On September 22 2011 04:08 TanGeng wrote: Under the horrors of totalitarian rule, public school are the perfect propaganda centers. A bit of hyperbole, but for US the reason why so many Americans are so blinded by American Exceptional-ism is precisely because of the public school system.
places like TL are dominated by left-wing arguments, including absolutely absurd statements that "the public school system teaches american exceptionalism."
You know you've been reading the general forum for too long when you see TanGeng being accused of being left wing. He's been the rational face of the right wing on tl since before you heard of Starcraft.
Lol, no shit, TanGeng is my homeboy. Very few people portray the right in its proper light, which is why so many people hate it, but TanGeng does it better than most.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Personally, I think the real skill is transcending the false dichotomy that our political elite offers us. They're providing a false choice between taxing the rich and funding the social welfare programs. The reality is that the left and right can probably agree on defunding and repealing of the subsidies, giveaways, sweetheart contracts, tax loopholes, and bloated military spending first.
Ironically, we have allowed the political elite to cast the centrist position as a defense of subsidies, giveaways, sweetheart contracts, tax loopholes, and bloated military while balancing trade-offs between taxes and social programs. The left and right could both benefit from uniting in opposition to such "centrism."
On September 22 2011 04:08 TanGeng wrote: Under the horrors of totalitarian rule, public school are the perfect propaganda centers. A bit of hyperbole, but for US the reason why so many Americans are so blinded by American Exceptional-ism is precisely because of the public school system.
places like TL are dominated by left-wing arguments, including absolutely absurd statements that "the public school system teaches american exceptionalism."
You know you've been reading the general forum for too long when you see TanGeng being accused of being left wing. He's been the rational face of the right wing on tl since before you heard of Starcraft.
Lol, no shit, TanGeng is my homeboy. Very few people portray the right in its proper light, which is why so many people hate it, but TanGeng does it better than most.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Personally, I think the real skill is transcending the false dichotomy that our political elite offers us. They're providing a false choice between taxing the rich and funding the social welfare programs. The reality is that the left and right can probably agree on defunding and repealing of the subsidies, giveaways, sweetheart contracts, tax loopholes, and bloated military spending first.
Ironically, we have allowed the political elite to cast the centrist position as a defense of subsidies, giveaways, sweetheart contracts, tax loopholes, and bloated military while balancing trade-offs between taxes and social programs. The left and right could both benefit from uniting in opposition to such "centrism."
Classical public choice problem. Add to this that economists usually only disagree on the finer points of the economy and that when two people discuss a thing, they emphasize the differences and don't talk about the similarities, which looks to the onlooker like they are miles apart.
Case in point, we agree totally on what you said just there, but probably disagree on what would be a "just distribution" of income.
Anyway, to not be too soft-hearted, I am reformed. Lowering taxes for the rich actually creates jobs, as I have just found out.
^ you're right, because tax rates being decreased is the only thing that's been happening in this country with regards to employment... cool, classic liberal trolling
Yeah, it's not like towards the end of the ninetees the economy started booming worldwide... Until the recent crash (with some bumps)... ... No, not at all, it has to be lower taxes... I'm sure the lower Taxes in the US even created Jobs in countries that didn't even touch their Taxes!
I in fact think to high Taxes are the reason for the rise of deaths due to cancer in the western world..
On September 22 2011 04:08 TanGeng wrote: Under the horrors of totalitarian rule, public school are the perfect propaganda centers. A bit of hyperbole, but for US the reason why so many Americans are so blinded by American Exceptional-ism is precisely because of the public school system.
places like TL are dominated by left-wing arguments, including absolutely absurd statements that "the public school system teaches american exceptionalism."
You know you've been reading the general forum for too long when you see TanGeng being accused of being left wing. He's been the rational face of the right wing on tl since before you heard of Starcraft.
Lol, no shit, TanGeng is my homeboy. Very few people portray the right in its proper light, which is why so many people hate it, but TanGeng does it better than most.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
Personally, I think the real skill is transcending the false dichotomy that our political elite offers us. They're providing a false choice between taxing the rich and funding the social welfare programs. The reality is that the left and right can probably agree on defunding and repealing of the subsidies, giveaways, sweetheart contracts, tax loopholes, and bloated military spending first.
