In the debate of job creation and how best to pursue it as a policy goal, one point is forgotten: Government doesn’t create jobs. Government only diverts resources from one use to another, which doesn’t create new employment.
Video produced by Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg.
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President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
I have a son named Wilson Daniel Hatcher and he is named after two of the most respected men I have ever read about : Daniel from the Old Testament and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
One of the thrills of my life was getting to hear President Reagan speak in the beginning of November of 1984 at the State House Convention Center in Little Rock. Immediately after that program I was standing outside on Markham with my girlfriend Jill Sawyer (now wife of 25 years) and we were alone on a corner and the President was driven by and he waved at us and we waved back.
My former pastor from Memphis, Adrian Rogers, got the opportunity to visit with President Ronald Reagan on several occasions and my St Senator Jeremy Hutchinson got to meet him too. I am very jealous.
Today we are going to compare Reagan’s record to that of Obama:
Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s.
But perhaps that was an unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit a wall. Or maybe the Obama recovery was the economic equivalent of a late bloomer.
So let’s look at the same charts, but add an extra year of data. Does it make a difference?
Meh…not so much.
Let’s start with the GDP data. The comparison is striking. Under Reagan’s policies, the economy skyrocketed. Heck, the chart prepared by the Minneapolis Fed doesn’t even go high enough to show how well the economy performed during the 1980s.
Under Obama’s policies, by contrast, we’ve just barely gotten back to where we were when the recession began. Unlike past recessions, we haven’t enjoyed a strong bounce. And this means we haven’t recovered the output that was lost during the downturn.
Unfortunately, the jobs chart is probably even more discouraging. As you can see, employment is still far below where it started.
This is in stark contrast to the jobs boom during the Reagan years.
So what does this mean? How do we measure the human cost of the foregone growth and jobs that haven’t been created?
Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, former Senator Phil Gramm and budgetary expert Mike Solon compare the current recovery to the post-war average as well as to what happened under Reagan.
If in this “recovery” our economy had grown and generated jobs at the average rate achieved following the 10 previous postwar recessions, GDP per person would be $4,528 higher and 13.7 million more Americans would be working today. …President Ronald Reagan’s policies ignited a recovery so powerful that if it were being repeated today, real per capita GDP would be $5,694 higher than it is now—an extra $22,776 for a family of four. Some 16.9 million more Americans would have jobs.
By the way, the Gramm-Solon column also addresses the argument that this recovery is anemic because the downturn was caused by a financial crisis. That’s certainly a reasonable argument, but they point out that Reagan had to deal with the damage caused by high inflation, which certainly wreaked havoc with parts of the financial system. They also compare today’s weak recovery to the boom that followed the financial crisis of 1907.
But I want to make a different point. As I’ve written before, Obama is not responsible for the current downturn. Yes, he was a Senator and he was part of the bipartisan consensus for easy money, Fannie/Freddie subsidies, bailout-fueled moral hazard, and a playing field tilted in favor of debt, but his share of the blame wouldn’t even merit an asterisk.
My problem with Obama is that he hasn’t fixed any of the problems. Instead, he has kept in place all of the bad policies – and in some cases made them worse. Indeed, I challenge anyone to identify a meaningful difference between the economic policy of Obama and the economic policy of Bush.
Bush increased government spending. Obama has been increasing government spending.
Bush adopted Keynesian “stimulus” policies. Obama adopted Keynesian “stimulus” policies.
Bush bailed out politically connected companies. Obama has been bailing out politically connected companies.
Bush supported the Fed’s easy-money policy. Obama has been supporting the Fed’s easy-money policy.
Bush created a new healthcare entitlement. Obama created a new healthcare entitlement.
Bush imposed costly new regulations on the financial sector. Obama imposed costly new regulations on the financial sector.
I could continue, but you probably get the point. On economic issues, the only real difference is that Bush cut taxes and Obama is in favor of higher taxes. Though even that difference is somewhat overblown since Obama’s tax policies – up to this point – haven’t had a big impact on the overall tax burden (though that could change if his plans for higher tax rates ever go into effect).
This is why I always tell people not to pay attention to party labels. Bigger government doesn’t work, regardless of whether a politician is a Republican or Democrat. The problem isn’t Obamanomics, it’s Bushobamanomics. But since that’s a bit awkward, let’s just call it statism.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
THE OPEN MIND
Host: Richard D. Heffner
Guest: Milton Friedman
Title: A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy VTR: 5/31/77
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THE OPEN MIND
Host: Richard D. Heffner
Guest: Milton Friedman
Title: “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy VTR: 5/31/77
I’m Richard Heffner, your host on The Open Mind. My guest today is perhaps this country’s foremost economist, Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, of Newsweek magazine, and of wherever it is that persons of brilliance and concern gather to discuss the fate of individual liberty in the midst of ever-expanding governmental responsibilities. Well, that’s the way I introduced Professor Friedman on The Open Mind two years ago. Since then he has been as brilliant, has delighted still more discerning citizens of the world, has become a Nobel laureate, and is here today to pick up where we left off.
Professor Friedman, we were saying two years ago, literally, we left off on the road to serfdom. I was looking back at the transcript of our program together, and we did leave off on the road to serfdom, the road to an overabundance of interference in the lives of most individuals. And you said, “I really do think the chance is a good deal less than 50 percent that we’ll be able to avoid it.” And by avoiding it you were referring to this road to serfdom. Now, two years later, have you changed your mind? Is it still 50 percent? Is it 40 percent, 60 percent, or what?
FRIEDMAN: I am sorry to say that I haven’t changed my mind. I wish I could say I had a favorable direction. I think the odds at the moment are still less than 50 percent. In the past two years there have been some favorable developments from this point of view and some unfavorable ones. If you start with the unfavorable ones first, the developments in Great Britain have been very unfavorable from this point of view. Britain has been in an increasing crisis economically. And that is threatening the political stability of Great Britain. Great Britain, after all, is a fount for most of our ideas on political freedom and liberty. And if Britain were to go, that would not be a good thing from the point of view of the world as a whole or the US in particular. On the continent of Europe, Italy and France seem to be on the verge of moving toward governments in which the communist party will either be dominant or will play a large role. They may yet escape that fate. But certainly the possibility of that development today is larger than it was two years ago. At home in the United States, on the unfavorable side, the energy program development is from a fundamental point of view the most threatening at the moment to the preservation of a free society.
