jackie hayes

B/c each extra dollar is less valuable than the last. Think of it in terms of income 'groups'. The very poor spend their money on what is needed for survival, so we believe that they should not have much of that taken away, if any. The next group has some spending money for basic comforts (somewhat better food, more nutritious, an inexpensive used car so that the commute to work takes half the time of a bus, going to the movies occasionally). The next group can eat out occasionally, but can't realistically think about buying a house. And so on. Eventually, you have people who earn many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. These people can buy property in the best parts of town and all the nicest toys. They barely spend any part of that last dollar of income, largely b/c their needs and wants have been satiated. It seems unfair to take the same amount of income per dollar away from someone who's using their last dollar to buy bread or more convenient baby food, and someone else who's using it for a $250 bottle of wine or a vacation to Europe. Those needs just aren't comparable.

Davis has had many, many chances, they've just been distributed over 3 different organizations. You shouldn't give him more leeway than Willie (who's never been trusted w/ more than a limited role) or Garland (who hasn't broken out, but has been consistent over the last few years). Burke was our best catcher last season, anyway.

The worst part is that it would be enormously regressive, even w/ the poverty exemption. All the tax reform proposals being floated now have the property that reduced tax rates for the rich would be financed by raising taxes on the poor. The Republicans, if these plans go through, will become the worst stereotype of the party. The NYT has a great summary of Bush's coming fiscal reforms here.

My God, that's funny. I still don't have any clue if Willie can hit lhp or not, he had 72 abs against lhp this year, I don't think he has even 150 in his ML career. I don't know why "Willie can't hit lhp" is treated as an established fact. He did pretty well in the 2nd half of 2004, who knows?

Fox reports: "Green has stated publicly that he'd like to remain in Los Angeles". Here's their story. They also suggest that Sosa would help replace Beltre's production. Maybe they just missed the last couple years. There HAS to be more to the deal than this.

You're quite welcome.

of=outfielder

If you say so. $1 mil for hitter like Perez seems like way too much. He could easily have an obp below .300, even a slugging pct below .300 isn't out of the question. Isn't there a veteran who's barely hanging on, or a AAAA guy somewhere who can do basically the same job for league minimum?

The same discrepancies in registrations vs vote totals occurred in 2000, so I imagine there's a more innocuous explanation for this.

I can't figure Hendry out. His moves alternate savvy and stupid. Just as I'm quieting to a chuckle after the brilliant Jose Hernandez trade, he picks up Lofton and Ramirez and just embarasses Pittsburgh in the process. Now, after seeing him fleece the bunch in picking up Nomar, he resigns Perez. Next entry in his calendar is either 'Convince SF that Jason Schmidt is washed up, Brownlie has the better future' or 'See what it would take to land this Borchard kid for lf.'

Using maps like this as evidence of anything are hilarious. You think, by putting up a map, you can magically make Bush's 3% majority a 50% majority. Cities are more important b/c there are more people. People are more important than land mass. If you think this map has any meaning about the overall mood of the country, you need to wake up.

None of that will happen, b/c the Repubs have abandoned all small government ideas. Any party that touches the SS benefits of baby-boomers is out of office for decades. The Republican plan isn't feasible of course unless they cut benefits, but I've come to think that they're actually quite content to have exploding deficits, as there's really been no hue-and-cry from Republicans. The party has come to support a federal constitutional amendment barring gay marriage, not a states' rights approach. (Which was spurred by a state actually deciding for itself, by normal legal procedure, that marriage could not legally be limited in that state.) Your scenario won't play out. While you're waiting for Republicans to gut SS and Medicare, they'll be expanding both and financing these with debt.

We should have made an offer a couple years ago, but better late than never.

If it costs him too much, I hope the Sox pick him off. (I know, pipe dream.) There're only a few position players anywhere as good as Berkman.

Supposedly he was playing flag football. Why do all these pro athletes get hurt so badly playing in their backyards? Here's a link. He is simply one of the best players in the game today, I he's not out too long and comes back in top shape.

I've heard that Guillen is not willing to rely on Uribe to be the everyday ss. But he seems willing to let him be the everyday 2b. Isn't his defense good enough to be the ss? Other than that, I don't see the difference, everyone hits. It feels like this team tries to train its players w/ some half-speed ML seasons, for Rowand and Willie, eg, and maybe now Uribe (though not Crede), and I don't understand that practice. Once they're ready for the ML, throw them in the fire and see what they've got.

I was just trying to explain how the numbers add up, I wasn't trying to explain why they look like they do. It's a fact that about 6 mil more working age people are not actively looking for jobs. That's why the they are not counted in the unemployment rate. That's where a lot of the 7 mil new workers went. Persons working in cash industries would count as employed in this survey (if they were surveyed at all), so that can't be part of it. It's not clear how this would affect welfare payments, it depends on who's leaving the labor force and why. Just looking at the numbers quickly, it seems as though the ranks of young workers have been thinned more than others, and that part-time jobs have replaced full-time jobs (though the full-time jobs numbers are recovering now). So lots of good-for-nothing kids living at home, refusing to work at McDs? Doubt it, but I dunno, you'd have to look at these numbers more closely to be sure.

