I tried to expain it to you and you didn’t get it. So I tried another means which is
get someone else to explain it to you. The basic point is wealth creation which both
Krugman and I tried to explain. You just went with an ad hominem attack. If you have nothing,
attack the source. Let us try again
Three Times Great: YOU CANNOT CONSUME WHAT YOU DID NOT PRODUCE."
when a poor person is given free government money to go consume with, that money came from somewhere; an amount X was taken from other people via taxation and the same amount X (actually less due to inflation) was then given to a “poor” person to go “stimulate” the economy with by going to walmart.
K: This is such a generalize statement that it is almost useless for example you have to define what is a poor person.
TTG: the problem with your view, the reason you are wrong, is that taking X amount from one person and giving it to another person doesnt create anything. how does this “create” wealth? if you had just never taken the X amount in taxes in the first place, you would be in the same situation. and since the X amount of money goes through the beuracracy, wastes time and effort being processed, loses some value due to inflation, then by the time it comes out the other end and is given as a check to some poor guy, its not even as valuable as it was when the money was taken out of the hands of a taxpayer.
K: Redistribution of wealth via taxes is all bush did in his years except he did it from the middle and
lower class to the upper class.And this is ok, how? I think the problem is you don’t actually understand economics.
The redistrubution of wealth via taxes is older than the hills. It is not a new idea. If you take it from someone who doesn’t need
it or is just going to put into a bank and give it to someone who does use it, wal-mart for example, yes that is a stimulus
because someone is using it in a productive manner, and writers as diverse as Karl Marx and Adam Smith both agree with it.
TTG: moving money from A to B laterally doesnt create anything; it doesnt generate wealth at all, and hence does not ‘stimulate’ anything.
there is a net loss when you transfer money from one person to another through taxation.
K: It is not about moving the money, it is about the money being used. Money is only useful if is being used. It has no value if it just sits there.
TTG: if you want to CREATE wealth, you do it via investment, because when money is INVESTED or in SAVINGS then its EARNING INTEREST, i.e. its GROWING. this generates more money, and not to mention is what allows all businesses, small and large, to continue functioning at all, and thus provide all those poor people with their minimum wage paychecks… if not for production and investment, there COULD BE NO CONSUMPTION.
K: You support the trickle down theory which is wealth trickles down from the wealthy to the lower classes.
No wonder you are so confused. that theory was discredited 20 years ago.
TTG: i dont understand why some people just dont get this… its not rocket science ]
K: in your case, it may as well be rocket science.
I think this is where you go wrong. ‘Hence’ is used inappropriately here. When I take water from a cup and put it in soil, I don’t generate anything, I simply redistribute water. But I do stimulate the growth of a flower. That’s just an example to show that ‘not generating’ =/= ‘not stimulating’. Now let’s apply that to economics.
One of the big problems in our current economy is a lack of consumer confidence, and an unwillingness of people to buy luxuries. People are only willing to buy necessities, and once they’ve done so, they are simply saving and paying down debt. Their money is less liquid, because when they do invest it, they invest it in secure assets like CDs. Giving these people more money won’t change their spending habits. They have the money to spend, but they are choosing not to.
On the other hand, poor people have much more that would fall into the ‘necessities’ category that they aren’t able to afford usually. If they are given money in the form of refundable credits, they are very likely to spend that money. That’s good, because consumer spending engages market forces. Money in the hands of the poor is much more likely to be put back into the market in exchange for goods.
You mention, loudly, that " if not for production and investment, there could be no consumption." But if there’s no demand, what good is production? The consumer needs to exist to drive production, to show that there is a market for a given good or service. Without consumers, there is no indication of where to spend ones investment, and it is safer to bide time until indicators appear. Redistributing doesn’t create anything, but it does change the way that the money flows into the system. Such a change can incentivize creation. Redistribution then, though I agree that in and of itself is costly, can still be a worthwhile use of funds if it encourages more productive spending patterns. And there are good indicators that’s what it will do.
wrong; the correct analogy to the economy would be that, you drain water from one part of the plant’s soil, and then redistribute it to another part of the plants soil… that doesnt generate anything. its a waste of energy and effort to redistribute, since nothing is gained. why not just leave the water where it was? why not just leave money where it is… people will spend it if its theirs. to take an amount from A and give that same amount to B within the same economy doesnt do anything ‘stimulative’.
your analogy would be correct if we were taking money from OUTSIDE the economy and redistributing it INSIDE the economy, but thats not what happens. taxes take from me, and give to you; they take from you, and give to me. no one is privileged or special in the economy… there is no intrinsically better thing about giving me the money that was taken from you-- there is no reason to think i will spend it better than you would have.
if ‘redistribution’ works so well, why havent socialist economies been the economic powerhouses that capitalist economies are?? why is it that all the EU countries, china, russia, etc all needed to embrace aspects of free capitalist principles in their economies just to keep their economy functioning?
government doesnt grow or create wealth, because government does not generate profit (i.e. efficienty). it takes from A and gives to B… and it doesnt matter how ‘good’ it makes you feel to steal $100,000 from a rich CEO and give out $10 checks to 10,000 people-- you have not added anything to the economy, and you have not ‘stimulated’ anything at all.
why would there ever be no demand? demand for what? everyone needs necessities, there will always be demand. you are not making an argument here, you are making grand assumptions like “but if theres no demand” which are totally false and unrealistic. there will always be demand… if there were no demand, there would be no people.