HEFFNER: Why do you say that?
FRIEDMAN: Because the plans that are being made and the programs that are being offered with respect to it are programs fundamentally for nationalizing or the equivalent of nationalizing the production, distribution, consumption of energy. If you look at the program that has been proposed by various groups, not necessarily only those by the Carter administration, they are programs for turning over control over the production and distribution of energy to governmental bureaucracies. That’s a move in the direction of a corporate state. It’s a move of replacing private initiative and voluntary action by compulsory governmental action. Those are the unfavorable developments.
On the favorable side, if I may start with what I think has been the most favorable development of the past two years and one that many people will not find favorable, it’s been what’s happened New York City. Now, that’s very unfavorable for the citizen of New York.
HEFFNER: Tell me about that. I am a citizen of New York.
FRIEDMAN: But for the country as a whole it’s been the most dramatic element that has shaken the confidence of the public at large in the virtues of big government, of paternalistic government, of social welfare measures. Here is New York City. The most welfare state oriented electorate in the country. The city which has the largest government spending per person. A city which has the greatest problems of any city in the country, in which government spending far from solving problems has created or exacerbated them. Now, from the point of view of the public at large, the experience of Britain should have been just as great a cautionary tale. But Britain is a long way off; it’s a different country. New York is close to home; everybody knows about New York and is aware of New York. And therefore the problems of New York City have had, I think,, a very healthy effect on the attitudes of the public at large toward the role that government should play in their lives.
Similarly, on a number of a wide range of other issues there has been increasing disillusionment with what government can accomplish. We all know from all the polls that governmental agencies, whether it be the Congress or the White House or the bureaucracy, rank very low in public esteem. There has been a gathering tax revolt, a gathering reaction against big spending by government. It is this reaction against big spending, this decline in confidence that the way to solve a problem is to throw money at it which has been the major political force behind what commentators have been describing as Mr. Carter’s fiscal conservatism. Now, that’s a good trend. Much more fundamental and much more important potentially from the long run is what’s been happening in the world of ideas. The ideas of socialism, of collectivism, of central planning, of the welfare state, which were for so long the dominant ideology of the intellectual community, have become increasingly discredited. That line of thinking is dead. It has nothing to offer to a young, hopeful man who is trying to look for something to believe in and to have faith in. The ideas and individualism of freedom, of each person doing his own thing, the idea that maybe you have a better society if people tend to their own knitting rather than everybody trying to tend to everybody else’s. Those ancient and honorable ideas are having a resurgence. They have a much better hearing today on campuses, among the intellectual community in general than they did even as short a time ago as two years. That intellectual development, I think, is all to the good. But whether it will be able to stop the road to serfdom, stop us from going all the way down to the road serfdom is a real question, because once you get an avalanche going, if that’s the right image, once you get a big car going down the road it has an enormous amount of inertia. And it takes something really to stop it and turn it around. And the real problem is whether the changing climate of ideas can take effect soon enough before it is overwhelmed by the onrushing behemoth of the state.
HEFFNER: Professor Friedman, I’m interested in what you say as what you see as a shift in ideas away from the welfare state, away from socialism, away from stateism. Yet I had the occasion recently to look at a series of reports that indicated what citizens in this fair city, New York, were thinking about, what they were concerned about. And I was fascinated to note – now, this isn’t two years ago, this is very recently – to note that they are still concerned about the services that they want, additional services. They want more, they want more, they want more. And perhaps on the campuses, perhaps you and your friends are terribly much aware of what the “gimmes” have done to us. But what indication is there that really at the depth of this society, at the basic level of this society, people are moving away from an insistence upon more and more social services?
FRIEDMAN: Well, maybe there isn’t, and maybe you’re right. In which case that pessimistic evaluation that we started out with is supported. But I think one must distinguish between common opinion at a moment and the underlying movement of intellectual ideas which only determines common opinion after a very long lag. Now, of course, most people most times would like to get something for nothing. They…always have the gimmes, in your very evocative term. But yet – and New York, of course, is exceptional, as I said before, New York is the most welfare-oriented electorate in the country – and yet even the people in New York, I suspect, are more aware than they were before about the price, the cost, the consequences of trying to get things by that device of getting it through government. And undoubtedly the majority of the people have not been moved…
I think that it would be great if President Obama slowed the pace of new regulations in comparison to President Bush, but I am afraid that the increase of regulations under President Obama has been much more costly than it was under Bush.
Some 10,215 new federal regulations from the Obama administration are costing consumers, businesses and the economy overall $46 billion annually, more than five times the regulatory price tag of former President Bush in his first three years in office. Worse: just implementing those regulations had a one-time additional cost of $11 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis provided to Washington Secrets.
The analysis backs up complaints from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups that the president’s regulations are stalling the economy and employment growth. It also calls into question Obama’s promise to put the brakes on new regulations and his State of the Union bragging about issuing less red tape than Bush.
The fact is, said Heritage’s review, hundreds more costly regulations are coming, especially those targeting energy companies and Wall Street. They threaten “to further weaken an anemic economy and job creation,” said Heritage’s James Gattuso and Diane Katz.
While there is no central agency that collects regulation information, Katz and Gattuso mined the Federal Register and other government databases to get their numbers. What they found was that while Obama has bragging rights to claiming he’s put into place fewer regulations than Bush, his cost far more.
The $46 billion price tag calculated by Heritage is staggering, as are those hitting the economy the hardest. Just consider the regulations tagged as “major” for costing $100 million or more. Obama’s team issued 106 on private industry since taking office, compared to 28 by Bush. Last year alone, Obama’s administration issued 32 major regulations impacting everything from clothes dryers, to toy labels.