Ironically, we have allowed the political elite to cast the centrist position as a defense of subsidies, giveaways, sweetheart contracts, tax loopholes, and bloated military while balancing trade-offs between taxes and social programs. The left and right could both benefit from uniting in opposition to such "centrism."
Classical public choice problem. Add to this that economists usually only disagree on the finer points of the economy and that when two people discuss a thing, they emphasize the differences and don't talk about the similarities, which looks to the onlooker like they are miles apart.
Case in point, we agree totally on what you said just there, but probably disagree on what would be a "just distribution" of income.
Anyway, to not be too soft-hearted, I am reformed. Lowering taxes for the rich actually creates jobs, as I have just found out.
lololol what a dishonest graph. I don't know if the conclusion is correct, but the agenda and representation is fucking awful.
That graph was created in response to the claim that "tax cuts for millionaires create jobs." A claim which has even less evidence to support it than a troll graph made by the folks at Comedy Central
On September 22 2011 16:08 Velr wrote: Yeah, it's not like towards the end of the ninetees the economy started booming worldwide... Until the recent crash (with some bumps)... ... No, not at all, it has to be lower taxes... I'm sure the lower Taxes in the US even created Jobs in countries that didn't even touch their Taxes!
I in fact think to high Taxes are the reason for the rise of deaths due to cancer in the western world..
... You're right... the economy was seriously growing...
Because it wasn't the dot com bubble that was growing during the late 1990s that in 2000 wiped out 66% of nasdaq... and it wasn't the housing bubble that was growing under Clinton...
it was all our economy.
That graph was created in response to the claim that "tax cuts for millionaires create jobs." A claim which has even less evidence to support it than a troll graph made by the folks at Comedy Central
nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
That graph was created in response to the claim that "tax cuts for millionaires create jobs." A claim which has even less evidence to support it than a troll graph made by the folks at Comedy Central
nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
Care to actually back that claim up with any evidence whatsoever?
On September 22 2011 05:11 Biff The Understudy wrote: Well, the main problem with the State, and especially your State is when their is collusion with private interest.
That's corruption, but that's also what lobbies are about, etc...
That you can fight against.
Now, obviously, no government is perfect. Obviously, even the most democratic States have flaws because they are run by people and that people are never perfect.
That being said, the principle of a democratic State is the interest of everybody. The principle of a corporation or a hedge fund or whatever, is the interest of its owner.
I don't think the State is the solution to everything, and many evil can come from too much state. I am just astonished that some people seem to consider that the State is inherently evil, without taking into consideration the fact that maybe private interest can be a source of tyranny, of oppression, and of slavery.
If I go to the hospital, I prefer to know that the hospital belongs to the whole nation and that its purpose is to cure anybody the best way possible, rather than thinking that the hospital is owe by some shareholders who don't give a flying fuck about anything if not their return on investment.
I've been to a public school, and it was fantastic. And my parents didn't pay anything. And my musical education was free also, and I am a professional musician. And all my life I have been having excellent healthcare that I never paid for. And I think it's an amazing thing that everybody in France can have the chance of having a great education, to go to a conservatoire, or to get himself cured regardless of his income.
Yes, it was all "free." You never "paid" for it.
The State has historically been a combination of justice and domination. It is wholly beneficial insofar as it is upholding justice. Domination in its most blatant form could be rape, pillage, executions, etc. A little bit milder for of domination is taxation. Modern civilization has given us the patron State where the government provides services and tells you what to do. It's softer, kinder, but still domination and can easily veer off into tyranny.
I pay (and my parents paid) for a system. My parent's didn't pay for "my" school or "my" hospital. If I had never been to the hospital they would have paid exactly the same, if I had had a 10 year cancer and AID at the same time and broke seventeen time my leg, they would have paid exactly the same and if they had had no kid in a public school too.
My parents paid for a type of society. It's true, the money comes from somewhere, and I am really willing to pay taxes for having a society in which anybody can enjoy the quality of services I have.
Now, yes you are right. When we say "the State" we talk about multiple things.
The thing is that I prefer to be taxed and be "told what to do" by a government on which I have control through democratic process than by corporations that obey solely the interest of their shareholders. In a democratic society, the State also belongs to me. Fox News and Mc Donald's don't. If one has the feeling that he is not represented in the State, it just means that your institutions are not democratic enough (and that's certaily true for both the US and France).
