For Certain Reasons

It's been a while since I've posted about my continuing endeavor - or at all, for that matter - and there have been some substantial developments recently.

With child expenses, car expenses, and an upcoming trip to Costa Rica for my brother's wedding, I haven't exactly had the funds to grow my record collection lately, especially given my taste for rare albums.  However, I have been able to address an issue I didn't discuss in my first post:  once I get all of this vinyl, how am I going to listen to it?

Building a decent hi-fi turntable-receiver-speaker setup can be an expensive proposition on its own.  At the high end, there are items like this masterpiece turntable from Avid:

I've obviously neglected this blog for a few weeks now...I'm working on a lengthy post about vinyl, but for the time being I wanted to cover a few political notions I've been considering lately:

1. If you're arguing simultaneously for lower taxes, lower government spending, and lower unemployment, you fail it.  It being critical thinking.  The deficit is a big problem and will be for quite some time.  However, there is still a massive credit crunch.  In order for us to address unemployment, which is the most pressing issue, someone has to start spending.  The private sector still can't get the credit to do it right now, so the best available candidate is the government.  Another point that is lost amidst all of the rampant deficit-hawking is that if the government is in debt, more money has to be in private hands.  It's zero sum.  And China does not hold most of our debt, by the way - not even close.  While they hold the largest amount of our foreign debt, the lion's share of the national deficit is held in the United States itself, by the private sector.  Finally, concerning spending, the federal government is far and away the largest employer in the United States.  I don't think it's wise at this point for the country's largest employer, and the only one has the ability to counteract market irrationality, to cut jobs in the middle of a deep recession.  To summarize, anyone who is deficit-hawking right now has missed the point, and the ones who are simultaneously complaining about high unemployment are especially unhinged.