Paul Krugman: "In Defense of Obama"

Without looking at your bullshit, this from a Wiki article:


The “Miracle of Chile” was a term used by Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman to describe the reorientation of the Chilean economy in the 1980s and the benefits of the economic policies applied by a large group of Chilean economists who collectively came to be known as the Chicago Boys, having studied at the University of Chicago where Friedman taught. He said the “Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society.”[1] The junta to which Friedman refers was a military government that came to power in a 1973 coup d'état, which came to an end in 1990 after a democratic 1988 plebiscite removed Augusto Pinochet from the presidency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile

My article linked to the excesses of the Pinochet regime, which had some of the worst human rights abuses of the 70s and 80s, but they don't fit your preconceived view of the world so you dismiss it out of hand.
 
Friedman wasn't responsible for the excesses of the Pinochet regime, he did however correct the economic chaos caused by that regime, bloated dummy.:rolleyes:

Well, he never had anything but harmful influence on economic policy in the U.S.
 
Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Historical School style argument; because it happened this way then, it will happen this way now. In economics that is rarely, if ever true because an economy is not a series of macro inputs but actually an accumulation of millions upon millions of micro inputs all ruled by Sociological forces at play upon those engaging in economic activities. There is a reason the Economics Faculty is in the Sociology Department and not in the Sciences Department.

In a mathematical sense you are saying that you have identified the strange attractor in a chaotic system, which you have not; what you have done is taken factors that have little, or nothing to do with the actual health, or wealth, of the economy and then tried to treat them as a much simpler linear "model" which ignores such important factors as consumer sentiment (Human Action). Then you cherry-pick the Historical record for "proof" that you can manage future economic activity, which, we have learned in Japan, Europe and not the United States is a futile enterprise. The Bush-Obama (-Krugman) stimulus did not do what it was designed to, turns out ”’Shovel-ready’ was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”

;) ;) ...,

and a lot of it went to political allies and crony Capitalism where it was pretty much pissed away.


In economics, as in other social sciences, our only way of predicting what is likely to happen in the future is to see what did work in the past.

Conservatives are supposed to study and respect the past. Unfortunately, what passes for "conservatism" in the United States is often little more than hatred for taxes, gun control laws, and government.

Republicans have had plenty of time to learn since 1980 that tax cuts do not pay for themselves. Nevertheless, cutting taxes remains the Republican cure all for the economy. When the economy is doing well Republicans say that we can afford to cut taxes. When the economy is doing poorly Republicans say we need to cut taxes. Then they blame the resulting budget deficits on the Democrats.
 
Meanwhile, the black ghetto riots in Ferguson, Missouri remind white blue collar workers why their parents and grand parents voted for George Wallace in 1968 and Richard Nixon in 1972.


Yes of course. Why do you think America's white working class left the Democrat Party and started voting Republican? That is a serious question. I would like an answer.
 
In economics, as in other social sciences, our only way of predicting what is likely to happen in the future is to see what did work in the past.

Conservatives are supposed to study and respect the past. Unfortunately, what passes for "conservatism" in the United States is often little more than hatred for taxes, gun control laws, and government.

Republicans have had plenty of time to learn since 1980 that tax cuts do not pay for themselves. Nevertheless, cutting taxes remains the Republican cure all for the economy. When the economy is doing well Republicans say that we can afford to cut taxes. When the economy is doing poorly Republicans say we need to cut taxes. Then they blame the resulting budget deficits on the Democrats.

Well fuck me to tears. I just typed out a lengthy and involved reply only to have Lit time out and disappear everything I wrote. The fucking dog ate my homework.

:mad:

Let me try to recap:

There is no formula or Historical Model in the Social Sciences to determine when a population will go to war, so it follows that cherry-picking the year 1980 and its tax rates and revenue is not a sound exercise in economics.

