Brianomics

So, I tend to hop around from major to major. I spent almost 10 years in a two year college trying to decide what I wanted to do. When I transferred to a 4 year university, I still changed my major to something else almost immediately, got a degree, and decided it's not what I wanted a year before I graduated. So now I'm back at the 2 year college working on another major. Already, I've thought of several other majors I could try along with it. Is there anything I *don't* want to study? Not really. I'd stay in college forever, learning everything they can possibly teach me until they ran out of classes.

In this case, I want to finish my BS in Computer Science no matter what. I really like programming and, unlike Anthropology, would actually enjoy the work. But, I don't want to get a Masters in it. I'd like to get a Masters one day, but I've never been able to decide in what.

So the other day, I got a hold of a textbook on Economics. There are a few things I like about the subject. It's sort of about business--which I like. I've aced every business class I've ever taken. But it's also about human behavior. I love studying people as well. I think what put me off the first time I took Macroeconomics is all the terms and memorization. But, I'm older now from when I first took those classes at age 22. Nearly all those terms, I now already know, so it would be a lot different.

But I thought this textbook was really interesting. Another thing I've sort of looked down on Economics about is I know Keynesian Economics is really trendy. If you don't know what that is, one way of summarizing it is to say it's the belief that if the government taxes the living snot out of people, then uses the revenue from that to inject money directly back into communities, that will ensure a robust and stable economy. The Liberals / Socialists love Keynesian Economics because it's Big Daddy Government taking away our freedoms and telling us how to live. Obama and his economic team are all supporters of Keynesian Economics.

Now, I have no idea if the author of this textbook is representative of all economists, but he wrote that Keynesian Economics has been disproven because it's failed every place it's ever been tried. He said Economists have gone back to free market solutions and believe that Government is too inefficient to compete with a more nimble and flexible free market system in terms of ensuring a strong and stable economy.

It's interesting that this book was published in 2004. And here 5 years later, Obama passed the "Stimulus Bill" that was a huge, expensive tribute proving that Keynesian Economics doesn't work. How many real jobs would have been created had that money instead been massive tax breaks to businesses to encourage them to hire people? Obama's top Economic adviser, Christine Romer, recently stepped down, and not long after another on the economic team stepped down. She was dead wrong about the Stimulus Bill. Don't believe Biden, the Idiot, trying to say the Stimulus Bill was more successful than anticipated. Romer, and thus Obama, promised the Stimulus Bill would prevent unemployment from exceeding 8%. It went to 10%. They were dead wrong. The Stimulus Bill either far under performed, or had next to no effect at all. I would argue that Obama could have gotten better results if he piled the trillion dollars in the back of his limo, and tossed fistfuls of it out the windows as he drove around neighborhoods all over the country. A trillion dollars thrown down the toilet to test an Economic theory that's already been disproven. And people think Bush was an idiot because he stuttered in his speeches but otherwise made sound economic decisions? Some Obama is an idiot but articulates his wrong ideas better and people like him. Sad.

Anyway, I have at least a year before I'd need to decide to go for a Masters in Econ or not. I just think it's nice to know the field might not be dominated by nitwits, forcing me to learn a bunch of discredited crap. There was a woman in my Calc II class who was an Econ major. She said that California was bankrupt because people pay too little in property taxes. I just shook my head. The state with the second highest tax rate in the country, and we're bankrupt because we're not taxed enough? It's mind boggling how stupid people are. There are too many memorize / regurgitate people in the world. They can ace tests, but they can't think their way out of anything. I think most the people currently running this country are that way.