The markets:

Sharon Grey writes: Re. “US Congress swapped a crisis yesterday for a bigger crisis tomorrow” (yesterday, item 4). CIS research fellow Adam Creighton decries provoking a “tirade of abuse from Crikey readers in the past fortnight” while now deriding others as “economic geniuses” or “naive and unhelpful”. He unequivocally states that he doesn’t “renounce his view” regarding the necessity for the US to establish a “hard-debt ceiling”.

At the risk of having observations be deemed as abuse, I don’t think it’s edifying for  Creighton to make the first reference in either of his articles to the revenue-raising capacity of a nation-state by asserting that “the idea that Congress should simply enact ‘a sensible program of tax increases and spending cuts’ as my critics recommend, is naive and unhelpful” without explaining why he thinks this is so. In any discussion pertaining to debt servicing, surely prudence demands the possibility and implications of raising tax revenues be considered.

It seems particularly unfortunate then that Creighton omits any mention, for example, of the current average effective corporate tax rate in the US.  Nor does he mention the percentage of corporate tax receipts relative to all federal revenue (The New York Times reported on March 24 2011 that “the corporate share of the US’s tax receipts has declined from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009”).

I also think it would be interesting to understand demographic influences relative to US debt levels.  Despite not referring to population increases during the periods he cites, Creighton states that the “as real incomes have grown, the welfare state — social and corporate — has exploded”. What isn’t noted is that a nation that had some 150 million people in 1950, now has a population of more than 330 million. Discussing the percentage of per capita debt (adjusted for inflation) relative to population increases over time would help clarify the extent of the purported “explosion” and offer a more nuanced perspective.

Simply stating, too, that “the US has lost its AAA credit rating”, without noting that this is from a single rating agency, S&P, and without discussing the stated bases and potential motivations behind that move, or that “President Obama’s $787 billion ‘stimulus’ … greatly exacerbated the debt crisis” without canvassing the breadth of proponents who suggest that it acted to stave off a far deeper recession, much less those economists who suggested that the stimulus was inadequate, doesn’t seem especially insightful or analytical either.  Calibre commentary, not “truthiness” or polemics, is of considerable interest. I always look forward to the former.

London riots:

John Gleeson writes: Re. “UK riots: ‘the Youth of London rise up for a HD-ready 42″ Plasma TV‘” (yesterday, item 5). Rather than ascribe the riots to mindless materialism and recreational violence, why not take a long look at the way British society has declined over the years — try reading Theodore Dalrymple’s articles as a primer to what is wrong.