171–180 of 180 posts
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This is fear mongering driven by obvious ideological bias. Sure, things may get worse than they are now, but you have no evidence of the scale of the problem, just as you have no evidence that socialism or “wealth re-distribution” will make anything better.
Then time will prove me wrong. I would greet it with pleasure.
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> Look at the amount of construction that is going on in China. That is what is physically possible. That sort of activity could be usefully replicated in the West. OK: how? The private sector isn't going to be doing it because it's not profitable enough. The public sector won't do it because people complain about the public debt.
> The public sector won't do it because people complain about the public debt. This isn't true, though. The US consistently elects republican administrations that jack up deficits to cover tax cuts for billionaires and nobody bats an eye. The military can blow 700bn a year with barely a peep of outrage. And unlike with infrastructure investment that money is effectively a 700bn jobs program for 3 million people that…
> Complaining about debt is usually a cover for bigotry. People don't want social equity or fairness because leveling the playing field... This could be a paragraph out of the millenial reactionaries handbook..not only are the concepts of social equity and fairness highly subjective and controversial but debasing majority cultural bias to construct a level playing field is so historically unsuccessful as to make it a philosophical curiosity (aside from with a singularly unsuccessful foray into the real world which ended in despotism and pogroms for all).
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Err... Keynes « center piece » is not manipulation of money supply. This extreme monetarism you describe is... Friedman’s!!! And boy do I agree it does not work! Ultra liberal economics lead to accumulation of wealth by few super riches. This happens to be one of the reason the Roman Empire fell because all this money could not be spent on keeping the army in working conditions. Super riches of the time hoarded the n…
> Keynes « center piece » is not manipulation of money supply. Yes, it is. Keynes said at one point that the government printing dollar bills and burying them for people to dig up would be a valid form of economic stimulus. > This extreme monetarism you describe is... Friedman’s!!! Milton Friedman did not advocate anything like the arbitrary manipulation of the money supply by the government that is practiced by the…
This does not make it the center piece. The center piece of Keynesian economics is that state intervention is necessary to moderate the booms and busts in economic activity.
> Milton Friedman did not advocate anything like the arbitrary manipulation of the money supply by the government that is practiced by the Federal Reserve.
Sorry, but clamping the growth of money supply with a k-rule, irrespective of the market cycle, is the arbitrariest manipulation I can think of.
> No, the government printing money and giving it to a few favored parties (.../...)
We can agree there that governments giving money to the already super wealthy is a bad think. But why does it do that? Because same super wealthy have become so wealthy they can influence government.
Which brings me to your case on Rome. The reason why Roman emperors debased their coins was because they had emptied their coffers on other things yet /needed/ to keep the army strong for what was essentially a looting regime to survive. At the end of the day, Emperors are not governments, they are another form of super-rich protecting their short-term positions at the expense of longer term stability.
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> Keynes « center piece » is not manipulation of money supply. Yes, it is. Keynes said at one point that the government printing dollar bills and burying them for people to dig up would be a valid form of economic stimulus. > This extreme monetarism you describe is... Friedman’s!!! Milton Friedman did not advocate anything like the arbitrary manipulation of the money supply by the government that is practiced by the…
> Yes, it is. Keynes said at one point that the government printing dollar bills and burying them for people to dig up would be a valid form of economic stimulus. This does not make it the center piece. The center piece of Keynesian economics is that state intervention is necessary to moderate the booms and busts in economic activity. > Milton Friedman did not advocate anything like the arbitrary manipulation of the…
Not just "state intervention", but state intervention of a particular kind, namely, manipulation of the money supply. Keynes' basic theory was that in a depression like the Great Depression, the problem was that there wasn't enough money in circulation, because people would not simply let both prices and wages fall in order to establish a new equilibrium between supply and demand. So, he said, the solution is to simply print more money.
> clamping the growth of money supply with a k-rule, irrespective of the market cycle, is the arbitrariest manipulation I can think of
I personally don't favor Friedman's solution either; I don't think the government should be manipulating the money supply at all. But to call determining the money supply by a known objective rule "more arbitrary" than determining it by the whim of regulators does not strike me as a sound use of language.
> We can agree there that governments giving money to the already super wealthy is a bad think. But why does it do that? Because same super wealthy have become so wealthy they can influence government.
No, you have it backwards. The super wealthy influencing government comes before the government giving money to the super wealthy, not after.
In the case of the Federal Reserve, it came into being because the super wealthy got tired of the government coming to them for loans to bail it out every time there was a financial panic. Why did the government come to the super wealthy for loans? Because the super wealthy had already gotten favors from the government through influence--for example, monopoly privileges over transcontinental railroad routes in order to outlaw free market competition. So naturally the government would come to the super wealthy expecting a quid pro quo.
Once this had happened a few times, the super wealthy figured out a better (from their perspective) solution: create a system of central banks that would allow them to transfer wealth to themselves directly, stealthily, by manipulating the money supply, instead of having to openly go to the government for favors. And sell this system to the public as a means of "preventing" future financial panics. The Panic of 1907 presented a perfect opportunity to put this system in place, and by 1913, the Federal Reserve system was law.
> The reason why Roman emperors debased their coins was because they had emptied their coffers on other things yet /needed/ to keep the army strong for what was essentially a looting regime to survive.
