A Trip to the Doctor
Sam Columbia visited the doctor yesterday for a routine checkup. His doctor, Dr. Smith, was examining his lab work and his test results.
Dr. Smith – Your test results came back. You have hypertension.
Sam Columbia – Hypertension? What does that mean?
Smith – It’s very common. Basically, it means that your blood pressure is elevated. It’s very common in someone your age. Are you exercising?
Columbia – No, not really.
Smith – What’s your diet like?
Columbia – I gotta admit, I eat a lot of junk food. Lots of processed stuff, salty snacks, and sweets.
Smith – Our best bet is to make some lifestyle changes. Try to get 30-60 minutes of exercise a day. I recommend starting by taking walks around your neighborhood. And it might be time to start eating additional vegetables. Hypertension is manageable, but if we don’t get it under control, your risk of coronary artery disease really starts to skyrocket. I have this great cookbook I recommend: lots of good, home-cooked, easy meals, and there are quite a few healthy ones in there that could make a real difference for you. You want to be around for your grandkids, right?
Columbia – Yeah, I do.
Smith – Good.
Columbia walked out. He thought about it for a while, but he wasn’t convinced by Smith’s solution. So he did some research and he found another doctor: Dr. Trump.
Dr. Trump – Look, Sam, I’m looking at your blood pressure here, and it’s off the charts, it’s awful, it’s really dangerous. Your resting heart rate is really high, too. If we don’t get this turned around soon, it’s gonna be a real disaster.
Columbia – What do we do?
Trump – Trust me on this. We have this great stuff that we can do to reduce blood pressure and your heart rate: morphine. I know the guys who manufacture this stuff, they’re great, they’re Americans, smartest guys you’ll ever meet, went to the best schools. We’ll hook you up to this IV right here, we’ll run the morphine into your bloodstream, and we’ll get your heart rate and your blood pressure way, way down.
Columbia – It’s just a simple treatment? But what about diet and exercise?
Trump – Look, all these other doctors, they’re morons, OK? They don’t know what they’re doing. We’re dealing with very, very stupid people. I know what I’m doing, I’m very successful, I have a great practice in this great office, wonderful receptionist, the very best nurses. This is the way to go.
Image by jeffeaton 
So it looks like the party of country club conservatives is now being lead by a carnival barker.
If he gets beat, it’ll be very interesting to see how your party responds. Even with another loss at the Presidential level, the Republicans are doing very well in the House, about even in the Senate and way ahead in state houses. On the other hand, neither Kansas nor Louisiana are turning out the way that was promised and the California disaster that was supposed to come with Democratic supermajorities is nowhere in sight.
My guess is that nothing much will change. Trump will be called out as an aberration and the major party donors will continue to candidates who promise to deliver the low-tax, low-regulation, imperialist policies that the donors want.Report
What is the point of this post other than Trump bashing? Politicians usually promise the easy way out.Report
It’s specifically in reference to his “negotiate with our creditors” posture, per the link in the text, which is the equivalent of killing the patient. Politicians usually promise the easy way out, but not usually in a way that is so obviously destructive.Report
I think a better metaphor might be high cholesterol -> instant bypass, rather than hypertension -> lethal morphine dose, to be a-little-but-not-very fair to Trump’s argument.Report
Pff.
Just have the fed but a few more trillion on their balance sheet.Report
Which is fine and the magic of debt financing – use inflation to reduce the real value of the money you are paying back.
What is not fine is saying you’re going to reduce the nominal value of what you’re going to pay back.Report
Proper pricing of debt includes inflation, so you’re not paying down debt with cheaper money, unless your interest rate is below cost, like when the car manufacturer offers 0% financing for 4 years and the Fed rate is 1%.
You devalue the currency by creating more of it.Report
And that devaluation manifests itself as inflation.
Proper pricing of debt includes inflation *projections*. (That’s why there’s a yield curve for different debt time horizons). But when you’re issuing debt *and* the money to pay it back, you have your fingers in both pies.
Plus, at their most fundamental, federal Reserve notes are debt instruments. That they are also money is the key sign of confidence in that debt.
Now, all that said, you should also be circumspect about your inflation plans – as the Fed has been, for most of the lifetimes of everyone here. One quirky feature of the last few years is that the Fed has been utterly unable to get inflation to *beat* the Feds target. (Though it’s possible that it’s not only lower zero bound interest rates but also basket miscalculation)Report
Dan:
It’s good to know that Trump isn’t promising anything other politicians don’t promise either. I’d hate to think he was any worse than the others.Report
“I recommend starting by taking walks around your neighborhood. It’s very safe, because it’s an extremely mild form of exercise, and you’re not a black teenager.”Report
It’s not unsafe for black teenagers either. Don’t beat up the neighborhood watch captain to amuse yourself and do not wave replicas at the police like you’re going to shoot them, and your chances of being injured fall from minimal to nil.Report
Oh! Also, don’t cross the street in front of a cop car. Or play rap music on your car. Or follow police directions. Or drive. At all. Oh, wait — also, don’t sit at home and do nothing.Report
Jordan Davis was shot dead in the sort of interpersonal dispute which occasionally ends in homicide (“another Bronx piece of shit” as the Tom Wolfe character put it). There are a two digit population of such disputes every year in any city of ordinary size. Usually, the disputants are peers; the oddity in the Davis case was that the hothead in question was a middle-aged bourgeois.
As for Michael Brown, the whole sequence of events has been delineated through security cam footage, the autopsy, and eyewitness testimony. You’ve got your fingers in your ears. Get back to us when you can handle the truth.Report
Are you still laboring under the myth that Brown was shot for crossing the street in front of a cop car? What is more amusing is that if you had bothered to read you own link, the one about sitting at home and doing nothing, you would have seen this interesting quote form the family. It said, “Family members did not consider race a factor…”
There is a difference between a black person being shot and being shot b/c you are black, sadly liberals can’t always tell the difference between the two.Report
Political correctness has come to West Point.
http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/2016/05/10/west-point-cadet-photo-inappropriate-but-not-political/84196326/Report
Just because they consider beating an old war horse after he’s gone and died to be a tad abusive…!Report