Net Neutrality

I recently received the following question...


Somebody explain to me why the Dems support Net Neutrality and the GOP is against it? I've just read the proposed rules from the FCC and it seems fairly reasonable to me. I can't see why the GOP is so upset about it?


Yeah, the Internet has worked just fine without regulation all the while... but in the last few years we've seen signs of nearly monopolistic power on behalf of several ISP's that threaten the Internet operation. 


I'm serious. I don't get it. Unless somebody can explain otherwise I don't see how I support the GOP on this.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/throttle-away.ars

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/460485-Hutchison_To_FCC_Stand_Down_on_Net_Neutrality.php

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/will-we-have-net-neutrality-rules-by-christmas.ars

While I don't speak for the GOP, I can explain why I oppose net neutrality regulation.


The main problem with net neutrality is it is government regulation of a problem that doesn't need government regulation to fix it. It is only going to create legal and bureaucratic hangups and issues and some government imposed solutions to problems that, for the most part, are easily solved through non-government action.

It also extends the governments power to interfere in a private business simply because they provide data access. If I want to allow people to connect to the internet through my lines, but I want to block spammers, pornographers, or people attempting to block copyright laws, should I not be allowed to do that? Should the government be given the power to decide what traffic I'm allowed to stop and what I have to let through? If I wanted to provide a service which only allowed people to check email, should I not be allowed to do that?

As the the "problem" of ISPs blocking or limiting certain traffic, it is quite easily solved and, indeed, already has been by many in the file sharing communities. You can always encrypt traffic and route it through "normal" ports. You can cycle traffic through multiple ports, etc. It's simple to make one block of digital data look just like any other.

Finally, as to the issue of limited ISP options, that is not true in most places and is true in many places only because the ISPs have been providing enough service that there is no need for new markets to emerge. In cities you have Telecom, Power, Cable, Long Range Radio, and Satellite as options for providing bandwidth to most homes. In most areas not all of those options are available, but there are usually at least two until you leave for the rural areas. Some options are better than others in their overall limitations, but all can provide people with broadband access and if there is demand for a service which is not being offered, those offer several companies the ability to compete for bandwidth.

The lack of competition is simply due to the fact that most broadband offered is pretty much the same except that some companies have invested more in certain areas. They have done so because there isn't demand for something else. If an ISP were to restrict things too far it would create a demand for a greater service and the barriers to entry into that market, at least in non-rural areas are not great.

The GOP are acting not only to protect the rights of business to offer their services without government interference, but also opposing government regulation and expansion of government power into an area which clearly doesn't need it and will likely be harmed by the intervention.

Where We Go From Here

In the recent election a strong message was set to the US Government.  That message was not that the Republicans should return to power or that the Democrats should be removed from power.  That message, I believe, was that Democrats and Republicans need to stop playing the same game that they have been playing with each other and with the public.  When it comes to fiscal policy, both parties agree that there should be a balanced budget, but for both parties it is a much lower priority than their other financial plans. 

Republicans want to decrease taxes or at the very least not raise them.   Democrats want to expand services or at the very least not cut them back.  Each party has been ever more willing, especially in recent years, to rack up large deficits rather than go against their preferences.  That is what has to stop.   We are no longer in a position to keep compromising by just building up debt.  Services need to be cut and taxes are going to have to increase.  For too long we have been compromising by increasing debt.  That policy needs to end.  What I, and I believe most voters want is for this country's leadership to show some fiscal responsibility for a change.   We didn't have that under the Bush administration and we don't have it under the Obama administration.  

Democrats have been arguing that their spending programs will help the economy recover.  They believe that without government spending things would be worse.  They might even be correct.  Experts wildly disagree on the subject.  What they don't disagree on, however, is that large scale deficit spending is very harmful.  Our current policies have been trading certain future wealth for a possible short term gain.  While the idea is to take from a plentiful future and help ease a troubled present, there are no assurances.  We don't know that we can afford to take from the future.  We don't know how much the spending will help the present.  Worst of all, we don't know when or how things will change.  How long can or will the spending go on?  How many of the jobs created by unsustainable spending will be temporary?  Will the economy recover in time to take up the slack for decreased spending or will this spending only postpone and possibly worsen a recession?  Many negative effects are likely or certain, but the positives appear to be highly speculative.

Many Republican plans are no better.  Cutting taxes might help the private sector to grow the economy, but it will certainly result in increasing deficits now which leads to all of the same negatives of the Democrats plans for all of the same reasons.   We don't have any more certainty that the positive effects of providing more money to the private sector will outweigh the costs than we do that direct spending will.  Either way we are betting probable short term positives against certain long term costs.   That is a poor investment.

Instead, we need to show fiscal restraint and responsibility.  Even a good investment is not a good investment if we cannot afford it.  There is always an element of risk and if you cannot afford to lose you should not play.  Some deficit spending is worth the risk, as you can often have investments which pay out higher than the cost of borrowing to invest.   Taking that too far, however, leads to disaster. 

Both parties have worked to bring us where we are today, which is with massive debt which is growing at an astonishing rate.  We have been living too far beyond our means for too long.  The unfortunate reality is that we have been gambling that we could continue to outgrow our current debt with future revenues for far too long.  We have lost sight of financial responsibility and have instead grown accustom to living outside our means.  We need to correct that, and it isn't going to be pleasant. 

For some time, I have been advocating that while compromise in politics is often a good thing, that it is also often very bad.  I have applauded the fact the Republicans refused to be bargained into most of the spending programs for the past couple of years.  As I saw it, the current administration was going down the same spending path as the previous one, only faster.  I felt it was the wrong direction and so I encouraged an end to compromise to stop the out of control spending.

In that, I have been wrong.  It had been bothering me for a bit, because I don't like the idea of not working in cooperation to make things better.  I like the idea of compromise in most situations where people disagree and yet I was seeing a lot of damage come from compromises made between the parties.  The problem is not compromise, the problem is the type of compromise.  Rather than compromise by each party pursuing its primary fiscal goals, we need to compromise first on pursuing the shared goal of limited deficit spending and reducing the debt.   Working within that shared goal we need to make sacrifices in our non-shared, but individually higher priorities.

Taxes need to be raised.  Spending has to be cut.  We need to shift away from the compromise of double spending and instead compromise on double cutting.  Our government cannot afford to offer all of the services we enjoy at the tax rate we have.   Increasing taxes will only get us so far, cutting services will eventually be far too harmful.  It is in this that we need to compromise with each other and work opposing each other in the details but together in the common goal of bringing this country back into a fiscally responsible path.

