We are struggling together

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Also, Keynes was a farce. He also claimed that war was economically beneficial. No. Just…no. No.

FYI, the currently prevailing school of thought in economics is Post-Keynesianism, which is really just Keynesianism with some revisions. And the Austrian School is a pseudoscientific dead end.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Remember, what may work fine in Germany might do serious (and possibly irreversible) damage in the Land of the Free.

Dunno about that; we ain’t so different.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

We do. The ridiculous amount of fluctuation is a result of an unstable market. Gold supplies in the US, though, are lavish, so why the market for gold is so unstable, I have no clue. Gold has been used as currency for thousands of years. Here, though, we’ve gotten rid of having any relationship between our currency and gold, which is a huge mistake. Gold backing for our currency (hell, I even want a return to gold coins!) has proven to not only stabilize, but bolster our economy. It’s why the period between 1946 and 1973 was the last of the “Golden Eras” as I call them. Nixon destroyed our economy beyond all reason by taking us off the gold standard.

(The '80s looked prosperous, but that was silver with gold’s face.)

Problems with returning to a gold standard. Most interesting:

Gold doesn’t even necessarily prevent inflation

All of this being said, this does not mean that printing money (or Bushonomics/Obamanomics) is always a good thing; quite the contrary. Printing money without a sound policy to manage the money supply can devastate an already-troubled economy if people hoard the new money rather than spend it, reducing the real value of a stagnant market. However, returning to the gold standard or a fixed exchange system does not prevent inflation (see the Mexican peso crisis of 1994 and the Icelandic financial crisis of 2009), undermining the very reason the gold bugs seek to reinstate the standard. All it means is that there will be a severe and debilitating crash in the currency when the government realizes it can no longer subsidize an artificially strong currency. A well-run mint would tie the production of “fresh” currency to run slightly ahead of growth in the economy, thus keeping the money supply in a close relation to the actual wealth of the nation.

Even gold can suffer problems with inflation.[24] Gold rushes such as the California Gold Rush expanded the money supply and, when not matched with a simultaneous increase in economic output, caused inflation.[25] The “Price Revolution” of the 16th century demonstrates a case of dramatic long-run inflation. During this period, western European nations used a bimetallic standard (gold and silver). The Price Revolution was the result of a huge influx of silver from central European mines starting during the late 15th century combined with a flood of new bullion from the Spanish treasure fleets and the demographic shift brought about by the Black Plague (i.e., depopulation).[26][27] There are all sorts of other factors at play that affect inflation but aren’t tied to the currency itself. An oil shock is going to drive prices up if your economy relies on oil, which is inflationary whether your currency is backed by gold or nothing at all. This is an example of cost-push inflation.[28]

[Inflation vs. deflation: Two different kinds of thieves

Another reason the gold bugs hate fiat currency is because of their belief that inflation is “theft.” That is, your savings decrease in value because of the increase in money supply. This is true, but it also overlooks the fact that the gold standard tends to be deflationary and deflation could be called “theft” as well. The upper classes, while hit less hard by inflation due to their massive stocks of wealth, tend to also be creditors, while the lower classes are the debtors. Inflation is good for the debtors as it makes their debt worth less, while deflation is good for creditors, as it makes debt worth more. This was the magic of mortgage debt — up until 2008, debts shrank over time as interest failed to keep up with inflation — and was also the reason why the American populist movement in the 1890s had the free coinage of silver as one of its chief planks. Real estate, like gold, has a fixed, known quantity or supply, while population (or what is the same, “demand”) is ever increasing. Theoretically, the value of the asset would only increase.

A caveat, though, is that inflation is taken into account in setting interest rates (as many adjustable mortgage[29] debtors found out), so a constant inflation at an expected rate is neutral; only higher than expected inflation benefits debtors. Deflationary cycles also tend to lead to lower wages and job loss. So, overall, inflation helps people in debt and hurts people with savings or who own debt.[30]

The issue of how inflation affects price stability is also important. Gold bugs like to throw around the statistic that the value of the dollar has been devalued over 98% over the last century. Of course, this is a number with no context and ignores the bleeding obvious: wages have gone up since then as well![30] If you want to go back to having your dollar worth what it was circa 1900, have fun going back to a circa 1900 paycheck too. Gold can help preserve long-term price stability to some extent, but it may actually be inferior to fiat currency in providing for short-term stability. Extreme short-term variability in price levels is not uncommon. The wild swings in prices during the late 1800s under the gold standard are one example of this.[31] In terms of price stability, then, the gold standard would be most helpful to people who prefer to stuff their money under the mattress, or bury it in a time capsule in the backyard if they are as nostalgic for turn-of-the-century currency as gold bugs are.