Heritage said that most expensive regulation of 2011 was from the Environmental Protection Agency, which added five major rules costing $4 billion. Among them, stricter limits on industrial and commercial boilers and incinerators, for a cost of $2.6 billion annually for compliance.
The regulations are also hitting workers through higher fees on items such as checking accounts.
“The president cannot have it both ways: having identified over-regulation as a problem, he must take real and significant steps to rein it in. At the same time, Congress–which shares much of the blame for excessive regulation–must establish critical mechanism to ensure that unnecessary and excessively costly regulations are not imposed on the U.S,. economy and Americans,” said Gattuso and Katz. “Without decisive steps, the costs of red tape will continue to grow, and the economy, and average Americans, will be the victims.”
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Rude Rob Boston of Americans United favored President Obama speaking at Notre Dame but it turned out that after President Obama got the honorary degree he went out and now is going to force the catholic institutions to provide free abortions under Obamacare. (By the way we have seen rudeness from Rob Boston before and he spread misinformation too before.)
Infamous Andy asked, “@Saline: So you think that, because ND gave an honorary degree, President Obama should have deferred to the wishes of the Catholic church? Is that what you’re suggesting.”
The answer is no. Actually Rob Boston argued that the catholics should have no problem with President Obama speaking at their university and I made the point in my post that the catholics should have barred Obama from coming because of his position on abortion and it turns out later that I was right…On 2-29-12 the Heritage Foundation noted:
Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) has fought for religious liberty against the Obamacare assault. He plans to offer this week Senate Amendment No. 1520 to S. 1813, the highway authorization bill, to protect the right to religious liberty against the Obamacare mandate. The Blunt Amendment notes that, until the enactment of the Obamacare statute in 2010, “the Federal Government has not sought to impose specific coverage or care requirements that infringe on the rights of conscience . . . .” The Blunt Amendment would override the Obamacare mandate that religious institutions provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization when it is contrary to their faiths, allowing them to keep their faiths and provide health care coverage for their employees….William D. Lindsey asserted:@Saline: “If someone wants abortion inducing drugs and they work for a religious organization then they will be able to get them under obamacare.”
Sorry, but that’s not true.
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If you are correct then why are the catholic institutions all up in arms?
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Finally I posted this:
Take a look at this video from the Heritage Foundation called “Religious Liberty: Obamacare’s First Casualty.” It lays out all the facts:
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/22/morning-bell-religious-liberty-under-attack/ | The controversy over the Obama Administration’s anti-conscience mandate and the fight for religious liberty only serves to highlight the inherent flaws in Obamacare. This conflict is a natural result of the centralization laid out under Obamacare and will only continue until the law is repealed in full.
How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the last 30 plus years. Here is part one.
Volume 1 – The Power of the Market
Abstract:
Finding examples in his visits to Hong Kong, the U.S. and Scotland, Dr. Friedman says that free markets are the fundamental engines of economic progress. In free markets, individuals can go into any business they want, trade with whomever they want, buy as cheap as they can, and sell at the highest price they can get. In truly free markets, governments do not interfere with any of these privileges. Individuals are free to enter the marketplace to do business, and they, and they alone, enjoy the fruits of their successes and the consequences of their failures. In free markets, producers of goods and services respond to signals they receive from buyers in the marketplace. They key production to their understanding of what people are buying and, apparently, wish to continue to buy. Using this information, they decide what to produce and in what quantity. Competitive forces in free markets promote efficiency. Because there is free entry of new producers into the market, individual producers must keep costs down in order to price their products at competitive levels. This means the resources they consume tend to be used efficiently. If they are not, costs of production rise, selling prices go up, and the producer may not be able to sell his product because it is not priced competitively. Free markets promote voluntary cooperation among a great diversity of people. As Milton Friedman points out, even making something as simple as a pencil requires the cooperation of thousands of people largely unknown to one another. Because the pencil manufacturer needs paint, graphite, wood, glue, and other components, widely separated groups of individuals have an incentive to produce these items and ship them to the pencil plant. This cooperation is not accomplished by any government. Individual freedom and economic freedom are tightly linked. It is difficult to conceive of personal freedom existing in isolation from economic freedom. Thus, the free market system not only promotes economic progress, but also buttresses our cherished individual freedoms.
Hi, I am Arnold Schwarzenegger. I would like a moment of your time because I wanted you to know something. I wanted you to know about Dr. Milton Friedman’s TV series, Free to Choose. I truly believe that the series has changed my life. When you have such a powerful experience as that, I think you shouldn’t keep it to yourself, I wanted to share it with you.
Being free to choose for me means being free to make your own decisions; free to live your own life; pursue your own goals; chase your own rainbow; without the government breathing down on your neck or standing on your shoes. For me that meant coming here to America. Because I came from a socialistic country in which the government controls the economy. It is a place where you can hear 18 year old kids already talking about their pension. But me __ I wanted more. I wanted to be the best __ individualism like that is incompatible with socialism. So I felt I had to come to America. I had no money in my pocket, but here I had the freedom to get it. I have been able to parlay my big muscles into big business and a big movie career. Along the way I was able to save and invest and I watched America change and I noticed this __ that the more the government interfered and intervened and inserted itself into the free market, the worse the country did. But when the government stepped back and let the free enterprise system do its work, then the better we did, the more robust our economy grew, the better I did, and the better my business grew, and the more I was able to hire and help others.
Okay. So there I was in Palm Springs, waiting for Maria to get ready so we could go out for a game of mixed doubles. I started flipping through the television dial and I caught a glimpse of Nobel Prize winner, Economist Dr. Milton Friedman. I recognized him from the studying of my own degree of economics in business, but I didn’t know I was watching Free to Choose __ it knocked me out. Dr. Friedman expressed, validated and explained everything I ever thought or experienced or observed about the way the economy works. I guess I was really ready to hear it. He said, the economic race should not be arranged so that everyone ends at the finish line at the same time, but so that everyone starts at the starting line at the same time. Wow! I would like to write that one home to Austria. He said, that society that puts equality before freedom winds up with neither, but that society puts freedom before equality, we will end up with a great measure of both. Boy, if I would have come up with that one myself, I maybe wouldn’t have had to get into body building.