That is the message I believe the voters have sent in this recent election, and it is a message that I hope both parties come to hear.  We are willing to have fewer services if it means more financial responsibility.  We are willing to pay more taxes, if it also comes with more financial responsibility.  We are not willing to let the parties gamble with our futures with the costly and risky plans that they have been proposing and implementing so far.  There may be some short term pain, but it is largely a cost of letting things get so far out of hand for so long.

We can get this country back on track, and the answer isn't to follow the ideological path of either party, but rather to shift the give and take of compromise which cause us each to sacrifice a little for the sake of financial responsibility rather than each of us gain a little borrowing against our future.

How to Help People - Part 2 Moral Help

It is perhaps somewhat ironic that Democrats and Republicans have completely reversed positions on the government providing moral assistance to people rather than financial.

When I talk of moral help, I am referring to programs designed to help people to be better people, as opposed to financially better off.  While there can be some overlap such as with education, but here I am referring to programs which deal with non-financial morality.  Examples of this would be anti-drug laws and programs or things like sex education.  Some public decency laws and the like would also fall into this category.

The moral issue is far more complicated than the financial one because there are several factors at play when it comes to morality.  Some moral issues are beneficial to society.  A clear example of this is a prohibition against murder.  Other moral issues have less clear benefit to society, such as a prohibition against abortion.  It is further complicated by the fact that society does not have a unified moral code, but rather has a large variety of moral codes which mostly overlap in a few major areas.  While many laws are based on some aspect of a moral code their intent is rarely focused on the individual, but rather on the protection of society as a whole.

So when looking to provide moral assistance to someone, then, there are two important questions to look at.  First, there is the question, as with financial help, of how much help is beneficial.  Second, there is the question of which moral code to use.

Let us begin with the first question and look at one of the larger examples of moral law in US history: Prohibition.  In 1920 the US nationally banned the sale, manufacture, transportation, and consumption of alcohol.    Those who supported prohibition did so for both individual and societal reasons.  Religious groups were split on the issue, but there were many who saw drinking as a sin and wanted the law to help prevent people from doing so. The vast majority, however, supported prohibition because they believed it would have six primary effects:  reduction of crime, protection of families(from effects of alcohol abusers), reduced drunkenness, reduces cases of insanity, reduced government cost (primarily through crime reduction), and a greater general respect for the law.  It was inarguable that alcohol had negative effects on all of those areas.  Alcohol was at the center of a great deal of lawless behavior and caused many societal problems.  What they didn't realize was that the problems created by banning alcohol were far worse.

The years of prohibition in the US showed that banning alcohol was not only worse for society overall, but it was worse in all six areas that it was intended to improve.  Though there were many positive effects to prohibition, they were greatly overshadowed by the negatives.  Overall alcohol consumption declined.  It was the moderate alcohol consumption which disappeared rather than the excessive drinking which was the source of problems.  Excessive drinking actually increased.  Crime actually increased due to the creation of a vast black market in alcohol and the violence between gangs which came with fighting for control of that market.  Government spending was greatly increased in an attempt to deal with the gangs.  Because of the clear ineffectiveness of the government to enforce the law, and the growing unpopularity of the law as it failed to have positive effects, respect for the law greatly decreased.  In the end the attempts to help improve society with a moral and very popular law proved to be harmful and lead to a less moral society.

That one case certainly doesn't invalidate all attempts to use government to help people morally, but it does show that there can be harmful unintended consequences to the attempts to do so.  Any law compelling moral behavior limits personal freedom, which means it comes with a high cost.  In many cases that cost is justified.  There is nearly universal support for laws against murder, assault, theft, fraud, and the like.  These are laws which agree with nearly everyone's moral code and which consequently have clearly seen benefits to society by most people.

In other cases it is less clear.  Take, for example, sex.  There are two aspects to government involvement in sex laws and sex education.  First there is an interest in protecting society.  There are problems with sexual predation or teens and children, unwanted pregnancies, and disease which almost all people agree are damaging to society.  Laws and programs designed to eliminate these problems are typically popular as long as they are not too extreme. 

Some people wish to take the issue further.  Most of the population believes that teenagers, especially those under 18 should not have sex.  There is a pretty wide range on how strongly people feel about the issue and many who agree that that teenage sex is a bad idea don't support any action taken to limit it.  Aside from laws which are designed to prevent adults from taking advantage of teenagers, there has not been much legal action to address the problem.  Instead the focus has mostly been on sex education and subsidized birth control and disease prevention.

It is here that there is a pretty strong divide.  On one side people argue that providing teenagers with condoms and other devices used to prevent disease and pregnancy will lead to an increase in teenage sexual activity.  This is probably true, however, the greatest increase will be in the more responsible sex and it will result in a decline of unprotected sex.  So you have both desirable and undesirable outcomes.  This is further complicated by the fact that birth control and disease prevention are not completely effective.  Even responsible sex leads to the outcomes society is attempting to prevent.

This goes to the other argument which is that sex should not be promoted among teenagers by supplying them with what they need to have sex more responsibly.  This is mostly supported more strongly by those who believe that teenage sex is always irresponsible.  They argue that there is an emotional toll on people who engage in sexual activity at an early age and that teenagers should be protected from making such harmful decisions.  This is much the same rational as is used for laws against alcohol and tobacco for teens and children.   

What we have is that overall teenage sex is leads to a number of problems.  There are many things which can be done to reduce the problems created, but these same actions will also result in an overall increase.  At the same time, strong discouragement can drive the more responsible to act less responsibly if they have limited access.  In many ways this is similar to the alcohol situation, though there are certainly some significant differences.  Still, you are faces with some of the same challenges.  Does reducing the overall activity result in greater or less harm than does increasing the activity and reducing the harm per incident?

The real problem is that there is great disagreement on how harmful different aspects are with the greatest disagreement on the amount of harm caused by any teenage sex, which is why you have such a difference of public opinion.  There are many who believe that responsible teenage sex is not a problem at all, so increasing total activity, if you decrease irresponsible activity is a good thing.  On the other side you have those who believe there is still great harm in responsible teenage sex, so increasing the total to increase responsibility is not a good thing.  Most people fall between the two positions believing that teenage sex is somewhat bad and that responsible teenage sex is less bad.

