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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (346984)	8/16/2007 10:26:31 AM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575426

cj, Sure. But, look at New Zealand. By 1984 their economy was in shambles, they owed huge sums to the IMF and their prospects were dim. I have read a lot about New Zealand in late 80s, so I am familiar with the story (but not read much lately). They made a plan with an eye to the future, privatized those things that made sense and were long term viable, floated their dollar, removed the system of controls and tariffs and totally revamped their tax system. And much of their success is a result of careful planning and being pragmatic. Not everything turned out as expected, but because they weren't driven by ideology ("private industry is always more efficient than government") they avoided a lot of the traps that other countries who tried to privatize based on ideology. The chances of non-ideological approach to reform in the US taking place is exactly zero. As far as privatization, there is not really a whole lot that is not private. Education is the only really big one that needs privatization, but it is a holy cow - a rotting holy cow that can't be touched precisely because ideology. But as far as environmental issues, I remember when Reagan put some people in positions responsible for regulation, and these people tried to introduce a cost benefit analysis of environmental regulations - meaning going after most harmful, and cheapest to address problems, and moving down from there to less harmful and more expensive problems. Of cource the whole concept was attacked by enviro-nazis. I am not sure things have changed a whole lot since then, which gives me little hope for anything positive coming out of Washington. Joe

To: combjelly who wrote (346984)	8/16/2007 4:19:18 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575426

They made a plan with an eye to the future, privatized those things that made sense and were long term viable, floated their dollar, removed the system of controls and tariffs and totally revamped their tax system Its planning in the sense that they had a plan and they executed it, but its a move away from "central planning" and government control. They reduced the complexity and intrusiveness of taxes, they privatized (sure not everything, but it was a move towards the private sector owning more resources and the government owning less), floating their currency means they where not trying to have the government or a quasi government entity control exchange rates, removing import controls and reducing tariffs is again removing government control. It was a pragmatic move in the sense that people where trying to figure out what would work best and than implement it. But it wasn't some attempt to balance out different ideological moves. There was an overall theme or direction.