On another note, I only agree with parts of Matthew Yglesias's five part plan to fixing the economy. I especially disagree with step 1. We should not allow the federal reserve to print more money. This will only deflate the dollar anymore. Our dollar already does not hold much value. Printing more money is never the answer, it only leads to inflation. If I had it my way, I would see our dollar return to the gold standard. There would be more worth to the dollar and not a constant ability to print more money when the going gets tough. I agree with raising wages by simply lowering housing taxes. This will result in a stimulation of the economy. People will be more willing to spend if this happens and government would eventually see the money they saw in housing taxes in different forms of taxes. Except that this way the money coming from housing taxes is being poured into the economy as well.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Espionage, tensions in Germany
When I think of allies I think of allies in the terms of America's friends. When I think of friends I think of trust, honesty, and reliability. I do not feel the need to spy on my friends as I trust them. Spying would only create a rift in the relationship as they would become weary of my motives, etc. This is exactly what is happening between American and Germany at the moment. It also does not help that Americans can not come up with a reason for their espionage acts. When asked, a clear answer was not given. Just because we have the resources to do something, does not mean that we should proceed to do so. This was wrong and a breach of trust and contract. I can see where we were coming from in saying that we were looking for terrorists but we should have seeked out an okay from Germany or should have simply asked for their knowledge on the current dilemma. America violated an agreement and is now seeing repercussions in the form of tensions.
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I agree that the government breaking its contract with its allies is wrong, but its error, in my opinion, was not in the spying, but making this a part of their agreement in the first place. Every nation has foreign intelligence and does what it can to monitor other countries, and the NSA spying on other world leaders, to me, is not a bad idea. Every country has its own agenda, and being mere allies does not prevent another nation from working against another. But, again, I agree that breaking promises with other nations was wrong on the US government's part.
ReplyDeleteExactly, I feel as though spying on an ally is wrong and promotes a bad international environment where you cannot even trust your allies. If there was ever a situation where there was a need for international assistance, maybe it would not so easily come because of events like this.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say sought out an "OK" from Germany, do you mean for spying on German citizens? That would be an interesting request. It seems unlikely that they would grant it. Perhaps this simply shows how far we have stretched the pretext of terrorism.
ReplyDeleteOn the money question, this is more complicated that it looks. Remember the basic insight of Hume: in the short run economic activity goes up, not prices, when more money circulates. The idea is to get this effect, and to cut off the circulation when money starts to devalue. It's also important to keep in mind the difference between money losing value and things becoming more expensive. Much of what makes the dollar seem to lose value is that things are just becoming more scarce relative to world population (like gas and food staples). This has little to do with printing money. Printing money causes economic activity to go up, and if it does devalue the dollar, that is a net gain for most people, as their debts do not go up as well. Linking the dollar to gold will not make gas more plentiful, so it's unlikely to lower its cost.