When I did beef up my body building, at business school, of course it started with what Thomas Jefferson believed and what Adam Smith thought, even what Milton Friedman had to say __ I would be free to choose __ it all came together. Their economic thought with my own personal experience, and in a way I felt that I had come home. I sought out Dr. Friedman and had great pleasure and privilege of meeting him and his economist wife, Rose, and we have all become friends, and now I call him Milton. Then I became a big pain in the neck about Free to Choose.
All my friends and acquaintances got the tapes and the books for Christmas after Christmas, all the way through the Reagan years when I was able to tell them all __ you see, Milton is right. And I think it’s crucial that we all keep moving in the same direction, away from socialism and to its greater freedom and opportunity. That is why I am so excited that Milton Friedman is updating Free to Choose, bringing it into the 90’s by discussing how to deal with the drug disaster, the chabain phenomenon, and of course, the miserable failure of communism. By the way, there are plans now to translate Free to Choose into the languages of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And you know, they really need it to guide them through it __ to take the first walk toward freedom. But we need it too.
I commend to you the new television series Free to Choose and encourage you to walk into the 21st century in freedom, in opportunity and in success, with Dr. Milton Friedman.
Thanks for listening.
Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians who lived here traded the 22 square miles of soggy Manhattan Island to the Dutch for $24.00 worth of cloth and trinkets. The newcomers founded a city, New Amsterdam at the edge of an empty continent. In the years that followed, it proved a magnet for millions of people from across the Atlantic; people who were driven by fear and poverty; who were attracted by the promise of freedom and plenty. They fanned out over the continent and built a new nation with their sweat, their enterprise and their vision of a better future.For the first time in their lives, many were truly free to pursue their own objectives. That freedom released the human energies which created the United States. For the immigrants who were welcomed by this statue, America was truly a land of opportunity.They poured ashore in their best clothes, eager and expectant, carrying what little they owned. They were poor, but they all had a great deal of hope. Once they arrived, they found, as my parents did, not an easy life, but a very hard life. But for many there were friends and relatives to help them get started __ to help them make a home, get a job, settle down in the new country. There were many rewards for hard work, enterprise and ability. Life was hard, but opportunity was real. There were few government programs to turn to and nobody expected them. But also, there were few rules and regulations. There were no licenses, no permits, no red tape to restrict them. They found in fact, a free market, and most of them thrived on it.Many people still come to the United States driven by the same pressures and attracted by the same promise. You can find them in places like this. It’s China Town in New York, one of the centers of the garment industry __ a place where hundreds of thousands of newcomers have had their first taste of life in the new country. The people who live and work here are like the early settlers. They want to better their lot and they are prepared to work hard to do so.Although I haven’t often been in factories like this, it’s all very familiar to me because this is exactly the same kind of a factory that my mother worked in when she came to this country for the first time at the age of 14, almost 90 years ago. And if there had not been factories like this here then at which she could have started to work and earn a little money, she wouldn’t have been able to come. And if I existed at all, I’d be a Russian or Hungarian today, instead of an American.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But aren’t you now saying in effect, I mean by God whatever is good or the sum total of what is good — the system of what is good, and, therefore, when a young man loves anything that is good he is loving God. Is that what you’re saying, because if so, it wants a bit of arguing.
FATHER COPLESTON
I don’t say, of course, that God is the sum-total or system of what is good in the pantheistic sense; I’m not a pantheist, but I do think that all goodness reflects God in some way and proceeds from Him, so that in a sense the man who loves what is truly good, loves God even if he doesn’t advert to God. But still I agree that the validity of such an interpretation of a man’s conduct depends on the recognition of God’s existence, obviously.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but that’s a point to be proved.
FATHER COPLESTON
Quite so, but I regard the metaphysical argument as probative, but there we differ.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
You see, I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don’t say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, but what’s your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I don’t have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
By my feelings.
FATHER COPLESTON
By your feelings. Well, that’s what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil, probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn’t been gone into in the same way and I couldn’t give it [to] you.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, let’s take the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable, I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you it is evil.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No, I shouldn’t quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. if you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You’re making a mistake.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his emotions.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions, but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler’s emotions, then Hitler makes quite a different appeal to my emotions.
FATHER COPLESTON
Granted. But there’s no objective criterion outside feeling then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your view?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No more than there is for the color-blind person who’s in exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-blind man? Isn’t it because he’s in the minority?
FATHER COPLESTON
I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally belongs to human nature.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn’t say that.
FATHER COPLESTON
Then you’d say that there’s no criterion outside feeling that will enable one to distinguish between the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen and the behavior, say, of Sir Stafford Cripps or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The feeling is a little too simplified. You’ve got to take account of the effects of actions and your feelings toward those effects. You see, you can have an argument about it if you can say that certain sorts of occurrences are the sort you like and certain others the sort you don’t like. Then you have to take account of the effects of actions. You can very well say that the effects of the actions of the Commandant of Belsen were painful and unpleasant.
FATHER COPLESTON
They certainly were, I agree, very painful and unpleasant to all the people in the camp.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but not only to the people in the camp, but to outsiders contemplating them also.