Governments always spend more money than they have, on white elephant schemes that do not benefit society. So of course governments are always looking for ways to avoid having to face the consequences.
But that is a very different claim from the claim you originally made, and I rebutted, that the Roman empire fell because the ultra rich were hoarding all the wealth. In fact the Roman emperors appropriated the wealth of the ultra rich pretty much the same way they appropriated the wealth of everybody else. The reason for the shortage of real wealth in the later Roman empire was not that it was being hoarded; it was that it was being squandered and destroyed by ruinous public policy.
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> Keynes « center piece » is not manipulation of money supply. Yes, it is. Keynes said at one point that the government printing dollar bills and burying them for people to dig up would be a valid form of economic stimulus. > This extreme monetarism you describe is... Friedman’s!!! Milton Friedman did not advocate anything like the arbitrary manipulation of the money supply by the government that is practiced by the…
> Yes, it is. Keynes said at one point that the government printing dollar bills and burying them for people to dig up would be a valid form of economic stimulus. This does not make it the center piece. The center piece of Keynesian economics is that state intervention is necessary to moderate the booms and busts in economic activity. > Milton Friedman did not advocate anything like the arbitrary manipulation of the…
Ah, our old friend No True Scotsman. Sorry, not buying it.
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> History teaches that governments messing with the money supply ... leads to civilizational collapse. I always had an impression that all the money everywhere was always something issued by the government and its supply effectively controlled by the governments: even many centuries ago there were laws that forbade forging the money, even at the times when the money was made of gold. The way I understand it, the wort…
> I always had an impression that all the money everywhere was always something issued by the government No. Government having a monopoly on the issuance of money is a relatively recent development. > even many centuries ago there were laws that forbade forging the money That forbade forging/counterfeiting money issued by the government, yes. But not issuing different money altogether. Historically, government-issued…
The problem is, a big part of the value in the economy never gets to be an explicitly "issued" money, and that was so even many centuries ago. So your belief in the magic of the "hard" issued money appears to me to be just a wishful thinking, even without the historical support since the earliest times. Different forms of debts are older than any precisely defined issued money, and all the forms of debts are what actually drove the economies.
Most famously, the period of democracy in Athens started only after Solon abolished the accumulated debts, which speaks a lot about the dynamic of their economy during all the times before that point was reached.
It appears to me that sooner or later the current world will have to accept that we need a Solon-like act to end the period we're in.
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> I always had an impression that all the money everywhere was always something issued by the government No. Government having a monopoly on the issuance of money is a relatively recent development. > even many centuries ago there were laws that forbade forging the money That forbade forging/counterfeiting money issued by the government, yes. But not issuing different money altogether. Historically, government-issued…
> if one private issuer's money gets debased, but there are multiple different private issuers, such as banks, people can simply stop using the money from the bank that debases it. The problem is, a big part of the value in the economy never gets to be an explicitly "issued" money, and that was so even many centuries ago. So your belief in the magic of the "hard" issued money appears to me to be just a wishful thinki…
For an appropriate definition of "value", yes, I'll agree with this.
However, I don't see how it conflicts with anything I said.
> Different forms of debts are older than any precisely defined issued money, and all the forms of debts are what actually drove the economies.
Debt certainly plays a role in how economies develop. However, again, I don't see how that conflicts with anything I said.
> the period of democracy in Athens started only after Solon abolished the accumulated debts
First, I don't think historians are in agreement about exactly what Solon did and whether it amounted to abolishing all accumulated debts.
Second, while many historians credit Solon with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy, it did not actually start until well after Solon's death, after a considerable period of autocratic rule following the seizure of power by Peisistratos. So even if we grant that Solon abolished all accumulated debts, I don't see any clear connection between that and democracy.
> sooner or later the current world will have to accept that we need a Solon-like act to end the period we're in
Meaning, abolish the accumulated debts? That's basically what the US government is doing to its debt by continuing to print money; since all of the US government's debt, and pretty much all of US private sector debt, is denominated in dollars, printing more dollars dilutes the impact of all that debt on the debtors. It's not clear to me that this is a good thing. Of course, it's also not clear to me that continuing to accumulate debt is a good thing. But while the current financial and economic system certainly has plenty of issues, I don't see how "abolish all accumulated debts" is a good way to fix them.
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I think you missed the point. If the current administration, or possibly some other dumb one in the future, undermines US credibility where other countries unpeg from the dollar, we are going to turn into a shithole country pretty quickly.
> we are going to turn into a shithole country pretty quickly. We have piles of rich natural resources, an educated populace, good infrastructure, and high mobility. Sure, some of those aren't where they were decades ago, but we still have an incredibly strong foundation to build on. America is much more than just the USD.
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Deaths have clearly peaked and are going down. Cases could be increasing due to increased and/or improved testing.
The 7 day average for Deaths has been static for about a week now. And given the state of the premliminary death date in the 14 day window it will start rising in a week.
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The 7 day average for Deaths has been static for about a week now. And given the state of the premliminary death date in the 14 day window it will start rising in a week.
Historical note: I was wrong, whilst positive test results have and continue to sky rocket deaths, after levelling of for a week, continue to fall.