If we really want to fight domination and oppression, then certainly you have to fight every form of State control, but doing it without being extremely critical against corporation and economic control is just plain stupid (and that's why american "libertarianism" is just a way to get out of a form of tyranny just to go into a much harder one).
In that sense, I think a critic of the State is really emancipating only if it's done through anarcho-socialism (or anarcho-syndicalism as it's sometimes called), which is Noam Chomsky position. But that's not today's discussion.
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
On September 22 2011 16:13 BlackJack wrote: That graph was created in response to the claim that "tax cuts for millionaires create jobs." A claim which has even less evidence to support it than a troll graph made by the folks at Comedy Central
They took a graph of 14 years worth of data and then used only one plot point for the dependent variable lol. That's like negative evidence.
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
ok...
RIGHT NOW, tax cuts are better than stimulus.
So are you ignoring my request for you to back up your claim? I'm no economist so please explain to me why it's good to give money to the people that are just going to sit on it instead of to the people that are going to spend it and increase demand?
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
ok...
RIGHT NOW, tax cuts are better than stimulus.
So are you ignoring my request for you to back up your claim? I'm no economist so please explain to me why it's good to give money to the people that are just going to sit on it instead of to the people that are going to spend it and increase demand?
I think the rational behind it is that the richest the rich get, the more they invest. That's Adam Smith argument: the reason that we allow people to get super rich is that they provide work by investing and employing people.
When you consider that a vast majority of financial operation now are speculative; and that speculation don't produce anything, you see the limit of that reasoning.
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
ok...
RIGHT NOW, tax cuts are better than stimulus.
So are you ignoring my request for you to back up your claim? I'm no economist so please explain to me why it's good to give money to the people that are just going to sit on it instead of to the people that are going to spend it and increase demand?
Ok first let's start with the fact that stimulus doesn't work... It only protects jobs that aren't pulling their weight in the first place. The taxes used to get the money for the stimulus, and the inflation that the printing of money causes can actually destroy jobs that are pulling their own weight.
The problem with spending is that we will spend them on foreign products (80% of products at walmart are chinese for example) so which americans will benefit from these purchases? I'll tell you which, the ones that are in the service sector jobs doing the selling of these foreign products. Our own production doesn't grow from it, only the parts of our economy that help us consume the imports from other countries grows from it (at least for the most part.)
Overall you have to understand how the business cycle works to understand why the stimulus is bad.
It's late here, so this video that was posted in another thread will save me some time to explain it.
The overall problem is that the consumption for a large part worsens our trade deficit. We're importing more than we're exporting, so we're consuming our way into debt. If there was no stimulus, yes a lot of these service consumption jobs would be lost, but these are jobs that our current economy can't sustain anyways. Trade deficit causes currency devaluation which is also bad.
Now why it's bad to tax to rich... well it's not quite as bad as the deficit spending, but it's still bad. Right now a lot of rich people are sitting on their money because they've realized that the cheap money provided by the FED is a fraud and they're all scared about what's going to happen. In essence they don't want to blow up another bubble. In 1995s it was the dot-com bubble, then the housing bubble both of these things to an extent were results of the low interest rates, because if the rates are low you're inclined to invest, because your return on savings are so low... but of course we've learned that the bubbles lead to a crash and people don't want that, so the economic situation is unstable and people are hesitant.
Obviously you can tax the rich to cut the deficit, and then it will be even less profitable to run businesses and some may go out of business, and others may take some portions of their money out of the market, but it's not THaT bad to tax them as long as you're just using this money to help pay the deficit while also cutting the spending. It becomes very bad when you start trying to redistribute this money because that in turn coordinates the private sector spending which is actually a bad thing... and of course if the rates went up people would spend less, and it would make the entire idea of stimulus seem rather silly, but in reality the rates must go up in order for people to pay off their debts, and in order for the market to once again accumulate enough resources for sound investments to be made.
I think the rational behind it is that the richest the rich get, the more they invest. That's Adam Smith argument: the reason that we allow people to get super rich is that they provide work by investing and employing people.
When you consider that a vast majority of financial operation now are speculative; and that speculation don't produce anything, you see the limit of that reasoning.
See this is a misconception.The real rationale behind this is the following:
If the rich spend their money on non-investments... then who cares? They're spending their money like anyone else would.
If the rich SIT on their money, then what in fact they're doing is leaving the resources in the marketplace. This would be very evident if our system wasn't so broken because we DO have such a high wealth disparity right now.