The result is that there is great disagreement on which path is better, which is largely why there has been little activity in attempting to pass laws in the area and instead the focus is on education and subsidizing programs.

My personal belief is that teenagers should not be having sex, I think that there is great harm to them in doing so.  Ultimately, however, it is their choice and while I agree that they are often not yet responsible enough to make that choice wisely, limiting their options is not a good idea.  I strongly support teaching that abstinence is the best way, but I also believe you should teach teenagers who choose to have sex how to do so more responsibly.   I realize that will probably lead to greater choices which I think are harmful, but it will also reduce the most harmful ones.  Finally, as much as I would like to protect young adults from making decisions which have such consequences, I don't want to use ignorance to do so.  The truth is that while they may not be prepared to make such decisions wisely, they are the ones who have to make the decision.  I believe we should do everything we can to help them make a better decision, even if that means fewer blindly choose to make the best one.

These are only two examples and moral issues are always complicated.  I am strongly in support of laws and programs which prevent harm to society, but I believe that should be the overriding concern. I recognize that, just as in the case of alcohol, sometimes the intent to reduce harm can lead to greater harm.  Where I disagree with many of my fellow Republicans is that my focus for the law is on damage mitigation rather than either doing what is right or in coercing others to do so.  While I believe their intent is good, the result would not always be.  

A Response: Why Levi prefers Direct Government Spending

Let's start with a question... What is more stimulative, tax cuts or food stamps.  The answer may surprise you.  It's food stamps, and the same is true when it comes to tax cuts for people below a certain income level.  When you give rich, upper middle class or even middle class people a tax cut generally they save it or put it on debt, which doesn't have a multiplier.  In order for any money put into the economy, either through tax cuts or direct social investment it must be spent.  

Let's take the Bush tax cuts for example...  $300.00 or $600.00 per couple.  What did I do with my $300... I paid off a credit card and then closed it.  That did nothing for the economy...  What did my parents do with their $600.00.. they put an extra payment on the house... which did nothing for the economy.  But what did my friends who were just making ends meet do?  They went out, and bought food, and an Xbox to provide the family with entertainment.  I didn't adjust my spending habits at all, but they did and bought a luxury and therefore stimulated the economy.  So it would have been better stimulus, to give me and those who make an income higher than me nothing and double or triple my friend's tax cut.  OR as many poor people don't make enough to pay any taxes, perhaps double their food stamp allowance, or increase the earned income tax credit, or... I could go on.  The point is tax cuts for the rich are of limited stimulative effect.

Pivoting to direct government investment. When the government pumps money into an economy directly it had multiple benefits.  Large government infrastructure investments employ people... the workers, the suppliers, the food vendors nearby... and allow for greater economic activity.  Adding light rail between Seattle and Tacoma will increase the flow of people and therefore the flow of money.  Adding lanes to I-5, finishing 167 or the cross-base highway will allow goods and services to flow more effectively across the region.  Paying states not to lay off teachers will have the net benefit of smaller class sizes, improved education (which will pay long term benefits), and oh yeah, keeping a skilled and specialized workforce employed and spending money.  The benefits of direct government spending are large, but hidden.  How do you know the state worker who lives next door to you kept his job due to the stimulus?  But you do see that $300.00 that you ended up using to pay off that credit card.  Tell me, what has a higher long term economic benefit.. a $40,000 a year job as a teacher... or $300?

Tax cuts to billionaires will go into savings accounts, or hopefully stock portfolios to increase capital available for investment, but we really can't say because as a society we have no control over what people will do with that money.   Additionally, there is a lag time.  You can cut taxes, but it will take people a while to realize they have more money and spend.  A $1,000 a year tax cut comes down to an extra 83.00 a month... what will you use it for?  Will you even notice? 

Pivoting to local issues - Why Levi opposes I-1098.

In Washington State we have an initiative this election cycle called I-1098.  This initiative would impose an income tax in the state, while at the same time reducing the state property and B&O tax.  In a move that has put me in the minority with my more liberal friends, I personally oppose this.  This is not to say I don't agree with the general point that Washington's tax structure is regressive and that it does not serve the needs of a state to have a reliable means of income.

Washington State is primarily funded by property and sales taxes with some money being provided by a B&O tax.  With this structure it is very difficult for the state to accurately anticipate tax revenues and budget accordingly.  The result is that during good times, we have a surplus (and as a result start hearing from republican politicians that we need a tax cut), and and bad times we have a deficit.  What compounds the problem is that we do all of our budgeting on projections.  When this is based on sales tax, that creates a major problem.  It's much easier for a consumer to get spooked and stop spending, which drives down sales tax revenues, than it is for them to stop working.  Certainly, when the economic situation gets bad enough you'll have job losses, but it's not the same kind of volatility you get with sales tax revenues.

Additionally, when I was unemployed for a period of time last year, I took the initiative to try to start my own business.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that not only do I have pay state B&O taxes on my profit, no, I have to pay them on everything!  It was frightening and confusing and stopped me from trying to expand my business.  The B&O tax is a major hurdle to building a business in Washington State and must be replaced.

That said, I am completely opposed to I-1098.  First and foremost, it's unfair.  If you are going to levy an income tax, something that I support for a variety of reasons, you do so across the board, not just on the rich.   AND more importantly you remove other taxation.  All 1098 does is reduce other taxation, it reduces B&O but does not eliminate.  It reduces the state portion of the property tax but does nothing for the local portion.  It reduces the state sales tax but does not remove.  So now we have 4 different tax schemes as opposed to 3 and due to the idiotic targeting, we encourage higher income earners to leave the state.  Washington has to do something with it's regressive tax structure that doesn't allow the state to adequately predict income... but this... isn't it... and this is from a liberal!

How to Help People - Part 1 Financial Help

Most of the more divisive issues between the Republican and Democratic parties are among the array of domestic issues and most of those can fall into the definition of attempts to help people.  These break into two main areas: moral and economic.

Let's begin with the economic side.

When I talk about economically helping people, I am referring to any programs which provide goods or services to people either without charge or at a greatly reduced price.  All charity work is a form of economic assistance at some level.  There are different types of charity both private and public where the aid is giving in specific form such as offering food, education, child care, medical treatment, etc.  Other programs require some type of effort, competition or other form of merit.  These details are important for helping to ensure that the funding used for the programs are used as intended, but they don't change the essence of what the program is about.  It is about collecting or taking resources from one group to help another.