FATHER COPLESTON
Yes, quite true in imagination. But that’s my point. I don’t approve of them, and I know you don’t approve of them, but I don’t see what ground you have for not approving of them, because after all, to the Commandant of Belsen himself, they’re pleasant, those actions.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Yes, but you see I don’t need any more ground in that case than I do in the case of color perception. There are some people who think everything is yellow, there are people suffering from jaundice, and I don’t agree with these people. I can’t prove that the things are not yellow, there isn’t any proof, but most people agree with him that they’re not yellow, and most people agree with me that the Commandant of Belsen was making mistakes.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, do you accept any moral obligation?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I should have to answer at considerable length to answer that. Practically speaking — yes. Theoretically speaking I should have to define moral obligation rather carefully.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, do you think that the word “ought” simply has an emotional connotation?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No, I don’t think that, because you see, as I was saying a moment ago, one has to take account of the effects, and I think right conduct is that which would probably produce the greatest possible balance in intrinsic value of all the acts possible in the circumstances, and you’ve got to take account of the probable effects of your action in considering what is right.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I brought in moral obligation because I think that one can approach the question of God’s existence in that way. The vast majority of the human race will make, and always have made, some distinction between right and wrong. The vast majority I think has some consciousness of an obligation in the moral sphere. It’s my opinion that the perception of values and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best explained through the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and of an author of the moral law. I do mean by “author of the moral law” an arbitrary author of the moral law. I think, in fact, that those modern atheists who have argued in a converse way “there is no God; therefore, there are no absolute values and no absolute law,” are quite logical.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I don’t like the word “absolute.” I don’t think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I don’t see that differences in particular moral judgments are any conclusive argument against the universality of the moral law. Let’s assume for the moment that there are absolute moral values, even on that hypothesis it’s only to be expected that different individuals and different groups should enjoy varying degrees of insight into those values.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I’m inclined to think that “ought,” the feeling that one has about “ought” is an echo of what has been told one by one’s parents or one’s nurses.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, I wonder if you can explain away the idea of the “ought” merely in terms of nurses and parents. I really don’t see how it can be conveyed to anybody in other terms than itself. It seems to be that if there is a moral order bearing upon the human conscience, that that moral order is unintelligible apart from the existence of God.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Then you have to say one or other of two things. Either God only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind — which happens to include yourself — or He deliberately says things are not true in talking to the consciences of savages.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, you see, I’m not suggesting that God actually dictates moral precepts to the conscience. The human being’s ideas of the content of the moral law depends entirely to a large extent on education and environment, and a man has to use his reason in assessing the validity of the actual moral ideas of his social group. But the possibility of criticizing the accepted moral code presupposes that there is an objective standard, and there is an ideal moral order, which imposes itself (I mean the obligatory character of which can be recognized). I think that the recognition of this ideal moral order is part of the recognition of contingency. It implies the existence of a real foundation of God.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But the law-giver has always been, it seems to me, one’s parents or someone like. There are plenty of terrestrial law-givers to account for it, and that would explain why people’s consciences are so amazingly different in different times and places.
FATHER COPLESTON
It helps to explain differences in the perception of particular moral values, which otherwise are inexplicable. It will help to explain changes in the matter of the moral law in the content of the precepts as accepted by this or that nation, or this or that individual. But the form of it, what Kant calls the categorical imperative, the “ought,” I really don’t see how that can possibly be conveyed to anybody by nurse or parent because there aren’t any possible terms, so far as I can see, with which it can be explained. it can’t be defined in other terms than itself, because once you’ve defined it in other terms than itself you’ve explained it away. It’s no longer a moral “ought.” It’s something else.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I think the sense of “ought” is the effect of somebody’s imagined disapproval, it may be God’s imagined disapproval, but it’s somebody’s imagined disapproval. And I think that is what is meant by “ought.”
FATHER COPLESTON
It seems to me to be external customs and taboos and things of that sort which can most easily be explained simply through environment and education, but all that seems to me to belong to what I call the matter of the law, the content. The idea of the “ought” as such can never be conveyed to a man by the tribal chief or by anybody else, because there are no other terms in which it could be conveyed. It seems to me entirely….
BERTRAND RUSSELL
But I don’t see any reason to say that — I mean we all know about conditioned reflexes. We know that an animal, if punished habitually for a certain sort of act, after a time will refrain. I don’t think the animal refrains from arguing within himself, “Master will be angry if I do this.” He has a feeling that that’s not the thing to do. That’s what we can do with ourselves and nothing more.
FATHER COPLESTON
I see no reason to suppose that an animal has a consciousness or moral obligation; and we certainly don’t regard an animal as morally responsible for his acts of disobedience. But a man has a consciousness of obligation and of moral values. I see no reason to suppose that one could condition all men as one can “condition” an animal, and I don’t suppose you’d really want to do so even if one could. If “behaviorism” were true, there would be no objective moral distinction between the emperor Nero and St. Francis of Assisi. I can’t help feeling, Lord Russell, you know, that you regard the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen as morally reprehensible, and that you yourself would never under any circumstances act in that way, even if you thought, or had reason to think, that possibly the balance of the happiness of the human race might be increased through some people being treated in that abominable manner.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No. I wouldn’t imitate the conduct of a mad dog. The fact that I wouldn’t do it doesn’t really bear on this question we’re discussing.
FATHER COPLESTON
No, but if you were making a utilitarian explanation of right and wrong in terms of consequences, it might be held, and I suppose some of the Nazis of the better type would have held that although it’s lamentable to have to act in this way, yet the balance in the long run leads to greater happiness. I don’t think you’d say that, would you? I think you’d say that sort of action is wrong — and in itself, quite apart from whether the general balance of happiness is increased or not. Then, if you’re prepared to say that, then I think you must have some criterion of feeling, at any rate. To me, that admission would ultimately result in the admission of an ultimate ground of value in God.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I think we are perhaps getting into confusion. It is not direct feeling about the act by which I should judge, but rather a feeling as to the effects. And I can’t admit any circumstances in which certain kinds of behavior, such as you have been discussing, would do good. I can’t imagine circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect. I think the persons who think they do are deceiving themselves. But if there were circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect, then I might be obliged, however reluctantly, to say — “Well, I don’t like these things, but I will acquiesce in them,” just as I acquiesce in the Criminal Law, although I profoundly dislike punishment.
FATHER COPLESTON
Well, perhaps it’s time I summed up my position. I’ve argued two things. First, that the existence of God can be philosophically proved by a metaphysical argument; secondly, that it is only the existence of God that will make sense of man’s moral experience and of religious experience. Personally, I think that your way of accounting for man’s moral judgments leads inevitably to a contradiction between what your theory demands and your own spontaneous judgments. Moreover, your theory explains moral obligation away, and explaining away is not explanation.