I don't understand this sentence: "How much more cutting would companies have done if they hadn't have gotten the tax breaks to cover up their losses?" B/c the tax cuts don't go to companies, but to individuals, and that distinction is very important in terms of the incentive to hire. I think some of those numbers are probably exaggerated. The US economy was shedding jobs before Sep 11. Certainly the attacks made it worse, but not by 1 mil jobs. One study estimated that 78,000 jobs were lost in the NY-NJ region (many more were dislocated, but not lost). It is difficult to guess how many were lost in the entire economy. There are two problems in relying on consumption. First, the multiplier effect depends on the marginal propensity to consume. For the rich, however, this number is very low, ie the rich save a lot of that extra dollar of income. (The aggregate savings rate is largely due to the fact that poorer households are heavily indebted, not b/c the rich spend everything they get.) So the multiplier effect is small. Second, the decline in GDP growth was largely in private investment (which fell in 2001 and 2002, and only began to recover last year), not as much in consumption (even in a recession, consumption was increasing) -- I haven't seen any evidence that consumption was going to fall. Increasing consumption w/o increasing business ability to supply (which requires investment) is dangerous for inflation. Also, increasing consumption without any promise that it will continue to be high gives businesses no reason to increase investment, which is needed for long-run increases in employment. If anyone had taken the sunset clause in the tax bill seriously, these tax cuts would have had zero long-run effects. To be clear, I'm not saying the tax cuts had no effects on the economy, only that if the government's main goal was to stimulate the economy, there are better ways of accomplishing that (business tax breaks, military salary increases). Not to mention, the long run effect of the tax cuts is large deficits leading to higher interest rates and lower investment.

I know, it amazes me how a professional sports team can screw up a high publicity hiring so badly. First the Bears, now this. EDIT: Btw, thanks for posting this, I don't think I would have seen it o/w.

Not all 290 mil people are working. The labor force (acc to the current population survey, which does count the newly minted unemployed) is about 148 mil, and the unemployed are about 8 mil. A lot of people (about 6 mil) have dropped out of the labor force (stopped looking for a job, or perhaps never started), which drops the unemployment rate.

I have to say, my first reaction is surprise that a Republican is taking such a Keynesian view of the world. I never thought I'd see the day. My basic point was, it's not really 0 job loss for the real economy. Government hiring doesn't reflect the real economy (taken to the logical extreme, communism has zero unemployment, but the economy still sucks). As for the rest... Tax cuts can't hurt the real economy (in the short term) -- and I didn't say they were useless -- but the money can be put into more stimulative projects, like investment tax credits or expanded unemployment benefits or a pay increase for the military (though the last one would have limited scope). Plus, it is probably easier politically to change business investment tax breaks over the course of the business cycle than personal tax rates. (Btw, of course you can't give tax cuts per se to those who don't pay taxes, but there are clearly ways of transferring money to those poor who are likely to spend it, including welfare and unemployment benefits. I'm only arguing about the objective, macroeconomic effects of such policies, nothing else.) Why business tax breaks are more effective -- Yes, the rich tend to be employers, but to increase employment it would be more effective if the government stimulated private business investment through tax breaks, than if the government changed the personal tax rates of the rich. Usually, businesses are already being run so as to maximize profits. Changing personal tax rates does not change the number of people you'd hire to achieve that goal, while cutting investment costs does. Its only effects are indirect. I understand the multiplier logic, but I think you're putting too much faith in consumption, like some early Keynesians did. Private investment is the most volatile component of GDP, that's where your business cycle comes from. When the economy recovers, now, there'll be over a million extra workers on the government payroll. Although they may be more productively employed in the private sector, it will be very difficult to eliminate those jobs. Finally, I'm not arguing that the government should have balanced its budget every year, I don't believe that. But the government is on track to have the deficit stay constant at this new level, at best. If Bush partially privatizes SS, the deficit (and I'm talking about the deficit as a % of GDP) will get much, much worse. That is a very serious concern for interest rates and investment, and thus growth, moving forward. Getting away from the theories, I didn't see any models of the US economy that forecast it would have been as bad as you claim. Can you name one that predicted depression and double-digit unemployment absent the tax cuts? The fact you cited -- federal government expenditures were declining prior to the Depression? I find much different numbers. What is this based on?

Okay, I took your quote the wrong way. I took it as 'Elitist -- poor or otherwise'. You meant 'Elitist, poor, or otherwise'. Apologize, but grammatically it could be either. But as for the main point, fine, think what you like about the other side being pompous, whether in NY or elsewhere. It's your right, but it's not being serious about the differences in this country. It's no more objective than saying "All Repubs are redneck hicks," or in a more localized (like the only-NY) version, "All southern Repubs are redneck hicks."

There are poor people in NY who voted Dem. CC says that all NY Dem voters are elitist. Hence "elitist poor".

So that's still being set by MLB, right? Does anyone know when the team'll be sold? You're probably right, but it depends how frustrated they are with his injuries and what the new GM thinks of him. I can see a team deciding after 2 mostly lost years that they'll never be able to count on a guy.

You said "Elitist, poor or otherwise....", so you clearly are saying that there exist a group of "elitist poor". I don't think that's misapplied at all. So you think that all Dems in NY are exactly alike, but Dems elsewhere are entirely different. I think that's a pretty odd theory. Most of the people I know from NY are not like that, even though they're to a person Dems. They're boastful about their city, sure, so what? I'm boastful about mine, too.