Generally speaking, Democrats are in favor of very large government economic assistance programs.  Also generally speaking Republicans oppose them.  Republicans are consequently often accused of being uncaring, greedy, and unwilling to help those in need, and these accusations are not always without merit.  There is, however, another side to it.

Economic assistance programs are both a good thing to do and vital to a health economy and society.  Circumstances often put people in position where they can be trapped in a cycle of failure with little or no ability to get out of that cycle and achieve success.  Sometimes this is through no fault of their own, but even when they are culpable, it is important to allow people a way out.  None of us want to live in a society where people can make a few poor decisions or simply be unlucky and have to suffer through a terrible or meager existence because of it.  Prevent that is what these programs are about.  Proving a safety net so that people can fall only so far is a good and important thing for society to do and Democrats rightly point this out and support programs to help people in this way.

On the other hand, providing assistance is not always the same as helping people. There is a danger in providing too much assistance.  Providing assistance, even when it starts out as beneficial can lead to dependence.  At a certain point, some people stop using assistance to help themselves improve and start using it to get by.  When they happens they start growing dependent on that assistance and, eventually, unable to care for themselves.  Taken to the extreme, the act of providing assistance even with the intent to help can actually cause harm.  This is  one of the issues which those of us who oppose many economic assistance programs are concerned about.

Does that seem unreasonable?  People are motivated by different things but few of us like to change.  We change only when our desire to have something different in our life overcomes the desires we've been following to that point.  Few people, for example, are good about saving money until they want to buy something they cannot afford.  People don't try to get a better job when they are happy with where they are, and the longer people go down a path the hard it is for them to change direction.

Consider someone who is out of work and starts begging to get by.  At first, the people who are giving him money are helping him.  Depending on the person and on how much money he is about to get begging, he will either use that charity to get back on his feet or he might continue begging.  As he continues it will be harder and harder for him to change from a life of begging.  Not only is it becoming more comfortable, but he is getting further removed from normal society and any work related skills or education he has are atrophying.  At some point is his begging, the money he received has changed from helping him, to hurting him.  Instead of being the thing to help get him on his feet, it has become the thing which is keeping him down.

Even when you look at less extreme circumstances.  Just as we would lose many opportunities to see great people rise up if we provided no assistance, we can also lose the opportunities to see people thrive by providing to much.  Motivation is a fine line to maintain sometimes.  Provide too little incentive for people and they will not struggle to overcome challenges.  Provide to great of challenge and they will either fail or not make the attempt.  Providing economic assistance is one significant way to manage that motivation level for people and it is something which has to be in balance.

Despite the rhetoric, it is not about helping people or not helping people.  It is about finding the right balance so that our attempts to help result in actually providing benefit and not harm as much as possible.

Income's Effect on Happiness

I previously claimed that the often sited growth in the income gap in the US is not really an issue since the dollar's ability to improve quality of life rapidly diminishes as you increase in wealth.

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune discusses study which looked into part of that effect.  The study was looking into how income affects happiness.  They concluded that income increases up to around $75,000 impacted happiness, but that income increases above that level did not significantly increase it.  Of course, they are quick to state that there is a short term increase from any raise in income or windfall of cash, however, they found that non-income factors were the primary constrains on happiness above $75,000.

While happiness is just one aspect of quality of life, it is very interesting that the effective benefit of income to happiness is so low.  I suspect that much of the reason for that due to the limits in the power of the dollar for higher prices items as I discussed in the previous post.

The largest impact on people is not the difference between rich and poor, but the difference between poor and middle class.  No one, however would be willingly to openly state that they want to take money from the middle class and give it to the poor (though that is often a result of their attempts to take money from the rich as I discuss here).

So the question really should not be about the income gap between the rich and the poor.  A far more valuable measure, though still not a wholly accurate one would be to measure the income gap between the poor and the middle class.

I have not been able to find a more recent graph, but this one shows that this gap is increasing very slowly even looking at purely dollar terms.

The article that accompanies the image is here.  It, of course, focuses on the gap between the rich and the poor which shows a huge percentage change in income.  Looking at the middle to bottom fifth shows very similar rates of change.  

So again, while the rate of change in income is certainly widening at a very high rate, it is only rapidly widening  at income levels which have a very diminished impact on quality of life.  In the article it states that the top 1 percent in 2007 had an average income of $1.3 million and that the increase from the year before was an average of $88,800.  How much of an impact does a salary increase from $1.21 million to $1.3 million really make in a person's quality of life?  Is that change really greatly different in quality of life impact than the average increase of $800 from $16,900 to $17,700 that the bottom fifth attained?  I know that when I was making under $20k a year, $800 was a lot of money which would allow me to have something like a much more reliable car.  I could accept that some believe that $88k means as much to someone making $1.3 million as $800 dollars does to someone making under $18, but I hardly find it credible to believe that it means significantly more.   I mean how do you even spend $1.3 million a year?

When looked at in those terms, doesn't the income comparison between the top 1% and the bottom fifth seem to be the wrong one to look at?  Certainly it's draws attention, but it is a statistic that has very limited value and is used often to mislead people into the view that the poor in this country are worse off now then they were in the past.  When the truth is nothing of the sort.  

The above chart and article are discussion inflation adjusted dollars, so the poor have increased in wealth by 16% from 1979 to 2007.  This is compared to the slightly higher increase of 25% for the middle and 23% for the second bottom fifth.  That means that there is very little increase in the dollar income gap for roughly half the population. Even the next fifth showed only a 35% average increase.  The only large gaps come into play with the top 20% of the country where you are talking about incomes over $200k per year.  That is far above the 75k per year (over 40% of the country was at or above that income level in 2007), and it above the income level where you have very diminished increases of quality of life per dollar.

I'm not arguing that we should not have welfare programs and charity to help those in the bottom incomes.  I believe we should.   I even believe that the tax system should be a progressive one where the more wealthy pay a greater percentage share.  What I don't believe is that things are getting worse, quite the contrary I think the numbers (when you look at the right ones) show that things are getting much better.  

How do you Stimulate an Economy? Part 4 - Taxing to Spend

In light of my previous post on the benefits of government spending, you might wonder why I claim that reducing taxes is the better option in an even earlier post.