As regards the metaphysical argument, we are apparently in agreement that what we call the world consists simply of contingent beings. That is, of beings no one of which can account for its own existence. You say that the series of events needs no explanation: I say that if there were no necessary being, no being which must exist and cannot not-exist, nothing would exist. The infinity of the series of contingent beings, even if proved, would be irrelevant. Something does exist; therefore, there must be something which accounts for this fact, a being which is outside the series of contingent beings. If you had admitted this, we could then have discussed whether that being is personal, good, and so on. On the actual point discussed, whether there is or is not a necessary being, I find myself, I think in agreement with the great majority of classical philosophers.
You maintain, I think, that existing beings are simply there, and that I have no justification for raising the question of the explanation of their existence. But I would like to point out that this position cannot be substantiated by logical analysis; it expresses a philosophy which itself stands in need of proof. I think we have reached an impasse because our ideas of philosophy are radically different; it seems to me that what I call a part of philosophy, that you call the whole, insofar at least as philosophy is rational.
It seems to me, if you will pardon my saying so, that besides your own logical system — what you call “modern” in opposition to antiquated logic (a tendentious adjective) — you maintain a philosophy which cannot be substantiated by logical analysis. After all, the problem of God’s existence is an existential problem whereas logical analysis does not deal directly with problems of existence. So it seems to me, to declare that the terms involved in one set of problems are meaningless because they are not required in dealing with another set of problems, is to settle from the beginning the nature and extent of philosophy, and that is itself a philosophical act which stands in need of justification.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Well, I should like to say just a few words by way of summary on my side. First, as to the metaphysical argument: I don’t admit the connotations of such a term as “contingent” or the possibility of explanation in Father Copleston’s sense. I think the word “contingent” inevitably suggests the possibility of something that wouldn’t have this what you might call accidental character of just being there, and I don’t think is true except int he purely causal sense. You can sometimes give a causal explanation of one thing as being the effect of something else, but that is merely referring one thing to another thing and there’s no — to my mind — explanation in FATHER COPLESTON’s sense of anything at all, nor is there any meaning in calling things “contingent” because there isn’t anything else they could be.
That’s what I should say about that, but I should like to say a few words about Father Copleston’s accusation that I regard logic as all philosophy — that is by no means the case. I don’t by any means regard logic as all philosophy. I think logic is an essential part of philosophy and logic has to be used in philosophy, and in that I think he and I are at one. When the logic that he uses was new — namely, in the time of Aristotle, there had to be a great deal of fuss made about it; Aristotle made a lot of fuss about that logic. Nowadays it’s become old and respectable, and you don’t have to make so much fuss about it. The logic that I believe in is comparatively new, and therefore I have to imitate Aristotle in making a fuss about it; but it’s not that I think it’s all philosophy by any means — I don’t think so. I think it’s an important part of philosophy, and when I say that, I don’t find a meaning for this or that word, that is a position of detail based upon what I’ve found out about that particular word, from thinking about it. It’s not a general position that all words that are used in metaphysics are nonsense, or anything like that which I don’t really hold.
As regards the moral argument, I do find that when one studies anthropology or history, there are people who think it their duty to perform acts which I think abominable, and I certainly can’t, therefore, attribute Divine origin to the matter of moral obligation, which FATHER COPLESTON doesn’t ask me to; but I think even the form of moral obligation, when it takes the form of enjoining you to eat your father or what not, doesn’t seem to me to be such a very beautiful and noble thing; and, therefore, I cannot attribute a Divine origin to this sense of moral obligation, which I think is quite easily accounted for in quite other ways.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), born to Cuban immigrants, told us in an exclusive interview Wednesday that the pope should make time to see dissidents. Rubio was at Heritage to promote freedom in Cuba, particularly as it relates to technology and Internet access.
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We got to cut spending soon and try some austerity here at home.
Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.
As Greece, and now Spain and Italy, struggle with the crushing burden of debt brought on by the modern welfare state, perhaps we should shift our gaze some 1,200 miles north to see how austerity can actually work.
Exhibit #1 is Estonia. This small Baltic nation recently had a spate of notoriety when its president, Toomas Ilves, got into a Twitter debate with Paul Krugman over the country’s austerity policies. Krugman sneered at Estonia as the “poster child for austerity defenders,” remarking of the nation’s recovery from recession, “this is what passes for economic triumph?” In return, President Ilves criticized Krugman as “smug, overbearing, and patronizing.”
Twitter-borne tit-for-tat aside, here are the facts: Estonia had been one of the showcases for free-market economic policies and had been growing steadily until the 2008 economic crisis burst a debt-fueled property bubble, shut off credit flows, and curbed export demand, plunging the country into a severe economic downturn.
However, instead of increasing government spending in hopes of stimulating the economy, as Krugman has urged, the Estonians rejected Keynesianism in favor of genuine austerity. Among other measures, the Estonian government cut public-sector wages by 10 percent, gradually raised the retirement age from 61 to 65 by 2026, reduced eligibility for health benefits, and liberalized the country’s labormarket, making it easier for businesses to hire and fire workers.
Estonia did unfortunately enact a small increase in its value-added tax, but it deliberately kept taxes low on businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs, refusing to make changes to its flat 21 percent income tax. In fact, the government has put in place plans to reduce the income tax to 20 percent by 2015.
Cutting government spending, reducing taxes, and liberalizing labor markets brings more economic growth, increased employment, less debt, and more prosperity.
Today, Estonia is actually running a budget surplus. Its national debt is 6 percent of GDP. By comparison, Greece’s is 159 percent of GDP. Ours is 102 percent.
Economic growth has been a robust 7.6 percent, the best in the EU. And, although the unemployment rate remains too high, at 11.7 percent, that is down from 19 percent during the worst of the recession. It’s hard to see how a Krugman-style stimulus would have done much better.
Next door, Latvia has also embarked on a successful austerity program. In 2008, facing a deep recession — the worst in Europe, with a 24 percent drop in GDP from 2007 to 2009 — and a run on the country’s largest bank, Latvia turned to Europe for a €7.5 billion bailout. But unlike Greece and other countries that seem to look at such assistance as a form of permanent welfare payment, Latvia used the EU loan as an opportunity to make the painful government reforms necessary to restore long-term economic health.
