Only the American Central bank has the power to create the paper wealth in IOU's and the jobs whose wages will be paid. Those jobs can and will rebuild our real wealth once we get out act together.

I have ordered two books on the history and promise of economics that I will be receiving very soon.

One is "Grand Pursuit" by Sylvia Nasar that looks at how economists such as John Maynard Keynes and Alfred Marshall developed useful theories in modern times.

The other is "Making Sense of a Changing Economy: Technology, Markets, and Morals", on the promise of technology in business and economics in 1996 by Edward J. Nell -- which presents an original view of the state of economic theory and policies.

These two books will support the practical value of money creation to stimulate production that will allow consumption, exchange and rebuilding of American industrial power.

REMant is stuck with Hayek in the disasters of national socialism as developed in totalitarian Russia and Germany in the aftermath of World War I.

Of course REMant is fairly conceited -- perhaps as conceited as I am. He has his vision of the past. I have mine of the future. Between us, you can take your choice.

Schama is more on my side. But his style and story are not as clear as mine are. I see the "Singularity" described by Ray Kurzweil as evident. He sees Hayek and Von Mises as prophets -- not as victims of post-World War I politics.

The "Singularity" refers to the date on which artificial intelligence is so effective that price signals will be managed by experts not observed down at the mall.

Sure the mall exists. And you can find sneakers there on sale. But endless power from sunshine also exists. And only experts can harness it. They may chose to wear cheap or expensive footwear. But I do not want to leave the future to shoppers. They are not the arbiters of how we approach history or futurism. They are ordinary people who know what they like -- but not how to achieve it with common sense and scientific method.

Twaddlefree  09/19/2011 10:35 PM Report

Is Schama so ignorant when he states that Eric Cantor achieved his power on the coattails of the teaparty that he doesn't realize that Cantor was elected to Congress in 2000? Or that prior to that election, he was a delgate in the Virginia House since 1991? While Cantor is certainly not a teaparty conservative, and he felt the ire of Americans over his TWO votes in favor of TARP, he got his "power" legitimately. Unfortunately, it was due to longevity, something I hope Republicans will assure doesn't continue.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  09/19/2011 07:34 PM Report

So a character driven White House or a narrative driven White House.

Hmm . . . seems like the Great Society was a narrative and Obamacare is a character.

The Republican Party seems to like the character driven White House--get Obama out! Perhaps they are building on racist hate that already exists? From my gut I would say that this is the case because Obama's narrative has been logical and conciliatory.

nerrawg  09/19/2011 01:47 PM Report

Interesting interview, although a bit more of a monologue as Schama has a lot to say. I have to say I do agree with him that it might be dangerous for Obama to continue with his diplomatic stance and not take a well defined stand against some of the incredulous positions maintained by a minority of extremists in the opposition. It is interesting how this two-party "democracy" has done the opposite of what it was intend to do. Instead of a dominant and decisive leading centrist party/personality the politics have been hijacked by the delusional and unfounded principles a captivatingly insane minority. This debilitating climate in US politics has made the three and four party coalition governments look as decisive as pre-WWII fascist establishments when compared to the US. Surely this has completely undermined the notion that the fewer, larger parties are more effective than many smaller ones, its time we start to properly represent people with more political parties! That would put an end to the need to pander to the extremist few the paralysis of the government to act when it is truly needed.

REMant  09/19/2011 11:24 AM Report

Liquidating American govt or liquidating the idea of govt as a sort-of politically-correct Tammany Hall? The entire problem with the American economy is the Federal Reserve, which is most certainly NOT an agent of free trade. It is because of it the politically-correct Tammany Hall govt can write blank checks, and ignore fiscal restraints. It is why mkts do not work. It is what allowed ppl like LBJ to increase welfare, and moral hazard, all the while cooing about helping all the oppressed ppl in the world by supporting a string of dictators, and forcing the world to subsidize us. And it is what has inflated asset prices over a half century at the rate of about 10% a year, so that Prof Schama, who might have made about $20K/yr then, probably makes around $200K now. The reason why bubbles are created is because the money was not earned in the first place. Obviously, adding more will do nothing to change that.

As George Will pointed out recently, "Michael Boskin of Stanford says that even if one charitably accepts the administration's self-serving estimate of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus, each job cost $280,000 - five times America's median pay. And research by Garett Jones and Daniel M. Rothschild of George Mason University's Mercatus Center indicates that just 42.1 percent of workers hired by entities receiving stimulus funds were unemployed at the time. More (47.3 percent) were poached from other organizations, and 10.6 percent came directly from school or outside the labor force."

Regarding America's crumbling infrastructure, I have two things to say: 1. politicians should have thought about this before they decided to give lower and middle-class taxpayers the moon and inflate the currency to do it; and, 2. that if they would like to do it now, they should float capital improvement bonds like any other responsible govt to pay for it and see if anyone will buy them.

The wording about welfare in the Constitution's Preamble was inserted by Gouverneur Morris, in league with Hamilton, both being avowed monarchists, with the express intent of making a transition to monarchy easier, it being assumed on classical lines that the nation's extent would require it, and a mixed constitution the only real deterrent to autocracy. Article 1 Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" has been argued over extensively in this connection. See Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_clause IMHO, Madison's (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_1s27.html) is the correct interpretation, not Story's sophistry http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_1s28.html.

Teddy Roosevelt was not a Progressive in the sense Schama would have it, or perhaps his cousin Franklin supposed, but was an old-fashioned Liberal, the same as the Tea Party today. That is why he moved against cartels and trusts. Had he been Schama or Brookes, he would no doubt have backed them as much as the Bushies. I would argue, too, that Liberals are the most tolerant of ppl, as were John Locke and Adam Smith, both pre-eminent Liberals. They just do not elevate tolerance over truth, or believe in Progressive education. Schama who studied with Jack Plumb, should certainly know that. Like Mandeville, it has always been my impression that such erstwhile liberals are so for purely selfish reasons, nor do I think redistribution yields equality. In any case, suffice to say not all Progressives were Labourites.

Schama's ideas of all this are so ancient, so prejudiced, and so fully repudiated by modern scholarship, as much as by that of previous ages, that he really ought not be on any faculty, nor (over)paid for making presentations on public-supported television. Talk about noisome blather. In all Charlie may have enjoyed hobnobbing with him, but I'm sure it did nothing to improve his ratings. And I think those to whom all of it was directed enjoyed a good laugh at their expense.