The problem is that both are necessary for a healthy economy.  Government spending is beneficial to the economy, but low tax rates are also beneficial.  The problem is that one requires the opposite of other (though you can delay the taxation by increasing debt).  So if you increase government spending (good), you have to increase taxes (bad) or if you decrease taxes (good) you have to decrease spending (bad).  Either extreme is bad so it isn't a question of which is better for the economy, the question is what is the correct balance point.

In both cases the benefit is diminishing as you increase the levels.  Increased spending when spending is very low has a much higher benefit than it does when spending is high.  The same is true for taxes, the lower the rate the less benefit you have from lowering it further.

For me it is less a question of which is better and more of a question of where the balance point is.  There have been times when using spending would offer benefit despite the necessary raise in taxes and others where the reverse is true.

As for where we are at in the US today, I don't believe that increased spending is going to have an overall positive effect.  The outstanding debt is far to high and is rising far too quickly in an unsustainable way, which means taxes will have to increase to cover the cost.  The concern on what that increase will be, who it will affect, and when it will happen is having a hugely detrimental effect on the economy already. While there are many positive aspects to the spending programs which have been put in place in the past year, they also come with that significant negative.

That negative is compounded by the uncertainty of how the deficit will be handled, especially in light of how much debt the US has and how quickly it has risen.   The ability of the US government to continue spending on credit has a limit and there are signs that limit is approaching.  Further spending is going to exacerbate the problem even as it provides the benefits I have mentioned.

If the US had limited or no debt, then spending might be a good answer, though it does come with some risk.  With spending levels already high and debt levels very high, I believe that the overall effect of increased spending not only doesn't help the economy, but I believe there is overall harm being done.

How do you Stimulate an Economy? Part 3 - How Government Spending is Good for the Ecomony

So far with only me posting things have been a bit one sided.  I do, however, have points that I can make on both sides of most issues.  While I believe that economic stimulation from the government should mostly be based on reducing taxes (which I detail here), there are many benefits to using spending as a stimulus.

Government spending allows for development in areas which are either not directly profitable, or which will show profit only after too long of a term to make it a palatable investment for the private sector.  Just because the initial venture isn't profitable, however, doesn't mean that there isn't substantial economic gain to be made, sometimes that venture will lead to others which turn a profit.

A clear example of this from the past is the space program. In the 1960s and 1970s building craft and systems capable of exploring the solar system, launching satellites, and putting people on the moon were not economically viable programs.  While today that has changed, much of what has enable private industry to begin looking to outer space is a direct result from what NASA has already done.  Indirectly there were advances in technology made to overcome the challenges of NASA's missions which where helpful for hundreds of other industries (NASA calls them spinoffs and has over 1600 of them in a database they also have a flash driven summary).  In any case, there have been thousands of products which would have been either impossible to make, much more expensive, or vastly inferior had it not been for the space program.  The space program significantly contributed to the economic growth which resulted from these products being developed cheaper, faster and better.

A current example that most people support is energy research.  Alternative energy sources are mostly not economically viable for the private sector because they require too high of investments in the development of new technologies to make them either feasible or economically competitive with existing energy generation methods.  If the initial investment is not made by government spending then the growth of these industries will be very slow.  Government funding into this area, however, could result in a huge boost to the economy as new technologies are created to solve problems of energy creation.  Even if none of the primary objectives are successful there are bound to be both short and long term benefits through technological advance and short term job creation.


Since government spending is not used to create direct profit, it can be used on areas which do not create a direct financial return on the investment, but also on programs which increase the quality of life, and therefore the wealth, of people.  Examples of this are the creation of roads, power grids, and other infrastructure type projects.  While there is little direct return expected from these ventures, and therefore little incentive for the private sector to get involved, these projects also allow for economic development.  Increasing roadways allows for reduced transport times and therefore costs which not only helps business with delivering goods, but also people by reducing their travel costs.  Less time commuting, shopping, driving kids, etc. results in more time for people to use to enrich their lives.

Finally, the government is run by people who can be held directly accountable to the people.  Politicians have to act in the interests of most people or risk the loss of their position.

So government spending is necessary to a healthy economy.  It drives stagnant industries forward when long term investment is required and creates short term boosts to the job market by creating a demand for products and services to overcome challenges which the private market is not yet willing to take on.  It also allows for more indirect wealth creation since it is not limited to direct profitability.  For all these reasons, we need to have a healthy amount of government spending to strengthen the economy.

Why you can't increase taxes only on the rich.

It is common for politicians, when talking of raising taxes to promote the idea that they will be either taxing only the rich or taxing the rich more heavily. The idea being that they can raise the necessary revues by passing the costs only on those who can afford it.

Is that a something that any part or whole of the US government can do?  I don't think so.

Certainly, they can raise the tax rates on only those with incomes in a certain range, or they can tax only goods and or services that only the wealthy are likely to use.  But does that cost truly come from the wealthy?  Again, the answer usually is no.

The problem is that, as I say with nearly everything, it is more complicated. You cannot simply isolate one part of our economy.  When you make a change to one aspect, there are naturally changes to other parts.

Let us start with income taxes.  If you raise taxes on these high earners, what will be the result?

First you must look at what you have done.  What you have effectively done is increased the disparity between the business cost and the personal reward for the highest income labor.  To help that make sense, let's put some numbers in there.  Say we are talking about a $300,000 salary.(For now lets ignore other taxes, fees and benefits, since their impact is roughly the same before and after an income tax change).  With our current tax rate, the employee would pay about 33% of that income in federal income tax.  This means that it costs the company $300,000 to provide that employee with $201,000 in compensation (again excluding other taxes and benefits).  If you were to increase the tax rate to 40% it would then cost the company $335,000 to provide the same $201,000 in compensation or alternatively the company can pay the same $300,000 and the employee with now earn only $180,000.

If the latter result above is what happens, then the tax would primarily affect the rich.  Why is that considered to be even a likely outcome, much less the expected one?  If you were to suddenly have a permanent pay decrease for performing the same job, how would you react?  Would nothing change?  People who earn high incomes are able to do so, because they have skills which are in high demand, they have a willingness to work at a higher level than most, and/or they are willing and able to take a much higher level of responsibility.  If you decrease their compensation, most people are either going to move on to a place where they are better compensated or they are going to work less.  Either way, what you have actually taxed is not the wealthy employee, but the business.  It will have to either increase salaries to compensate to the taxes, or it will have to hire more people to do the additional work.  Essentially, employees pass on the much cost of their taxes on to their employers. Though we negotiate gross salaries, it is the net salaries that really concern employees.  Someone isn't going to do the same work for $7 an hour in take home pay that they will do for $9 an hour, even if the gross pay is $12 in either case. The same is true (perhaps more so) for those earning much higher wages.