Because if the rich that have the majority of the money, don't use it to purchase the majority of the products (which they should be able to do technically since they have proportionally more money.) Then they're leaving those products in the economy, so what that does is drive the prices of those goods down, which in turn creates the opportunities for investment to use those goods. The money that the rich sit on is actually the money that grows the economy, because if they isolate those assets from the rest of the people, this diminishes the money supply which in turn drives the purchasing power of currency up, and drives the prices down, which grows the economy.
as for the speculation... a lot of this just has to do with the fact that the rates are too low. The rates are low so putting your money in the banks isn't profitable, and also isn't safe given that if the rates go up the banks will probably fail, so they speculate instead. If the rates go up then speculation will go down considerably.
Look at how much the commodities have gone up... It's because they're being used to hedge inflation, that's normally part of the purpose of the interest rates, but the interest rates aren't anywhere near what the real levels of inflation are right now.
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
ok...
RIGHT NOW, tax cuts are better than stimulus.
I disagree.
Businesses are sitting on more corporate wealth than ever before. There's no reason why a tax cut would suddenly give them the incentive to spend.
The issue is demand related. When polled (according to The Economist), most small businesses cite lack of customers coming into their store as a reason why they feel their business isn't doing so well, and hence unwilling to spend more money than they have to.
The recession has made businesses a lot more streamlined and efficient because a lot of companies are switching over to automated systems, which removes jobs.
Simple economics solutions like "tax cuts", thus, are completely ignoring why the economy is not growing.
Also, why is nobody arguing that the reason why the economy still blows is because we lost over $7 trillion in household wealth because of the mortgage crash? 1/5 have mortgages worth more than their homes (at least I think that's the right statistic).
Whenever I hear people say "Oh the stimulus fucking sucked and didn't work", I always ask them "Dude, we lost well over $7 trillion in the crash in household wealth alone, and you're expecting a mere $1.4 trillion to cover for that?"
Then they just reiterate the same thing to me and I stop talking because I get tired and bored. x)
People are too busy deleveraging, which is why a tax cut won't fuel any growth.
On September 22 2011 17:53 Kiarip wrote: Ok first let's start with the fact that stimulus doesn't work... It only protects jobs that aren't pulling their weight in the first place.
at first I was going to respond to your first post with a longer one, but then I read this
I am NO (post-)keynsian scholar, but this is a completely ridiculous claim. It is an empiricly proven fact, that stimulus can help bring slumping economies back on track - given that the slump is caused by certain factors that can be influenced well with stimulus. Even the so very old solow-growth-theory acknowledges this. If stimulus can "kick" the economy back into equilibrium-performance (growth-wise and structural unemployment wise) it basicly pays for itself. Stimulus is only dangerous if you want to increase economic growth "itself" with it.
The overall problem is that the consumption for a large part worsens our trade deficit.
this has nothing to do with growth at all, since world-wide this is a zero-sum-game. If you want to export more, somebody else has to import more. if one country has a trade surplus, another one has to have a deficit. trying to develop your economy based on creating a trade surplus is doomed to fail if everyone does it EDIT: except you are fine with poor countries getting even poorer throught the following decades, of course; if the 1st world uses its power, then of course it can artificially sustain its wealth on the backs of the 3rd world
On September 22 2011 16:28 Kiarip wrote: nothing at this point will actually create jobs, but tax cuts are better for our economy than the stimulus.
the "tax cuts are better than government spending" is so pre 2000....I'm sorry, but even though we still don't know shit about economics (compared to biology, physics, etc. economics is still very far behind) this sentence is so unbelievably over-simplified, nobody should ever use it again...ever
there are a million situations where tax cuts are better and a million situations where stimulus is better
ok...
RIGHT NOW, tax cuts are better than stimulus.
I disagree.
Businesses are sitting on more corporate wealth than ever before. There's no reason why a tax cut would suddenly give them the incentive to spend.
The issue is demand related. When polled (according to The Economist), most small businesses cite lack of customers coming into their store as a reason why they feel their business isn't doing so well, and hence unwilling to spend more money than they have to.
The recession has made businesses a lot more streamlined and efficient because a lot of companies are switching over to automated systems, which removes jobs.
Simple economics solutions like "tax cuts", thus, are completely ignoring why the economy is not growing.