Latvia embarked on the toughest budget cuts in Europe. Half of all government-run agencies were eliminated, the number of public employees was reduced by a third, and public-sector wages were slashed by an average of 25 percent.
In the end, Latvia borrowed just €4.4 billion of the available €7.5 billion, and its economy is on the rebound. Unemployment, which reached 19 percent at the height of the recession, has declined to around 15 percent. Real GDP growth was 5.5 percent last yearCanada and is expected to be at least 3.5 percent this year. This year’s budget deficit will be just 1.2 percent of GDP, and the national debt is just 37 percent of GDP and declining. The credit-rating agencies recently upgraded the country’s credit-worthiness. And, while Greece mulls leaving the euro zone, Latvia has been pronounced eligible for membership.
The third Baltic country, Lithuania, also dramatically cut government spending — as much as 30 percent in nominal terms — including reductions in public-sector wages of 20 to 30 percent and pension cuts of as much as 11 percent. Unfortunately, Lithuania may have undermined the effects of those cuts by also raising taxes, including a significant hike in corporate taxes. Still, Lithuania is expected to see its economy grow by 2.2 percent this year.
Krugman and others do have a point in saying that the Baltic countries benefit from strong trade opportunities with neighbors such as Sweden and Finland that have growing economies. And it is true that, while their recoveries have been strong, none of the Baltic countries is expected to fully return to pre-recession levels of prosperity until 2014 at the earliest. On the other hand, when are Greece, Spain, or for that matter the United States — none of which has done much if anything to reduce government spending — likely to return to pre-recession growth?
If the Baltics are not a sufficient example of the value of cutting government, we can look a bit to the west, to Switzerland. Switzerland’s constitution includes provisions that limit the country’s ability both to run debt (the growth in government spending can be no higher than average revenue growth, calculated over a multi-year period) and to increasetaxes (taxes can be increased only by a double-majority referendum, meaning that a majority of voters in a majority of cantons would have to approve the increase).
As a result, total government spending in Switzerland at all levels of government is just 34 percent of GDP, compared to an average of 52 percent in the EU, and more than 41 percent in the United States. Switzerland’s national debt is just 41 percent of GDP and shrinking at a time when other European countries are becoming more insolvent. Switzerland’s economic growth has not yet returned to pre-recession levels, but it is better than the growth in, say, Greece or Spain. And its unemployment rate is just 3.1 percent, the lowest in Europe.
If that’s not enough evidence, we can just look to our own neighbor Canada. The Canadian federal government has been reducing spending in real terms since the 1990s. As a result, federal spending as a share of GDP has fallen from 22 percent in 1995 to just 15.9 percent today. Compare that to the United States, where the federal government spends 24 percent of GDP, roughly half again as much. And, while Canadian provincial governments spend appreciably more than do most U.S. states, total government spending at all levels in Canada has declined from 53 percent in the 1990s to just 42 percent today — still far too high, but clearly moving in the right direction.
Canada has also cut taxes. Corporate tax rates at the federal level were slashed from 29 percent in 2000 to 15 percent today, less than half the U.S. federal rate. Capital-gains taxes were also cut, as were, to a lesser degree, income taxes.
When Canada — led for so long by the ultra-liberal Pierre Trudeau — has smaller government and lower taxes than the U.S., something is seriously out of whack.
As a result of these changes, Canada’s national debt is now less than 34 percent of GDP. Its budget deficit this year will be just 3.5 percent of GDP, while ours will be 8.3 percent. Canada’s economy will grow at 2.6 percent this year — a modest rate but faster than ours — and its unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, again better than ours.
All these countries are following the successful examples set by other nations such as Chile, Ireland, and New Zealand in the 1980s and ’90s, and Slovakia from 2000 to 2003.
Of course, none of these examples is perfect, and cuts in government spending will not, by themselves, cure all ills. These countries often benefited from circumstances aside from fiscal discipline. Still, the evidence is there. Cutting government spending, reducing taxes, and liberalizing labor markets brings more economic growth, increased employment, less debt, and more prosperity. The opposite is also true: Bigger government and higher taxes result in more economic misery — see Greece, Spain, etc.
As the United States looks to its future, it is time to decide which path we will follow.
Below is a picture from Woody Allen’s latest movie and then below are some Italian films that influenced him over the years.
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By Philippe Antonello, Sony Pictures Classics
Appearing in one of his own movies for the first time since 2006, Allen plays an unhappily retired and somewhat neurotic opera director who pins a comeback attempt on his discovery of an Italian mortician who can sing like Pavarotti — but only in the shower.
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The Kobal Collection
The White Sheik (1952). An early romantic comedy by Federico Fellini about a bride honeymooning in Rome who leaves her husband behind to find the hero of her romantic novels. A direct influence on To Rome with Love’s similar story of a young couple who are split apart in the bustling city.
Allen’s observation: “It’s a film I love very much.”
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The Kobal Collection
Amarcord (1973). Fellini’s autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in a small seaside town in 1930s Italy is overrun with colorful characters, from a blind accordion player to the village beauty.
Allen’s observation: “Great fun.”
<The Kobal Collection
Blow-Up (1966). Michelangelo Antonioni created waves with his first English-language film when he turned his camera on swinging London as personified by a cocky fashion photographer (David Hemmings) who believes his lens has accidentally captured a murder.
Allen’s observation: “Not in the same class as the other films, but interesting to see.”
Why not pass the Balanced Budget Amendment? As you know that federal deficit is at all time high (1.6 trillion deficit with revenues of 2.2 trillion and spending at 3.8 trillion).
On my blog www.HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com I took you at your word and sent you over 100 emails with specific spending cut ideas. However, I did not see any of them in the recent debt deal that Congress adopted. Now I am trying another approach. Every week from now on I will send you an email explaining different reasons why we need the Balanced Budget Amendment. It will appear on my blog on “Thirsty Thursday” because the government is always thirsty for more money to spend.