Fair enough, businesses that can afford to pay people enough to be wealthy are wealth themselves, so taxing them is till taxing the rich.  Not exactly.

The problem with taxing companies is that you are simply increase their labor costs.  When a company has increased costs they can do many things, but they all boil down into one of two actions.  Either they increase the price of their product or they lower its quality.  This means that the increased costs of the company are felt, not by the employees but by their customers.

This is the same scenario you run into if you increase corporate or business taxes.  Increasing those taxes is simply increasing the cost of the goods or services that the business provides.  The reaction of the business will be to pass on that cost to the consumers.  In some cases this can force a reduction in the size of the company, which can cause layoffs.  The reason for this is probably a topic for another post, but it happens is most cases.

This leaves only investment income as a source of taxing the rich. Here again, you run largely into the same problem.  If you increase taxes on investment gains then you simply reduce the return on those investments.  This forces those seeking investment funds to offer more to get the same investment.  Just because investments are more expensive doesn't mean that investors are willing to risk their funds for a lower return.  The result of this is that starting companies are not able to retain as much revenue to use for growth and expansion as they instead have to use more to repay investors.  It also means that potentially profitable business are not able to get funding as their potential profits are not hight enough to attract investors.

None of what I have outlined above is 100%.  In reality the wealthy individuals targeted will pay some of the tax increases, but they will pay nowhere near all of them and the rest will be paid, indirectly, by the non-wealthy.  So while you can increase taxes on the rich and you can increase how much they pay, you cannot do so without a significant portion of those tax increases actually being paid by the poor and the middle class.

The Increasing Income Gap Between the Rich and the Poor

It is often cited with concern that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.  Usually this comes as a preface to some plan on how to either limit the income of the rich or to increase the income of the poor.  Basically this gap is seen by many as a problem which needs to be addresses.

Is this gap really growing?  The answer, of course, is yes....and no.  Like most things with statistics, it depends on what you are really measuring.  If you are looking at dollars of income then, of course, this gap is growing.  Is that, however the meaningful measure?  I would say that it is not.  Rather, the meaningful statistic that should be considered for this type of analysis is quality of life.  It is less often used, because it is much harder to define and since dollar income is a strong indicator for quality of life that is much easier.

The problem with looking only at dollar income is that, the dollar's contribution to quality of life is not linear it is a diminishing curve.  What I mean by that is that for someone who makes $20,000 a year giving them an extra $1,000 has far greater impact to their quality of life than giving someone who makes $1 million an extra $1,000.  (I would say that the curve is sharper than even an inverse geometric curve or that giving someone who makes $1 million  and extra $50,000 would also be less impacting than giving the $20,000 earner an extra $1,000, but that is both debatable and not as much to the point).

The problem is that, especially as the high end of spending, there is a very diminishing return for spending.  Take cars, for example.  You can buy a nice, reliable, new car for under $20,000.  On the other end of the spectrum you can pay easily over $400,000 for something like a Ferrari 599 (that's not even including the exotics like the Bugati Veyron which costs over $1.4 million, though I'm also ignoring that you can get a very reliably quality used care for under $10,000).  So yes, a wealthy person can easily spend 20 times as much to get a new car.  Does that translate into a twenty-fold increase in quality of life?  Not even close.  Don't get me wrong, Ferrari's a beautiful cars and I would love to drive one personally, but it doesn't hold near that value to me or, I would argue, to very many.

Perhaps cars are not a fair comparison.  What about food?  Meals at the top-end, first class restaurants can average over $175 per person and that's not including wine which can drive it up to $300 per person  (again, that's not including the extreme cases such as the $30,000 meal in this article. or having a $2 per person low-end home cooked meal)  On the other end of the scale you can get a meal at a low end restaurant (such as fast food) for under $7.  Certainly, the top end meal is far better, and as a one time thing, it might even be the 25 times better that it costs.  But we aren't talking about one time, we are comparing what wealth can buy.  For that we are talking about normal living.  Even if we talk about looking at the cost difference only of dinner now you are talking about a difference of $1,176 a week or over $60,000 a year.  If you include high end wines you can double that easily.  Now, if I make over a $1 million a year, then spending over $60,000 on food doesn't seem crazy,   as percent of income it is the same as the person making $20,000 spending $1,800 on food for the year.  Still, does increasing the quality from the type of meal you can get for $7 to the type of meal you can get for $175 really count as 25 times better? Again, don't think so.  If you aren't convinced then look at the middle ground.  An $80 per person meal is amazingly better than a $7, if not nearly 12 times as good, it might be close.  However do you think that the $175 meal is over twice as good as the $80?  Better, yes, but that much better?

You can look at nearly any area of quality of life measure and find the same thing.  While the rich have many more dollars, as you spend more and more money on things you get rapidly diminishing increases to the quality of life for each dollar spent.  At the same time, I would say that the difference between the middle top and the middle bottom end of quality of life items available is shrinking.  Even low income families have access to entertainment options which rival those of the wealthy.  Sure you might have to watch the Super Bowl  at home on a mid-size TV as part of your $50 a month cable bill and have it catered by Subway for about $6 per person instead of a $15,000 luxury game suite, but you are still watching the same game.  Yes the rich live better, even far better than the poor.  But the relationship is certainly not accurately portrayed by just looking at the dollars of income.

Why Disease Might be a Good Thing.

Just to show this isn't all going to be about the economy, I thought I would start with one of my notions that probably seems very strange on the surface.  I believe that disease is a good thing.

Now before you leave thinking that I am a lunatic, I certainly don't think it is good for the individual. I don't wish disease or illness on anyone and I certainly strive to avoid getting sick myself.  That is not what I mean.  I am talking more in the context of for humanity as a whole.  This is still an odd premise, I will grant you, but if you bear with me, I believe it will make sense.

Let us start with another question: What prevents the populations of any species from continual exponential growth? I can think of only four things:  predation, limited food, disease, and limited reproduction.  In a world of limited resources, any species will multiply to a point where it's population growth is greatly slowed or halted by all four of them to a greater or lesser degree.