The tax cuts of the 1920s
Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.
According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon:
The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.
The Kennedy tax cuts
President Hoover dramatically increased tax rates in the 1930s and President Roosevelt compounded the damage by pushing marginal tax rates to more than 90 percent. Recognizing that high tax rates were hindering the economy, President Kennedy proposed across-the-board tax rate reductions that reduced the top tax rate from more than 90 percent down to 70 percent. What happened? Tax revenues climbed from $94 billion in 1961 to $153 billion in 1968, an increase of 62 percent (33 percent after adjusting for inflation).
According to President John F. Kennedy:
Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.
The Reagan tax cuts
Thanks to "bracket creep," the inflation of the 1970s pushed millions of taxpayers into higher tax brackets even though their inflation-adjusted incomes were not rising. To help offset this tax increase and also to improve incentives to work, save, and invest, President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).
According to then-U.S. Representative Jack Kemp (R-NY), one of the chief architects of the Reagan tax cuts:
At some point, additional taxes so discourage the activity being taxed, such as working or investing, that they yield less revenue rather than more. There are, after all, two rates that yield the same amount of revenue: high tax rates on low production, or low rates on high production.
2) The rich pay more when incentives to hide income are reduced.
The tax cuts of the 1920s
The share of the tax burden paid by the rich rose dramatically as tax rates were reduced. The share of the tax burden borne by the rich (those making $50,000 and up in those days) climbed from 44.2 percent in 1921 to 78.4 percent in 1928.
The Kennedy tax cuts
Just as happened in the 1920s, the share of the income tax burden borne by the rich increased following the tax cuts. Tax collections from those making over $50,000 per year climbed by 57 percent between 1963 and 1966, while tax collections from those earning below $50,000 rose 11 percent. As a result, the rich saw their portion of the income tax burden climb from 11.6 percent to 15.1 percent.
The Reagan tax cuts
The share of income taxes paid by the top 10 percent of earners jumped significantly, climbing from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. The top 1 percent saw their share of the income tax bill climb even more dramatically, from 17.6 percent in 1981 to 27.5 percent in 1988.
Harmful Spending & Complexity
Lower tax rates are important, but they are not the only critical issue. Both the level of government spending and where that money goes are very important. And even when looking only at tax policy, tax rates are just one piece of the puzzle. If certain types of income are subject to multiple layers of tax, as occurs in the current system, that problem cannot be solved by low rates. Similarly, a tax system with needless levels of complexity will impose heavy costs on the productive sector of the economy.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/08/the-historical-lessons-of-lower-tax-rates

Before I went into the history of the Spanish inflation, the inflation under Marcus Aurelius, the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Historical Models employed the Socialists of the Chair in pre- and post-war WWI and the example of the DDR in post WWII where your economic ideas were fully employed.

I might go into depth next on the Spanish model.
 
In 1980, the government was not engaged in quantitative easing. Currently we have eased ourselves into a corner and pretty much all of the Western Interventionist-Socialist countries are trying to figure out how to come to grips with it. Raising taxes was now cure and lowering taxes provided only a temporary bump.

Why was that?

As Queersetti pointed out to me in recent days (making a completely different argument), when the silver of South America started pouring in, the Spanish economy went to shit. It did, for the same reason that flooding our banking system with money is causing our economy to go to shit. The Spanish simply stopped investing in industry and agriculture since they viewed the silver as "wealth" so they merely invested in more wealth. Similarly, in our current situation, the model was, if you put more money onto the system, then business will borrow and grow. But business did not follow the model because the government, by not following the rule of law and the policies of sound money created insecurity. In short, the banks invested in money and money substitutes and grew their wealth and inflated the stock market without any appreciable investment in industry and agriculture because there was no demand and fear of taking risk.

Therefore raising taxes to put more money into the economy will not work because it only allows the non-productive some immediate spending while giving business no security or reason to take risk for they must support the unproductive. Reducing taxes will produce a short-term gain for it rewards the productive, however, it will be short-lived because of the inconsistencies of our current government which decided to begin picking winners and losers ignoring law and deciding that its friends were too big to fail and which did not have to answer to their bond-holders.
 
Wealth Creation More Important Than Employment

It is not important to have people employed as such but to have them employed in wealth-generating activities. Employment such as digging ditches and building non-wealth generating projects are only depriving wealth generators from the expansion of the pool of real wealth. This undermines the ability to grow the economy and leads to economic misery.

The belief that the Fed can navigate and grow the economy is wishful thinking. All that Fed officials can do is to pump money and tamper with the interest rate structure. None of this however can lead to economic growth.

The key to economic growth is the expansion in capital goods per individual. This expansion however must be done in accordance with the dictates of the free market and not on account of an artificial lowering of interest rates and monetary pumping.

Loose monetary policy will only result in the expansion of capital goods for non-wealth generating projects (i.e., capital consumption).

Only by means of the allocation of resources in accordance with the dictates of the market can a wealth generating infrastructure be established. Such infrastructure is going to lead to economic prosperity.

Conclusion

To conclude then, the Fed’s new indicator adds more means for US central bank officials to tamper with the economy, but what is required is not information about the strength of the labor market as such but information on how changes in labor market conditions are related to the wealth generation process.

The LMCI doesn’t provide this. Since Fed officials are likely to react to movements in the LMCI we hold this will only lead to a deepening in the misallocation of resources and to a further weakening of the wealth generation process.
http://mises.org/daily/6931/The-Feds-New-LaborMarket-Measure
 
Three cut and pastes in a row. Someone is VERY cross that something positive was said about Paul Krugman.