You asked for ideas to cut spending, but you voted for the 800 billion dollar stimulus that did not help the economy at all. I have included an article below that makes a very good point about the Balanced Budget Amendment and the stimulus:
Lee believes there are several key components to a balanced budget amendment which he outlines in his book, including making tax increases contingent on a two-thirds vote in Congress so that the option to increase taxes is not the default maneuver to balance a budget. He believes the amendment should require Congress spends no more than it takes in, and in fact should cap the spending at a fixed percent of GDP (the proposal submitted in the Senate caps it at 18 percent of GDP, just about the historical average). There would also be a supermajority vote required to raise the debt ceiling.
And for those who argue that stimulus packages wouldn’t have been possible under the amendment, Lee sees little difficulty responding.
“That’s exibit A for why we ought to have it,” Lee said of the Obama stimulus package.
As Washington spends the summer arguing over its spending addiction, GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has a solution to help prevent the same crisis for future generations: a balanced budget amendment.
The House made news last week when, in the heat of negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, they announced a vote on a balanced budget amendment this Wednesday. Though the Senate GOP introduced a one earlier this year, President Obama has stated emphatically otherwise, telling Americans last week during a press conference that the country does not need a balanced budget amendment.
“Yes, we do,” Lee told Townhall when asked to respond to the president, adding later when talking about simultaneously raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending, “We can’t bind what a future Congress will do. We can pass laws that will affect this year, but there will be a new Congress that takes power in January of 2013, and then another new one that will take power in January 2015. And they will make their own spending decisions then — we can’t bind them unless we amend the Constitution to do so.”
Lee points out that the American people support the idea of a balanced budget – 65 percent, according to a Sachs/Mason Dixon poll from this year – but politicians have been reluctant to wade into the debate.
“The fact that we’re in this debate, the fact that we’re sort of deadlocked, or we’ve reached a point of gridlock in the discussions, is indicative of the problem that we have,” Lee said.
In fact, Lee thinks a balanced budget amendment is so important to the future of the country that he’s written a book on it: The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment Is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government.
Lee even takes the argument a step beyond fiscal issues, saying a balanced budget amendment safeguards individual liberties.
““The more money it [Congress] has access to, whether it’s through borrowing or through taxation, either way, that’s going to fuel Congress’ expansion, and whenever government acts, it does so at the expanse of individual liberty,” Lee said. “We become less free every time government expands.”
Lee believes there are several key components to a balanced budget amendment which he outlines in his book, including making tax increases contingent on a two-thirds vote in Congress so that the option to increase taxes is not the default maneuver to balance a budget. He believes the amendment should require Congress spends no more than it takes in, and in fact should cap the spending at a fixed percent of GDP (the proposal submitted in the Senate caps it at 18 percent of GDP, just about the historical average). There would also be a supermajority vote required to raise the debt ceiling.
And for those who argue that stimulus packages wouldn’t have been possible under the amendment, Lee sees little difficulty responding.
“That’s exibit A for why we ought to have it,” Lee said of the Obama stimulus package.
Lee also pointed out that his balanced budget amendment includes an exception to the spending restriction in time of war – “not a blank check, but to the extent necessary.” Congress would also be able to supersede the amendment with a two-thirds vote.
“We wanted to make it difficult, but not impossible, for Congress to spend more than it had access to,” Lee said, citing as an example a massive or immediate crisis created by a national emergency or natural disaster. “What this is designed to do is to make it more difficult – to make it impossible – for Congress to just do this as a matter of course.”
Elisabeth Meinecke
Elisabeth Meinecke is Associate Editor with Townhall.com
Arkansas held a celebration on Dickson Street in Fayetteville to commemorate the start of the 100th year of the school’s Razorbacks mascot on July 21. Coaches, administrators and even a Hugo Bezdek impersonator, were on hand at the event. The Razorbacks debuted a historical maker near the old train station on Dickson Street, where Bezdek called the Arkansas Cardinals a “wild bunch of razorback hogs” after they defeated LSU 16-0 on Nov. 13, 1909.
After playing as a fullback at the University of Chicago, Bezdek began his football coaching career at the University of Oregon in 1906, but left after a year to become head coach at the University of Arkansas. Arkansas athletic teams carried the name of Cardinals until the close of 1909 season. Coach Bezdek referred to his team as “a wild band of Razorbacks” at a post-season rally following an unbeaten season. This nickname has been applied to Arkansas teams since that time. After five years at Arkansas, he returned to Oregon for six seasons.
While coaching in Oregon, Bezdek also served as a scout for Major League Baseball‘s Pittsburgh Pirates, who hired him as their manager in the middle of the 1917 season. He managed the Pirates through 1919, compiling a 166–187 record.
While managing the Pirates, Bezdek continued his football coaching career, moving from Oregon to Penn State in 1919. He was head coach there until 1929, amassing a 65–30–11 record that included two undefeated seasons and an appearance in the 1923 Rose Bowl. Bezdek was noted for changing the Nittany Lions’ style of play.[1]
Bezdek also served as Penn State’s athletic director from 1918 to 1936, was interim basketball coach in 1919, garnering an 11–2 record, and director of the School of Physical Education and Athletics from 1930 to 1937.
In 1937, Bezdek was hired by the Cleveland Rams as their first head coach after the team joined the NFL. His career with the Rams was brief, ending three games into the 1938 season with an abysmal 1–13 record. Nevertheless, Bezdek holds the distinction of being the only person to have served as both manager of a Major League Baseball team and head coach in the NFL.
As a college football coach, Bezdek tallied a career record of 127–58–16. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.
^ COACH BEZDEK CHANGES TEAM’S STYLE OF PLAY FOR THIRD TIME TROJANS TO TACKLE A REORGANIZED ELEVEN; Nittany Lions to Take Field With Almost a Completely New Bunch of Regulars. Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1922. Hugo “Spinx” Bezdek, commander-in-chief of the Penn State football squad, which is to meet the University of Southern California in the annual East-West Tournament of Roses New Year’s Day game, changes the style of his eleven’s play almost as much as a woman changes her mind.
unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit a wall. Or maybe the Obama recovery was the economic equivalent of a late bloomer.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
FATHER COPLESTON
The Daily Hatch 