For most species on our planet predation is at the top of the list.  Many species are limited by being either a food source or an inferior competitor to other species.  This is what keeps rabbits and mice from completely taking over the planet.  As a limit to population growth this is certainly effective, but it is also brutal and unpleasant.  As humans we have few predators, since our intelligence, community and mastery of technology has allowed us to become superior (at least in terms of killing power and in the general sense) to all other species on the planet.  If that were not the case, human existence would be much worse off.  Imagine a world where there were superior predators who kept our population growth limited.  Much of our lives would be devoted to survival and those who were slower, weaker, or otherwise less likely to survive would live in greater fear and horror.  Or worse, and probably more likely, people would begin to control the system, by finding ways to sabotage either other into becoming the next victims.   Humans are much better off to suffer very limited predation from another species.  

Humans have through history feared predation from other humans as differing civilizations have clashed over resources or ideology.  These wars have limited populations growth for humans on occasion, but thankfully warfare has not often been a primary limitation to the growth of human population.  If there were not for the other limits on population growth, however, a world of constant warfare over limited resources would certainly be a very likely possibility.

Limited food is probably the largest growth limiter for early stage civilizations of humankind.  While it extreme cases it lead to starvation, it often limited growth less harshly by reducing life expectancy and reproduction through both malnutrition and highly demanding lifestyles (often leading to very high infant and child mortality rates).  As humans began to form civilizations, however, limited resources turned instead into warfare.  Fortunately, civilization came largely because of increases in human ability to gather food allowing us to avoid (for the most part) the horrors of massive warfare for resources needed to survive.  With that increase in available resources, however, human populations were able to expand rapidly. This would have lead quickly to just that type of warfare but for two things: expansion and disease.

Human expansion could delay the problem, but it was always limited by human ability to either get to or successfully live in new lands.  Eventually, without another limiter humans would grow in population to fill all the usable land area.  As technology increased, so does the usable land, but that would eventually have limits, and often times in our history, expansion could not occur fast enough to allow enough resources for the growing populations.

That brings us to disease.  Don't get me wrong, disease is terrible.  When you compare it to the alternatives, however, it doesn't look so bad.  Disease limited massive populations from rising in small areas.  If it weren't for disease, there would have instead been a mix of wide spread starvation and warfare(human predation) which would have limited populations in localized areas through history. It was disease which kept either of those things from happening. 

Now you might argue that death is death, and that dying from disease is no better than being killed in war or starving.  Looking at the individual, I would agree.  Looking at the bigger picture, however, I do not.   What makes disease preferable is that is semi-random, but that there are many things which can be done to reduce the odds, and these actions lead to less damaging moral decisions because it is largely out of human control.  Starvation can be controlled by human decision and action to the point that it would lead to warfare followed by subjugation of the losing population (likely defined by ethnicity, culture, religion, or other generic trait).  The subjugated population would suffer from starvation unless they were able to grow in power and overthrow the oppressing population at which time the roles would change and the cycle would likely repeat until something happened to either vastly decrease the population or vastly increase the available food.  This would not only lead to terrible life for one people group or another, but leads greatly to the moral corruption as people would constantly be faced with deciding who gets to live and who has to die.

Disease, however, has been mostly out of control of humans for most of history.  As I said earlier it affects individuals in a semi-random manner (at least to the perceptions of humans for most of history), there were things which could be done to limit risk, but not eliminate it.  You couldn't control it to the point of directing it at any population group and you could not eliminate it to the point that it didn't reduce human population.  It is the one population control that would not lead early civilizations to ruin.  

I saved limited reproduction for last, because in the past hundred years or so, things have changed greatly.  Technology has both greatly limited the impact of disease while at the same time allowing for far more limited reproduction.  Limited reproduction is certainly the most desirable limit to population growth as it does not involve death.  If it is present in a species too early, however, there is the large risk that the species will not expand, but rather become extinct.  If humans took far longer to reproduce, it is unlikely that we would have survived.  Certainly many civilizations would have been lost after major outbreaks of war, famine, or other large scale population reduction.  Humans might never have had the localized numbers to cooperate and develop technologies which allowed them to overcome other species or expand their food supply to overcome starvation.  Today, since we have already accomplished these things and have a large, widespread population, limited reproduction is the desirable course.  In fact, we limited our population greatly, and some fear that in the cases of some nations, too much.  Humanity, however, will survive especially since we are better mastering both birth control and limiting disease at the same time.  

While the need for disease is largely passing, I believe it has been very beneficial to our past. I have not been able to come up with an alternative which would lead to a better outcome for us.  Perhaps one of you will.  I, however, believe that without disease the world would certainly be a different place, and I suspect that place would be much worse than the world we have today.  

How do you Stimulate an Economy? Part 2 - Why Aaron prefers Tax Cuts

In part 1 I discussed how difficult it is to even know what is the correct course of action to take to help improve an economy.  The is both a remarkably complex system and one in which seemingly small events can have massive impact.  Mathematically speaking it is a chaotic system, which makes it very hard to predict much less guide and control.

That is the primary reason that I prefer using tax cuts to stimulate the economy. While I don't think businesses are inherently any more competent or less corrupt than politicians, the bottom line is that there are many more of them and their methods produce success or failure much more directly for them and much more quickly.  This leads to a system in which many different plans are attempted and ones which lead to success are emulated and refined while ones that lead to failure are discarded.

Now of course, on major drawback is that these plans are not designed for the benefit of the economy, but rather for the benefit of the company, or the company owner/shareholder.  Such actions, however, almost always also increase the overall economy.  Making businesses successful is the key driver in making the economy healthy.

The plan of using the government spending, provides more direct control of things into the hands of fewer decision makers.  That can be a good thing, especially when there is a clear case of something that needs to be done.  A good example of this, and something good that is in the current US stimulus is funding research into non-hydrocarbon energy generation.  While I have some disagreements with the details of how it is being done, overall it is a good program to use government funding to promote this research.  However, that is because even if it isn't something that will directly help the economy overall in the near term (it in help in many ways and hurt in many others) it is something that, if successful, will help the economy greatly in the long term by reducing the costs (either political or economic) of energy.  Because it is clearly beneficial to the economy and may be too long term to be correctly promoted by business it is a good candidate for government funding.  However, those cases are, I believe, limited in number. 