Historically, the upper classes and economic elite have favored hard-money conservatism while the lower classes have favored populist inflationary policy. This has led some to argue that advocating the gold standard is “class warfare” in disguise.[32] This was most evident in the US with the Free Silver movement, where populists such as William Jennings Bryan advocated inflationary policies. That’s why it’s rather ironic to hear hard-money conservatives in the vein of Ron Paul arguing that all inflation screws over the little guy and repackaging gold buggery in populist rhetoric, although it can be argued that the non-neutrality of money leads to monetary inflation increasing the wealth of the rich. The non-neutrality of money in the short run can allow whoever owns the printing presses (i.e., government) to channel money to itself or favored institutions or agents. This would be a case of what’s called “financial repression.”[33]

It should also be noted that inflation can’t be employed as a panacea. It can be used to economically disastrous ends, such as the infamous case of the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation, in which it devalued its currency into oblivion in an attempt to pay off war reparations.[34] So, in short, any monetary system can be used to screw over the little guy, the gold standard included. Nevertheless, unless you’re living in a nation suffering Weimar-style hyperinflation that desperately needs to anchor its currency to something, the gold bugs are firmly in crank territory.

And here’s another: Gold is currently worth $1,063.70 per ounce, $34.20 per gram. A gold dollar coin or even a ten-dollar eagle, if it contained $1 or $10 worth of gold by market value, would be something you’d have to handle with tweezers. Unless you made it dime-size, mostly of zinc, with gold as a trace element, and then who would accept it as gold currency?

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

The Constitution (in case you forgot) explicitly reserves the “power to Coin Money, regulate the value thereof, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” So, why the hell is the Federal Reserve, who, by its own admission, is NOT a government agency or department, doing what the US Congress should be?

:rolleyes: That shit again?

Pseudolaw: Fake constitutionality

Gold bugs will sometimes use a pseudo-legal argument that only the gold standard is Constitutional, citing this clause:

“The Congress shall have Power To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; No State shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of debts.”

This is a combination of two passages from the constitution.[41] The first clause: “To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;” is Article I, Section 8, Clause 5. The second clause is found in another section entirely, referring to restrictions on the states, not Congress. It is Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, which reads: “No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.”[42] Apparently, some people think that this prohibits fiat money. However, the quote says the exact opposite: It explicitly grants the federal government the power to coin money. The restriction to gold and silver applies solely to state governments.

These passages refer to the concept of ‘Legal Tender,’ which varies around the world but does not generally refer to the types of coins and banknotes that can be used for monetary exchanges, but the amounts of each denomination of note or coin that can be combined together for payment of court ordered debts[43]. This means that stories of people beating the system by paying debts using wheelbarrows of small change may be exaggerated and has little or no bearing on which currencies are constitutional regarding private sales.

See also, regarding the Fed:

Trouble with accounting identities

Some monetary conspirators claim that the Fed creates money out of nothing and lends money to the government at interest, thereby stealing “the people’s” money and selling us into debt slavery or some similar nefarious scheme to take over the US government. The way this works, however, is not quite the same as your regular commercial bank. The interest on debt held by the Fed actually goes to two places: One, the Fed pays itself out of this interest to cover its own operating costs, and two, the rest of the interest is rebated to the Treasury.[19]

Typically, the Congress authorizes the U.S. Treasury to issue debt obligations, usually 90 day T-bills or longer term bonds, to cover its operating deficit. The Federal Reserve then purchases these obligations out of its reserve account with Federal Reserve Notes, aka U.S. currency.

Pseudolaw

This usually ties into the above point. The basic idea is that the Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money, so the Fed is unconstitutional because it is not the Congress. This is a pseudolegal argument because the Congress may delegate its powers. This is similar to pseudolegal arguments made by gold bugs.[20] It also raises the question that if they were right, then do all 535 members of Congress (or 541, counting the non-voting delegates) have to personally make the coins and bills?

