4 ms·

It makes sense when you understand how DC works, and how corrupt the government is .How many representatives have "farms" and get subsidies? There is no insanit

by camus2 13y ago

It makes sense when you understand how DC works, and how corrupt the government is .How many representatives have "farms" and get subsidies? There is no insanity here, it's by design. Saying that things are "illogic" is insulting.Things make perfect sense, journalists just dont want to admit that US politicians are rotten to the core.

splat 13y ago
The author isn't a journalist. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel-prize-winning economist.
- 001sky 13y ago
  That's not an excuse. He should understand political econnomy. Its perfectly 'rational'. Using rationality as a proxy for morality is a 20th century affectation. Its fake science, in other words. "My analysis rational, so if you disagree you must be irrational". But, politics are rational. And avoiding or dismissing political logic is not rational. Economics is mereley a subset of political ratinoality in this regards. And Stiglitz is a big boy. We don't need to treat him with kid gloves.
  - pm90 13y ago
    He isn't dismissing political logic, merely pointing out that it isn't the best logic to go by. That its not serving the interests of the country as a whole to have the political system so aligned towards the interests of so few. It's interesting to see how these things pan out though, In India, discontinuing a program to provide assistance to the poor gets you voted out of office. I guess the number of poor people in the US are not large enough for that to happen? There is a large middle-class though, and it would help if they showed more interest in the lives of the downtrodden....especially when there are more than enough resources to go around
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - ddebernardy 13y ago
      "I guess the number of poor people in the US are not large enough for that to happen?" More like: they've a long and entrenched track record of voting against their own interests, on the basis of keeping a hypothetical fable called the American Dream alive.
walshemj 13y ago
That's how the us constitution was set up to suit the rich landed gentry not the huddled masses in the city. Its why agricultural states with tiny populations have more representation in the senate than they should.
- pm90 13y ago
  Were there any huddled masses in cities in 1776?
  - jahewson 13y ago
    Certainly, that's why Washington D.C. was built, so that the gentry didn't have to go to sewer-like New York to run the country. (Actually they moved to Philadelphia first.)
    - tanzam75 13y ago
      > Certainly, that's why Washington D.C. was built, so that the gentry didn't have to go to sewer-like New York to run the country. (Actually they moved to Philadelphia first.). They didn't mind the size of New York or Philadelphia. Cities were very small in 18th-century America. In 1790, New York City's population was only twice that of Charleston. The reason for DC's location on the Potomac was that the Southern states wanted the capital to be in the South. The temporary capital of Philadelphia posed an additional problem, in that it was located in a free state. George Washington had to rotate his slaves through Philadelphia while he was President, so that they would not stay long enough to be emancipated.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - chipsy 13y ago
    Not so much in the American colonies, but they were informed by the ones in Europe. This was the era Thomas Malthus himself grew up in (b. 1766). The basis of the U.S. "yeoman farmer" idea was, in part, that there was land available for continual expansion. Simply go west, kick out the natives, and all your citizens could be given a plot of their own - organizing around this goal gave the government stability and purpose, even though it had several obvious flaws. This was also the genesis of the internal conflicts during the 19th century; the eventual victory of the federalists in the Civil War was, in effect, the creation of a new nation organized around industrial capitalism.
maxerickson 13y ago
A statistic showing that many representatives have farms would be a lot more interesting than an insinuation that many of them probably do. The excessively subsidized farms discussed in the article were collecting an average of $30,000 a year. That's nice money, but I can't see a significant portion of the body wasting their influence chasing that around.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  > A statistic showing that many representatives have farms would be a lot more interesting http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-paid-to-112-congress_b_842704.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-pai... http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-received-238k-farm-subsidies http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-received-238k-fa... Just some interesting links I found while attempting to sate my own curiosity as to whether such a statistic has been compiled.

by camus2 13y ago

splat 13y ago

The author isn't a journalist. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel-prize-winning economist.

001sky 13y ago
That's not an excuse. He should understand political econnomy. Its perfectly 'rational'. Using rationality as a proxy for morality is a 20th century affectation. Its fake science, in other words. "My analysis rational, so if you disagree you must be irrational". But, politics are rational. And avoiding or dismissing political logic is not rational. Economics is mereley a subset of political ratinoality in this regards. And Stiglitz is a big boy. We don't need to treat him with kid gloves.
- pm90 13y ago
  He isn't dismissing political logic, merely pointing out that it isn't the best logic to go by. That its not serving the interests of the country as a whole to have the political system so aligned towards the interests of so few. It's interesting to see how these things pan out though, In India, discontinuing a program to provide assistance to the poor gets you voted out of office. I guess the number of poor people in the US are not large enough for that to happen? There is a large middle-class though, and it would help if they showed more interest in the lives of the downtrodden....especially when there are more than enough resources to go around
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - ddebernardy 13y ago
    "I guess the number of poor people in the US are not large enough for that to happen?" More like: they've a long and entrenched track record of voting against their own interests, on the basis of keeping a hypothetical fable called the American Dream alive.

walshemj 13y ago

That's how the us constitution was set up to suit the rich landed gentry not the huddled masses in the city. Its why agricultural states with tiny populations have more representation in the senate than they should.

pm90 13y ago
Were there any huddled masses in cities in 1776?
- jahewson 13y ago
  Certainly, that's why Washington D.C. was built, so that the gentry didn't have to go to sewer-like New York to run the country. (Actually they moved to Philadelphia first.)
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    > Certainly, that's why Washington D.C. was built, so that the gentry didn't have to go to sewer-like New York to run the country. (Actually they moved to Philadelphia first.). They didn't mind the size of New York or Philadelphia. Cities were very small in 18th-century America. In 1790, New York City's population was only twice that of Charleston. The reason for DC's location on the Potomac was that the Southern states wanted the capital to be in the South. The temporary capital of Philadelphia posed an additional problem, in that it was located in a free state. George Washington had to rotate his slaves through Philadelphia while he was President, so that they would not stay long enough to be emancipated.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- chipsy 13y ago
  Not so much in the American colonies, but they were informed by the ones in Europe. This was the era Thomas Malthus himself grew up in (b. 1766). The basis of the U.S. "yeoman farmer" idea was, in part, that there was land available for continual expansion. Simply go west, kick out the natives, and all your citizens could be given a plot of their own - organizing around this goal gave the government stability and purpose, even though it had several obvious flaws. This was also the genesis of the internal conflicts during the 19th century; the eventual victory of the federalists in the Civil War was, in effect, the creation of a new nation organized around industrial capitalism.

maxerickson 13y ago

A statistic showing that many representatives have farms would be a lot more interesting than an insinuation that many of them probably do. The excessively subsidized farms discussed in the article were collecting an average of $30,000 a year. That's nice money, but I can't see a significant portion of the body wasting their influence chasing that around.

dangrossman 13y ago
> A statistic showing that many representatives have farms would be a lot more interesting http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-paid-to-112-congress_b_842704.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-carr/farm-subsidies-pai... http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-received-238k-farm-subsidies http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-received-238k-fa... Just some interesting links I found while attempting to sate my own curiosity as to whether such a statistic has been compiled.