BarraCain? Does it matter?

[lucy]

Thank you all for your replies. Just one thing i wanted to add: Although i'm definitely not pro Bush i think you can't blame him for your gas prices doubling. Gas is much more expensive in Europe too than it was two years ago. However, since it's heavily taxed here, the rise was not as steep as it was in the U.S.
But however, i think America (and to a lesser extent the rest of the western civilization) has to find ways to use (or rather waste) less oil. This will be hard. Not doing it now but waiting till there's no other way will be much tougher, tho.

As for democrats taking over control: Yesterday Iceland more or less declared itself bankrupt. And Iceland was and still is governed for a rather long time by the Icelandic version of Maggie Thatchers tories. So at the moment i think we see that although republicans/tories/liberals (as they're called in Switzerland or Germany) claim to be the ones who know about economics, in fact they know sh** about it. Or the market forces don't work like the theory would like to have it, and they weren't smart enough to realize that or honest enough to acknowledge it.

[MMI]

... in fact they [monetarist politicians] know sh** about it.

If any number of economists can hold the same number of views about how to manage an economy, why is it surprising that politicians are no wiser. They believe in one particular system or another because its a shiboleth they hold on to to save them the trouble of understanding it.

(Incidentally and slightly off-topic, but likely to excite a reaction, I was browsing the website of "Pravda" as is occasionally my wont, and I noticed the American political system was described as a one-party police state - implying the Democratic and Republican parties are just two sides of the same base coin ... I'll leave that thought for someone else to pick up ... )