Also, why is nobody arguing that the reason why the economy still blows is because we lost over $7 trillion in household wealth because of the mortgage crash? 1/5 have mortgages worth more than their homes (at least I think that's the right statistic).
Whenever I hear people say "Oh the stimulus fucking sucked and didn't work", I always ask them "Dude, we lost well over $7 trillion in the crash in household wealth alone, and you're expecting a mere $1.4 trillion to cover for that?"
Then they just reiterate the same thing to me and I stop talking because I get tired and bored. x)
People are too busy deleveraging, which is why a tax cut won't fuel any growth.
It's ridiculous that you conclude that we lost anything in the crash, when the crash followed a build up of a bubble which created a lot of fake equity. The burst of the bubble is simply the elimination of the fake equity. Yes it takes a down-turn, but a recession is needed in order to balance the marketplace. We weren't allowed to have a recession back then but it's not gonna matter, it's gonna happen eventually and the later it happens the worse it's gonna be.
On September 22 2011 17:53 Kiarip wrote: Ok first let's start with the fact that stimulus doesn't work... It only protects jobs that aren't pulling their weight in the first place.
at first I was going to respond to your first post with a longer one, but then I read this
I am NO (post-)keynsian scholar, but this is a completely ridiculous claim. It is an empiricly proven fact, that stimulus can help bring slumping economies back on track - given that the slump is caused by certain factors that can be influenced well with stimulus. Even the so very old solow-growth-theory acknowledges this. If stimulus can "kick" the economy back into equilibrium-performance (growth-wise and structural unemployment wise) it basicly pays for itself. Stimulus is only dangerous if you want to increase economic growth "itself" with it.
We're at a point where we consume way more than we produce. We need to produce more and consume less in order to be able to balance our economy and not go into more and more debt which will only devalue our currency...
Saving jobs that help our consumption simply pushes off the recession that is needed to painfully reshuffle and reallocate the workforce such that we can once again support our consumption with production.
My point being here that if you think our economy simply needs to be "kicked" back into equilibrium you're dreadfully wrong. Every single "kick" only pushes us into more consumption, and the redistribution of wealth is messing with the market's attempts to create jobs that can actually pull their own weight in the economy... and this process is already slow enough thanks to the low interest rates and the heavy regulations.
The overall problem is that the consumption for a large part worsens our trade deficit.
this has nothing to do with growth at all, since world-wide this is a zero-sum-game. If you want to export more, somebody else has to import more. if one country has a trade surplus, another one has to have a deficit. trying to develop your economy based on creating a trade surplus is doomed to fail if everyone does it EDIT: except you are fine with poor countries getting even poorer throught the following decades, of course; if the 1st world uses its power, then of course it can artificially sustain its wealth on the backs of the 3rd world
This has everything to do with it... Trading isn't a complete zero sum gain because of niches of different markets, but to a large extent it is... That doesn't mean that we as a nation shouldn't be trying to "win" this game. There are obviously winners and losers and our current policies are making us bigger and bigger losers.
Trade deficit has some stuff to do with growth, because it grows our debt which will probably force the government to raise our taxes, which is bad for the economy.
On September 22 2011 18:09 Kiarip wrote: My point being here that if you think our economy simply needs to be "kicked" back into equilibrium you're dreadfully wrong. Every single "kick" only pushes us into more consumption, and the redistribution of wealth is messing with the market's attempts to create jobs that can actually pull their own weight in the economy... and this process is already slow enough thanks to the low interest rates and the heavy regulations.
you are going from theory into application now - I haven't studied the economic crisis in enough detail to comment on that; furthermore, I'm more interested in analytical economics and economic theory, not so much in applied economics and econometrics
I was simply responding to your claim, that stimulus: a) is worse than tax cuts: which is wrong in many cases b) only protects jobs that shouldn't be protected: which is also wrong, because economic crises have the tendency to destroy huge portions of valuable industries, if nothing is done to stop it; you could compare it to insolvent debtors that run a potentially viable business; liquidate and sell? debtors will be happy, but restructuring would be better in the long run; same here: stimulus can help to "select" industries that we deem "save-worthy"; now please don't argue that politicians are morons and incapable of doing so properly....of course you are true for nowadays political landscape, but that doesn't change the fact, that the THEORY behind it, has its merit
EPT
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