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

One, the defense budget. There’s NO reason the US military should be spending 128 dollars on ONE HAMMER. (The same hammer at Home Depot: 9 dollars.)

The myth of the $600 hammer.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Six, an end to Congressional pensions and limits on their pay. (174K per yr for a part time job? What the ****?!)

What on Earth makes you think a Congresscritter has a “part time job”?

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Equal Pay for Women: You don’t seriously subscribe to that almost Goebbels-esque lie?
Here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wage-gap-myth-that-wont-die-1443654408

Don’t ever, ever cite the Wall Street Journal editorial page like you mean it; that’s the go-to place for Goebbels-esque lies. As for the Gender pay gap:

The gender pay gap is the average difference between men’s and women’s earnings.

The gender pay gap can be looked at locally, nationally and internationally. There are different ways of measuring the pay gap and different ways of expressing it. For example, the European Union defines the gender pay gap as the average difference between men’s and women’s hourly earnings, while the United States defines it as the ratio of women’s to men’s median yearly earnings among full-time, year-round workers.

What is important is that all ways of measuring or expressing the gender pay gap show that in every country men outearn women, leaving women more at risk of poverty for no reason other than their gender.[1]

The gender pay gap is often divided into the ‘unadjusted’ and ‘adjusted’ pay gaps. The ‘unadjusted pay gap’ does not take into account all of the factors that impact on the gap’s existence such as differences in education, number of hours worked, job sector, position etc.[2] When adjusted for these factors, leaving only what is unexplained or is a result of workplace discrimination, the pay gap does diminish considerably. This has led many conservatives and libertarians to denounce the gap as a myth — because when you correct for the discrimination, the discrimination *vanishes! *

However, this ignores that the origins of the adjusted factors are usually discriminatory in themselves, being almost entirely the result of society’s expectations of men and women.[3] As one commentator puts it:

“If high school girls are discouraged from taking the math and science classes that lead to high-paying STEM jobs, shouldn’t we in some way count that as a lost equal earnings opportunity?”[4]

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

I think it’s disgusting that they LITERALLY DO NOTHING. All they DO is write stern letters and reports. That’s IT. The GAO doesn’t FIX ANYTHING.

And then the ones who do have authority to fix things, e.g. Congress, use those reports to know what needs fixing. Which they might or might not do, that’s a political decision, but at least they’ve been advised, with solid figures. Sounds like a pretty sensible system – much more sensible than if an accounting office had actual veto power over Congressional appropriations.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Actually, I recently turned 20.

I was a libertarian at 20. I’m sure it’s a phase many of us go through.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

There SHOULD be restrictions on the franchise. There are people, ADULTS, no less, who think we fought against FRANCE in the Revolutionary War or RUSSIA in the Second World War. Are you saying that those people’s votes should count as equally as mine? There are people who don’t even know their congressman’s position on the hot-button issues. I see the oligarchic implications, but honestly, my vote WILL AFFECT MY NEIGHBOR. My neighbor’s vote WILL AFFECT ME.

Put it this way: When Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal,” he did not mean all are of equal intelligence, or judgment, or moral character, or anything else that might be held to make one person better than another. He was making an assertion in ethics, not science – he meant only that all persons are equally ends-in-themselves – that the poor do not exist simply to minister to the needs of the rich and highborn. Or, as Thomas Paine put it, “The mass of humanity are not born with saddles on their backs, nor the fortunate few booted and spurred to ride them.” Which was indeed a radical notion in the 1770s.

And that’s why every voter gets an equal vote, not weighted by IQ or income or anything else. We might not all be equal in every sense, but whatever government does or does not do, we all equally have to live with the results; therefore you have no greater claim to a right to influence those results than a mentally inferior person has. Both of you are ends-in-yourselves.

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

*Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. *-Marvin Simkin

An amusing canard. In the real world it much more often works out that democracy is two lambs and a wolf voting on what to eat for lunch – because IRL the lambs outnumber the wolves, and democracy is the only defense they’ve got. (The wolves, BTW, are something you’ll find in the Hamptons, not in the 'hood.)

