mail@HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) writes:
>I also note that nobody has changed their agenda on either side of the
>aisle.
Nobody? Not even you?
I am disappointed that so few people on this list want to demonstrate their
willingness to change their beliefs in response to new evidence.
Some of the opinions that I have changed are:
- I'm no longer interested in stopping hate-crime laws. I still think they
have problems, but the potential harm from a small number of anti-arab
crimes causing the arab world to unite against us now appears more important
than the other effects.
- I plan to reduce my criticisms of moderate religions. Getting people
to convert from religious beliefs that glorify suicide to beliefs that
discourage suicide appears more feasible and valuable than persuading
people to abandon religion entirely.
- The U.S. support for the Afghans who were fighting the Soviet invasion
was a mistake. I can imagine that there was a good way to do it (distribute
weapons equally to the average Afghani), but I can't see how the U.S.
government could have been persuaded to prefer such an approach to the
approach of channelling the weapons to a few of the most effective thugs.
>have seen Republicans insisting that we were not heading for a recession
>before this attack, and that Bush had turned to economy around. They say
>that the terrorists have put us into a recession.
I amazed by the number of people who think the attack will cause a decline
in gdp lasting longer than a few weeks.
Most wars and natural disasters show either little effect, or appear to
cause an increase in economic activity. The only exception that comes to
mind is the gulf war, where the increase in oil prices may have outweighed
other effects.
Maybe people think economic harm and a reduction in gdp are synonymous.
As to whether we were already in recession, the U.S. uses an official
definition of recession that generally doesn't tell us that we were in
one until it is over. If we based the definition on industrial production
figures (as I gather is done elsewhere) or the NAPM index, we would already
have agreed that we are in a recession.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Free Dmitry Sklyarov! http://www.freesklyarov.org/ http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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