What Government Institution is 3 Times Less Popular than Lawyers?

See the other 10 "charts that do the best job of explaining the political and economic scene in 2011, at the Washington Post, 2011 in 11 charts.

Great Quote On Politicians and Their Corporate Overlords

Tammy found this quote on politicians doing the bidding of their corporate overlords:

"The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

SOTU

Politics today, this pretty much says it all:



Needs no additional comments.

American Political Meltdown, The Road to Poverty

UPDATE V: "What if WikiLeaks got hold of a cable from China’s embassy in Washington? Here’s some of the “good news” that may have been sent home to Beijing." Read The New York Times, From WikiChina.


UPDATE IV: For another prediction -- "[t]here is very little likelihood the political class as currently constituted will address the looming fiscal disaster soon" -- and an explanation why, read The New York Times, Sin and Taxes.

Time to batten down the hatches?


UPDATE III: Be careful what you wish for . . . Read the Washington Post, Can business afford Jim DeMint?


UPDATE II: Does "the polarization of its politics symbolizes America’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of global capitalism after the financial crisis"? Read The New York Times, Blaming China Won’t Help the Economy.

The article concludes that America's political polarization and "nostalgic rerun of the experiment in market fundamentalism" may cause it "to ignore the global reinvention of capitalism. . . This would not prevent the rest of the world from changing course.

Rather, it would make it likely that the newly dominant economic model will not be a product of democratic capitalism, based on Western values and American leadership. Instead, it will be an authoritarian state-led capitalism inspired by Asian values. If America opts, for the first time in history, for nostalgia and ideology instead of pragmatism and progress, then the new model of capitalism will probably be made in China, like so much else in the world these days. "


UPDATE: Don't take may word for it, get "a good look at how the Chinese view us Americans" from someone who recently visited China. Read The New York Times, Too Many Hamburgers?

Some say the China model, also known as the Beijing Consensus or authoritarian economics, is the future, not "our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class [that is] more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country."

Have we lost that "'can-do,' 'get-it-done,' 'everyone-pull-together,' 'whatever-it-takes' attitude that built our highways, dams and put a man on the moon."

Political polarization and paralysis -- "the way wealthy nations become poor." Read the Washington Post, So goes the center, so goes the economy.

And China laughs all the way to the bank.

The Great Law of Change

Edmund Burke once said: "We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature." But "America has never settled whether its governing form of reason is one of radical abstraction or humility and gradualism." Read The New York Times, Two Theories of Change.

"Today, if you look around American politics you see self-described conservative radicals who seek to sweep away 100 years of history and return government to its preindustrial role. You see self-confident Democratic technocrats who have tremendous faith in the power of government officials to use reason to control and reorganize complex systems. You see polemicists of the left and right practicing a highly abstract and ideological Jacobin style of politics.

The children of the British Enlightenment are in retreat. Yet there is the stubborn fact of human nature. The Scots were right, and the French were wrong. And out of that truth grows a style of change, a style that emphasizes modesty, gradualism and balance."

The editorial is about a "superb dissertation by Yuval Levin at the University of Chicago called The Great Law of Change." (If anyone has a link, let me know by leaving a comment.)

After the British Election

An interesting article: "The fiscal future of the developed world looks bleak, but the British coalition should give us hope." Read The New York Times, Glimmers of Hope.

Will the U.S. follow the British example?

Doomacrats And Republigrins

Who is happiest? Read Washington Post, A Happiness Gap: Doomacrats And Republigrins, to find out why "[s]elf-certainty is like a happy pill."