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

*Democracy is a belief in the collective wisdom of ignorant individuals. -*H.L Mencken

I prefer a different Mencken quote: “Democracy is the belief that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Just so.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Four, the libertarian utopia CAN defend itself from the Fascists next door, and they can do that because average citizens, in addition to the organized military, have an INCOMPREHENSIBLE amount of firepower to send those goose-stepping morons to Hell. (One of the benefits of having zero gun control.)

But, a citizens’ militia cannot fight the goose-stepping morons by itself, without the organized military – and the organized military requires high levels of taxation.

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Five, there is still the issue of so-called “democracy” basically constituting mob rule. It’s still wrong when five people vote to invade your house. It’s still wrong when ten people vote to invade your house. It’s still an infringement of your right to security and privacy in your home, regardless of how many people vote to invade your house. That’s why Constitutions exist, precisely to prevent this EXACT scenario. Our founders knew the history of ancient Athens, and they saw how THAT ended. (Hint: Not. Well.)

It ended when the Romans conquered it. That was not a result of any flaw in Athenian democracy, they also conquered countless chiefdoms and kingdoms and tyrannies; nor was it proof of the superiority of the Roman model of aristocratic republicanism over Athenian democracy; rather, it was a result of the Romans having the most badass army in the Mediterranean world.

This is as good a time as any to point out that the so-called “Tytler Cycle” –

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

1. Is a misattribution. Alexander Tytler never said it. According to Snopes, the quote/meme seems to have originated in 2000.

2. Would be flat wrong if Tytler had said it. No republic or democracy in human history has ever self-destructed by way of the voters voting themselves largesse from the treasury. Many have self-destructed, but in completely different ways.

Q[UOTE=HawaiianBeachBoy 1959;18976629](Sovereign immunity is a barbaric legal concept that, I think we can ALL agree, needs to GO.)
[/QUOTE]

As a personal-injury lawyer I’m tempted to agree, but, remember, it’s not a political no-brainer – because to sue the state is ultimately to sue the taxpayer, which means suing the voter.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

Two, even Bill Maher, who is as liberal as a man can be, called B.S. on Bernie Sanders’ insane economic plan. It’s PROVEN that raising taxes on the wealthy won’t pay for Sanders’ 18 trillion dollar hippie boondoggle. There’s simply NO WAY to pay for it.

No, Bernie Sanders is not going to bankrupt America to the tune of $18 trillion.

The answer isn’t quite so dramatic: while Sanders does want to spend significant amounts of money, almost all of it is on things we’re already paying for; he just wants to change how we pay for them. In some ways it’s by spreading out a cost currently borne by a limited number of people to all taxpayers. His plan for free public college would do this: right now, it’s paid for by students and their families, while under Sanders’ plan we’d all pay for it in the same way we all pay for parks or the military or food safety.

But the bulk of what Sanders wants to do is in the first category: to have us pay through taxes for things we’re already paying for in other ways. Depending on your perspective on government, you may think that’s a bad idea. But we shouldn’t treat his proposals as though they’re going to cost us $18 trillion on top of what we’re already paying.

And there’s another problem with that scary $18 trillion figure, which is what the Journal says is the 10-year cost of Sanders’ ideas: fully $15 trillion of it comes not from an analysis of anything Sanders has proposed, but from the fact that Sanders has said he’d like to see a single-payer health insurance system, and there’s a single-payer plan in Congress that has been estimated to cost $15 trillion. Sanders hasn’t actually released any health care plan, so we have no idea what his might cost.

[BrainGlutton]

@HawaiianBeachBoy_1959

1. Well, what Jefferson meant by “wall of separation” is that the State can’t compel people to join a church or follow a certain religion. He knew full well that getting rid of all religious influence in government was ridiculous. Think: “Thou shalt not kill.” Plenty of countries have the death penalty for murder. (Something I totally agree with.)

Just because you can find Scriptural support for it does not make it “religious influence in government.”

[septimus]

@BrainGlutton

I was a libertarian at 20. I’m sure it’s a phase many of us go through.

I still am a libertarian. Remember that the Clean Air Act of 1990, which embraced market economics by pricing external costs, passed Congress via a coalition of environmentalists and libertarians. Libertarians embraced the writings of Adam Smith but also most other serious economists.