It is far more often that we don't know what the best path to promoting the economy is and when that is the case I prefer, to steal the term from Glenn Reynolds, an Army of Davids to the management of a Goliath.  As we decrease tax burdens it increases profitability and therefore incentive for new players to enter with new ideas.  Yes, we also get old players with old ideas, but failing ideas lead to either abandonment or failing business, successful ideas lead to emulation.  

So while I think that both spending and tax reduction can and to stimulate the economy in some ways and depress it in others, overall I prefer tax reduction because it empowers larger numbers of solutions to a problem that we don't understand well enough to have all the answers for.

How do you Stimulate an Economy? Part 1

How do you stimulate an economy?  Sadly this is a question that few people seem to ask, rather they are intent on experimenting with their chosen answer.  In the US we have the Democrats who largely support using government funding to stimulate economic growth, and the Republicans who largely support lowering taxes to do the same.

The problem we face is that there isn't a clear answer.  Which answer works?  Answering that is similar to asking if a volcanic eruption in Africa will affect the weather in Asia.  The answer...we don't really know.  Like the weather the economy is a very complex system and while we are fairly good at prediction both in short time periods, it is far more difficult to point to specific actions and accurately predict their results.  It is sadly, also very difficult to look back into the past and knowing the result point to what was the primary cause.  There are simply too many factors which have too many effects for us to track.

In theory we should be able to look at a hurricane and trace all of the weather patterns back to determine what were the primary causes and use that information to accurately predict them in the future (or possibly to either create them or prevent their formation).  In practice, there is too much information and we have to use computer models which necessarily simplify many factors based on our understanding of how important they are.  This causes our models to be only somewhat accurate and reliable at even predicting what is going to happen, which makes it very difficult to point to how.  The economy is much the same.  There are several schools of thought because we cannot model the system accurately enough to determine even the causes of why things happened in the past.  That, however, doesn't stop people from having beliefs and opinions.

That said, let's look at the two solutions above.

The idea behind a government spending stimulus is that the government can step in and provide demand for goods and/or services which will stimulate businesses to meet that demand.  As businesses expand to meet the new demand, they stimulate the general economy as all business growth does (job creation, innovation, etc.)  This temporary demand can either hold the economy steady through a recession or even eliminate the recession and restore healthy economic growth.  Or at least, that is the theory.  Does it really work?  We don't know. And we don't know because there are other factors that come into play when you take such an action and those factors can also have a significant impact on the economy.  

To look at just one of these factors, consider where the money spent on the stimulus comes from. Government spending on a significant enough scale to increase demand will also impact the economy in other ways.  If the money is borrowed (as it has been with our current stimulus) it will reduce capital available to businesses, as the government is either borrowing more and competing with businesses for credit, or it is lending less and therefore not providing as many loans to businesses. To avoid reducing capital availability you could alternatively increase taxes, tariffs, or other sources of government revenue, but they all have drawbacks as well.  Increasing taxes reduces profitability for businesses which can lead to either stagnant growth or price increases.  Increasing tariffs can cause reprisal increases on US goods which would also lead to reduced revenues.  Is this negative effect enough to overcome the positive effect of the stimulus.  Probably not, but is only one factor.  There are a host of other factors, both positive and negative and there are certainly many that I am not aware of.  On the balance it is difficult to know if it will be successful or not.  

The tax cut plan has similar difficulties. It is certainly true that by decreasing taxes you will provide more capital to business through private investors and you increase business revenues by reducing their tax burden.  At the same time you are reducing government revenues which will decrease government created demand which affects overall demand and can cause a stagnating effect. You also increase consumer demand since a tax reduction provides more revenue to people.  On the other hand, making any changes to the tax codes can cause a vast number of unintended consequences as you are altering a system that has been tailors over the years to promote or discourage various financial practices.  As with the spending plan, the complexity grows over many factors very quickly.

Is it possible to add all of these factors up for each side and determine which course is better, or perhaps if there is a better course of action?  Someday, perhaps.  But right now, if it were possible to model the economy with that precision, we would not have the debates and arguments we currently have.

Yet, at the same time, how often are we just supporting the practice we prefer and justifying our belief by focusing on the positive indicators that do exits in our preferred plan?  Increased government spending helps to promote and support many other things that Democrats want to support.  It shifts power away from wealthy corporations and individuals and into a government which they can hold more directly accountable for their actions.  Tax reductions, on the other hand, align more with the values of the Republican party, by pulling power away from government agencies and administrators who are often not directly affected by their decisions and actions.  

Personally, I do believe more in the tax cut plan than I do in the stimulus, but only to a limited extent and not for any of the reasons outlined so far in this post.  Part of my support probably comes from my desire for a smaller, less powerful government, but more of it has to do with what I believe is a better path to finding the optimal solution to a problem.  That, however, is another post and one that I promise will appear soon.

The Stimulus (pulled from a Facebook discussion)

This is something of a summary of my thoughts which were originally in response to a Facebook post started by Levi.   His posting linked to an article (link) discussing how President Obama's recent stimulus is having an effect, but it is perhaps a slower one than people expect.  His comment from reading the article was that turning around anything the size of the American economy would take time and that the large numbers of Americans who see the stimulus as a failure are being too impatient or perhaps not realizing that this is going to be a slow process.

In response, I argued that most of that problem is not so much with the American people as it has been with the messaging and communication of the White House and Congress on the issue.  We have been given dozens of projections which have consistently been very overly optimistic.  There have been regular communications of how things are getting better soon.  When the stimulus was passed, the projections of how bad things would be without it turned out to be better than reality, and the projects of how things would look with the stimulus looked to be wildly optimistic at best.   We are just leaving the time labeled by the administration as "Recovery Summer".  Though there have been some remarks from the President that recovery would take time, the overriding message for most of the year has been announcing that change is here and that things will be better soon.

The actual merits of the specific stimulus as well as the concept of using large scale government spending is something that my co-blogger and I very much disagree on and will certainly be a discussion in the near future here.  Regardless of the merits of the stimulus, however, the messaging from the White House has been terrible.  While I agree that we are, by and large, an impatient people, we are much more so when speed is part of the selling pitch.  I don't expect to sit down at a nice steakhouse and be served immediately, but if I were in McDonalds and had to wait for 20 minutes to get my food I would be pretty upset.  If you want to sell me on a long range plan for turning around the economy, fine, I'm wiling to listen and judge the plan on that merit, but when we emerge from the "Recovery Summer" program and there are very few positive economic indicators, can you really blame me for starting to doubt your plan?