"Wealth Creation is more important than employment"?

Really?

And you guys wonder why you continually lose elections?

#Derp
 
this picture needs to be remembered for ever


obamahazmat-e1413703589464.jpg
 
Read it yourself, and tell me what it says. If you cannot do that you do not understand it. Whenever someone tells me to read something, I tell them I have won the argument. I read lots of stuff. I am able to convey what I read in my own words.

still no real job?
 
Yes of course. Why do you think America's white working class left the Democrat Party and started voting Republican? That is a serious question. I would like an answer.



So, is the reason why you have a government job...


a. stupid.
b. lazy.
c. realize you can't cut it in the REAL world?
d. all of the above
 
The Reasons for White Backlash

Why do you think America's white working class left the Democrat Party and started voting Republican? That is a serious question. I would like an answer.


Thank you for that interesting article, KingOrfeo. Nevertheless, I had hoped that you would answer my question in your own words.

I could ask you to read Thomas Edsall’s May 1991 article in the Atlantic entitled, “Race.” In this article he argues, “When the official subject is presidential politics, taxes, welfare, crime, rights, or values, the real subject is race.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/race/edsall.htm

I also recommend Thomas Edsall’s other books and articles on this topic. Although he is a moderate Democrat, he has a more sympathetic understanding of white backlash than Michael Kimmel or you do.

However, I read Edsall’s Atlantic article, and a lot else besides. I try to restrict my comments to one computer screen. However, Michael Kimmel’s article merits a longer response.

If you have read many of my comments you know that I hate anti Semitism. Once you criticized me for saying that I am a Christian Zionist. I also have a certain amount of sympathy for the religious right, although I am a registered Democrat. I voted for George McGovern in 1972. I voted for Jimmy Carter twice, and for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary and general election, and again in 2012. I would vote for Obama again, although I am disappointed in him.

In his description of lower income whites Kimmel expresses class contempt. He thinks that the former farmers and trade unionists are too stupid and deluded to know what their interests are, but he does.

The migration of white blue collar workers from the Democratic to the Republican Party began in the late 1960’s when the economy, and their standard of living, were still growing. What started the exodus were five years of black ghetto riots that started soon after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, and the doubling of the crime rate from 1960 to 1970. Upper middle class white liberals were fairly immune from these problems. They lived in low crime, which is to say virtually all white neighborhoods. Many white blue collar workers lived in ethnic enclaves right next to black ghettos. They were threatened by the riots, and the crime, which was primarily black crime. Their children attended largely black public schools, which were dangerous places where little learning took place.

When those white blue collar workers tried to get away from black crime, blacks followed them because of the Open Housing Act of 1968. If those white blue collar workers were fortunate enough to be able to move to neighborhoods that were still white, forced school bussing still forced their children to attend schools with large black populations that were consequently dangerous. Those bussing decisions were never voted for. They were made by white judges, appointed by white Democratic politicians. The bussing decisions were approved of by white liberal columnists and editorial writers. All those white men sent their children to all white schools, KingOrfeo.

White upper middle class liberals have been terribly hypocritical about race. They keep devising sacrifices for white blue collar workers to make to help blacks. These are sacrifices they avoid making themselves. Now they call for a dialogue on race while making it dangerous for whites to express the way millions of us really think and feel about blacks, and dangerous for geneticists to tell about what they have learned about the biological reasons for racial differences in intelligence and behavior.

In every school I ever attended the black population was less than five percent. It is a whole lot different when the black population approaches or exceeds a majority. Whites are not safe in those schools.

When white blue collar workers, or their sons tried to get jobs as police men or fire men affirmative action policies made it difficult, even while those policies made it easier for blacks with lower scores on the entrance exams.

In 1964 a public opinion poll indicated that 74 percent of the American people trusted the government to do the right thing all or most of the time. In September 2013 that had declined to 19 percent.

http://www.people-press.org/2013/10...t-most-federal-agencies-are-viewed-favorably/

In 1964 if someone had asked a white blue collar worker what the government and the Democratic Party had done to help him he would have had a lot to say, beginning with the New Deal. He would have said that life for him and the people he knew began to improve almost as soon as Franklin Roosevelt had been inaugurated. Not only was his father more likely to have a job, but he and the people he knew benefitted from an expanding public sector of the economy, that included Social Security to take care of his grandparents, and eventually his parents. Minimum wage laws and laws to strengthen labor unions meant higher wages for his father, and for him when he got a job.

In 2014 if someone asks a white blue collar what the government and the Democratic Party have done to help him, what will he say, KingOrfeo? This time I would like you to answer in your own words.
 
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