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#SavePBS

The PBS supporters on here must not watch a lot of PBS. I watch Austin City Limits nearly every week and every episode begins with commercial advertisements for their corporate sponsors for AMD and Budweiser. If they didn't have taxpayer funds, I'm sure they could get more corporations to step in and fill the void. Supporters of PBS get all misty-eyed and nostalgic thinking about watching Sesame Street and Mister Rogers in the 1970s back before there were dozens of children's networks on basic cable. I'm sure those supporters have some degree of economic influence and could get another private enterprise to sponsor that programming if there is indeed a market for it and its not just a nostalgia thing like the Six Million Dollar Man. And Downton Abbey is fucking huge. Whenever you go pick your kids up from lessons at the tennis club, all the sweater moms who listen to Mumford & Sons are always talking about the week's dramatic happenings at the Abbey. When you have a brand that huge, you should capitalize on it - after all, Mumford & Sons were able to do it without taxpayer funding.

I don't see whats so wrong with having commercial advertisements for shows other than Austin City Limits that already has them, and the James Taylor concerts which are nothing more than telethons ("This programming is made possible by support from generous viewers such as you. Operators are standing by, please have your credit card handy. For a tax-deductable gift of only $300, you will receive a handsome DVD box set of 'James Taylor Live at the Excalibur Casino Las Vegas'!!!!").

The remarkable thing about the Corporate for Public Broadcasting is that these government bureaucrats are given such popular quality programming, and they still can't manage to operate within a budget without feeding at the public trough. If they can't make enough money to cover their costs, then maybe they should appoint a management team that is actually competent and understands that you can't spend more than the revenue you generate. When compared to the many crappy networks out there that not only cover costs but actually turn a profit, CPB should actually be ashamed.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
In what sense? I'd *prefer* it if the deficits were driven more by one-time items and less by structural issues that need fixing once we get out of the current output gap. I have some serious reservations about the makeup of the deficits, but none whatsoever with the deficits being "too big." There's a reasonable argument to make that they may be too small, or that the stimulus should have been bigger (though there weren't votes for a bigger stimulus for political reasons).
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....and stopped reading.
 
It's not like the rest of that sentence was very different that the ideas that came before it; you haven't missed much.
 
DreamOnDemOn said:
It is not tough to determine that Keynes would not support the ridiculous deficits we have:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4538449?uid=3739776&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101128880443
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"Under any circumstances" is quite the conclusion to draw from that, given that it is a critique of the whole of macroeconomic stabilization policy and not policy at a specific point. We can't change the Bush years; we don't have a rainy day fund to draw from when making public investments today. The basic idea from the Post-Keynesians there is running surpluses in good times to build rainy day funds to unleash on public investment when the rainy days arrive, it doesn't speak much to our limited options today.

I don't think you'd like the Post-Keynesian take on things very much.
 
We wouldn't actually put the cowbells on anything. Just bury them at a suitable depth and let Miss St fans know about the treasure trove and laissez-faire would take care of the rest.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
We wouldn't actually put the cowbells on anything. Just bury them at a suitable depth and let Miss St fans know about the treasure trove and laissez-faire would take care of the rest.
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Would do wonders for the obesity problem in the delta. No offense, to our fine posters from points south.
 
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