Re: how to compare living standards


"Jim Blair" <jeb@xxxxxxxx> wrote

Er, why would anyone from MI-5 or Mossad testify
to a US Congress?

And why would any of them tell ME what they know?


Why indeed? And that's my point: we only have the Bush administration's
word for what foreign intelligence services' assessments were.


Intelligence paints a fuzzy and uncertain picture.
Only probabilities can be estimated
from conflicting information. I say a leader must act
assuming the "most likely worst case"
that is consistent with the intelligence.


A vigorous and bloody resistance was _not_ the "most likely worst case" once
our Dear Leader decided to invade Iraq? A three-way civil war is not the
"most likely worst case" now?

Jim, in early 2003 I was arguing that Saddam's WMD strategy was "implausible
deniability": keep denying he has WMD, but not convincingly. Did I call it,
or what?


I don't know what "privatizing the national debt" would do,
or even what the term means.

Was it some _other_ Jim Blair that I discussed it with,
on sci.econ about a year ago?

Just because I discuss something, don't assume that
I know what it is ;-)


As I explained before, every man, woman, and child in America now owes $27K
to the government's bondholders. Let's split the check. Let's explicitly
convert the _national_ debt into about 300 million _individual_ debts.
Assign each of us his own personal balance to service or pay down as he sees
fit. You could choose to pay down your balance (and not mine), or you could
choose to just keep paying interest on it and let your kids (but not mine)
inherit your debt. If "personal choice" is good for SS, why would it be bad
for the national debt?


On the Danish cartoons, here is a letter I sent to a
Wisconsin State Journal columist. No response so far.


Usenet is in some ways more satisfying, isn't it :-)
I totally agree with your letter, this part in particular:


You call for "respect", but don't seem to show much
for the Western tradition of secularism and offensive cartoons.


Placating foreign mullahs and imams is dangerous. Our homegrown mullahs and
imams (e.g. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell) will be demanding the same
consideration, next.

-- TP


.

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