But the label “Libertarian” has been usurped by people for whom the Clean Air Act is anathema. To them, external costs unafforded in an anarchic dog-eat-dog environment are unreal. They pay lip-service to Smith and Friedman but in fact get most of their economic “knowledge” from YouTube rants. When asked for a citation on their economics views they refer to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a quack school firmly rejected by Friedrich Hayek, the only “Austrian” economist to win the coveted Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Disciples of Ayn Rand, von Mises quackery, and the bizarre belief that America, despite its phenomenal economic success would be richer still without the Federal Reserve system, have given libertarianism a bad name.

I live in an isolated area and rely on Internet boards like this one for intellectual conversation. The nearest American is a half-hour drive away. He’s a Hyperlibertarian, though “the New World Order” joins the FRB as his boogeyman rather than the “Illuminati.” Well, at least he’s an intellectual, I thought, and asked him if he wanted to borrow any of my books.

I don’t like to read books, he told me.

[Bone]

@BrainGlutton

Don’t ever, ever cite the Wall Street Journal editorial page like you mean it; that’s the go-to place for Goebbels-esque lies. As for the Gender pay gap:

The irony of criticizing the WSJ while at the same time linking to rational wiki is particularly amusing.

[BrainGlutton]

@Bone

The irony of criticizing the WSJ while at the same time linking to rational wiki is particularly amusing.

RationalWiki does not pretend to be unbiased – but it is biased in favor of rationality. That gives it a credibility the WSJ lacks (I mean the editorial section, not the straight news).

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Bone

The irony of criticizing the WSJ while at the same time linking to rational wiki is particularly amusing.

The WSJ editorial page feels like someone took FOX News and printed it. RationalWiki is more or less reliable most of the time.

[BrainGlutton]

@septimus

I still am a libertarian. Remember that the Clean Air Act of 1990, which embraced market economics by pricing external costs, passed Congress via a coalition of environmentalists and libertarians. Libertarians embraced the writings of Adam Smith but also most other serious economists.

But the label “Libertarian” has been usurped by people for whom the Clean Air Act is anathema. To them, external costs unafforded in an anarchic dog-eat-dog environment are unreal. They pay lip-service to Smith and Friedman but in fact get most of their economic “knowledge” from YouTube rants. When asked for a citation on their economics views they refer to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a quack school firmly rejected by Friedrich Hayek, the only “Austrian” economist to win the coveted Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Disciples of Ayn Rand, von Mises quackery, and the bizarre belief that America, despite its phenomenal economic success would be richer still without the Federal Reserve system, have given libertarianism a bad name.

See Vulgar libertarianism.

[Merneith]

@BrainGlutton

Put it this way: When Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal,” he did not mean all are of equal intelligence, or judgment, or moral character, or anything else that might be held to make one person better than another. He was making an assertion in ethics, not science – he meant only that all persons are equally ends-in-themselves – that the poor do not exist simply to minister to the needs of the rich and highborn. Or, as Thomas Paine put it, “The mass of humanity are not born with saddles on their backs, nor the fortunate few booted and spurred to ride them.” Which was indeed a radical notion in the 1770s.

And that’s why every voter gets an equal vote, not weighted by IQ or income or anything else. We might not all be equal in every sense, but whatever government does or does not do, we all equally have to live with the results; therefore you have no greater claim to a right to influence those results than a mentally inferior person has. Both of you are ends-in-yourselves.

Well … I mean, yeah, today every citizen is granted the right to vote automatically and each vote has equal weight. But the situation today was not what Jefferson described and we don’t do it that way, today, because that’s what Jefferson wanted.

Back when Jefferson wrote those words, voting was restricted almost entirely to white, male, land owners, because they were thought to have a stake in the community. I’m guessing our twenty-year old OP would not have qualified.

[BrainGlutton]

@Merneith

Well … I mean, yeah, today every citizen is granted the right to vote automatically and each vote has equal weight. But the situation today was not what Jefferson described and we don’t do it that way, today, because that’s what Jefferson wanted.

Back when Jefferson wrote those words, voting was restricted almost entirely to white, male, land owners, because they were thought to have a stake in the community. I’m guessing our twenty-year old OP would not have qualified.

I know. The notion of human equality-of-worth – though to some degree implicit in Christianity (where even a slave can be precious in the eyes of God) – was, as I said, still a radical doctrine in the 1770s. It took some time for the logical political implications to be worked out, such as the extension of the franchise to all adult citizens mentally competent to understand what “voting” means, without regard to wealth or race or sex.