Beauticians do have a very small component of their training that is related to health and safety, which is probably a rational requirement. However, that would just be a few week, couple hundred dollar weekend course, not a one year, $10,000+ apprenticeship.

However, I agree with Maddem…most licensing requirements are there for a reason. Some requirements may need some streamlining, but there aren’t that many that should be cut entirely.

Normally, I support running surpluses. Now I support running deficits.

Normally, I support raising taxes on everyone, a lot, immediately. Now I only support raising them on the plutocrats immediately, and everyone else later.

Normally, I would support slashing the military budget. Now, I only support a more gradual phase out.

Normally, I would support a quick phase out of the mortgage deduction. Now, the phase out needs to be slower.

Normally, I would support slashing ag subsidies. Again, the phase out now needs to be slower.

Boy, that was easy.

Generally though, I worry that there’s a danger that “now less than ever” ignores the extent to which politics can be counter-cyclical to policy. For instance, take your example of postponing various public sector austerity/efficiency measures. Agreed that the ideal time to do this as a matter of policy would be during a boom, but the political reality is such that the only time it will be politically feasible is during a bust. It just defies political reality to say that you’ll be able to implement a massive lay-off at a time when we’re running a surplus (or anything close to it) since the obvious argument is “why are we laying people off when we can afford to keep them on.” (You see the same argument in the private sector, most recently with Verizon, that layoffs/givebacks are immoral if the firm is turning a good profit). The ideal compromise during a downturn would be short-term stimulus coupled to long-term austerity, but you run into credible commitment issues since we can’t bind future sessions of Congress and the state legislatures.

Anyway, the point is that “now less than ever” looks a bit different if you think of it as a question that involves political feasibility and not just optimal policy enacted by a benevolent dictator.

Usually transferring fast is the source of instability and problems. Speed pretty much always translates to instability if you have any feedback in the system. You literally recover stability by slowing certain things down.

It also matters what the “error rate” is. For example, computers and internet are real fast but shockingly low fidelity for anything that isn’t representable in a simplistic and rudimentary way. So fast but not usefully fast for many types of information.

Fast can increase the error rates of information used to make decisions resulting in making faulty decisions that then get amplified by the speed of the system cascading the small mistakes into very large mistakes.

Those serving now will not have any trouble finding a job. I retired from the military in July of 2009, when the unemployment rate was skyrocketing, and I had multiple job offers to choose from, but I displaced someone. Now is the wrong time to dump thousands of troops into the workforce.

“we’re not going to deregulate our way to full employment”

If we target the regulations that most directly keep people out of work- mostly occupational licensing, also regulations on hiring and firing- I think we could do exactly this.