consumers drive production, and production drives consumption-- demand impacts supply, and supply in turn impacts demand. its a constant circle, its not a one-way street. if there “werent a market” for a good or service then that good or service goes out of business… so what? should we keep propping up the typewriter industry with billions of dollars just because the home pc took the demand away from typewriters??
the truth is that only freedom in the economy will generate a reliable and accurate demand/supply/price data. consumers need to be free to take their own money, NOT have it stolen to give it to someone else, and spend it how they wish. thats it. if no one wants to buy a certain good or service, so what, then that good/service goes out of business.
the government is the cause of the distortion of supply/demand/price in the economy, and now its trying to ‘fix’ it by artificially propping up failing industries. it is central planning that has caused these industries (financial/auto/banks/homes) to become uncompetitive and to fail-- more central planning and socialist redistribution is not going to solve the problem.
how is a specific economic principle like “if you consume X then you had to produce X” a generalized statement that is useless? it is not general, it is economic fact. for there to be a dollar, someone had to generate that dollar. thats it. no way around that.
and i only brought up ‘poor people’ because i was responding to the other poster, and how this issue has been phrased here… of course there are “poor people”, but in general i think the term is all but useless, more of a rhetorical emotional/propogandist concept these days than anything else.
when did i ever defend bush on economics? bush is the reason we have a socialist like obama in office now. bush was a retard and a disaster economically, mostly because he GREW GOVERNMENT just like a liberal. however, he did not ‘take from middle and lower classes and give to upper classes’ as you claim-- i assume you are referring to the bush tax cuts. tax cuts did not TAKE anything from anyone and give them to the “upper class”, they only REDUCED THE AMOUNT OF TAXES EVERYONE PAYS, depending on how much you make. thats progressive, just like the tax system. if youre going to give tax cuts in a progressive tax system, you give more cuts to the people who pay more taxes. i dont agree with progressive taxation, but you cant have it both ways.
the fact is that bush did NOT “take” anything from middle or lower-class americans. he only reduced the amount of taxes that people pay, which means that he “gave” them MORE OF THEIR OWN MONEY BACK.
so is poverty and economic stagnation. true economic freedom, progress and wealth has only existed since the industrial revolution and the advent of capitalism.
it is you who does not understand economics. what do you think rich people do with their fortunes, keep them under their bed in a shoebox?
wealthy people always have their excess wealth invested somewhere. they earn interest on it by investing in the stock market/bonds/venture capital etc. if not for the money that is SAVED by rich people (i.e. NOT spent on consumption immediately) there would be no stock market, no banks, no economy. the fact that you assume rich people “dont use” their saved money shows that your knowledge of basic economics is pretty limited. you should put down marx and pick up the wall street journal, you might learn something about how modern american capitalism actually works, and how its possible for your job to give you a paycheck at all (which would be impossible if everyone just spent all their money on immediate consumption like you recommend, or if rich people didnt actually invest and USE their own money, which you deny)
thats right. and like i just said, the people who USE their money the most are the wealthiest individuals, because they have the MOST INCENTIVE to earn interest on their wealth. how do you think they got rich in the first place?
money is always “used” unless its in the shoebox under your bed. take all the excess wealth that you think is “unused” and pull it out of all the banks/bonds/stocks/hedge funds and see what happens, see if the financial sector can survive without the excess saved (“unused” as you call it) wealth that the rich reinvest on a daily basis. see if your local bank is still in business.
trickly down theory is wrong, i do not support it. it is a gross oversimplification. wealth does not trickle up or down, it moves from the “top” (business) to the “bottom” (employee) naturally via payrolls, just as it moves from the “bottom” to the “top” naturally, via consumption/work. also, since material products such as goods/services are also “wealth” as well, wealth actually DOES move “down” the economy all the time, just as much as it moves “up”. where do you think your refrigerator came from? such wealth as all the goods/services you own came from “above” you, from a business. you traded your dollars for an equivolent amount of material wealth. so nothing “trickles” from anywhere, its going up and down all the time via economic transactions of all sorts.
that is why reagan was just as much of an idiot as bush; they were wolves-in-conservative clothing, and their misunderstood and oversimplified views of economics have screwed up the public perception of true classical economic theory.
you did not address my point, that wealth is created by investing it at a return (interest rates) so that YOUR MONEY GROWS OVER TIME. you cant address this point because you know its right. of a rich person takes 1 million dollars and invests it in a mutual fund for 9% return, he has CREATED $90,000 in one year. that is REAL wealth creation, since at the same time that his account grew, the accounts of the firms he invested in grew as well, just like the consumers wealth grew since they bought a product/service from those firms that they wanted/needed… just like the overall economy grows by this same process.
dont talk to me about ignorance-- you dont seem to even understand what an interest rate is.
perhaps its the other way around, it seems… ill take the fact that all you have to say is that “rich people dont use their money” and that “we should all consume immediately and not save anything” as evidence that you dont know much, if anything about how the real american economy works, and the REAL source of wealth and wealth creation/growth.
maybe thats why youd rather quote other socialist EDITORIAL writers rather than try to make your own points, since when you respond (or rather TRY to respond) to my points its clear that you dont know anything about economic principles.
I disagree Mr. Great. Let me tell you why.
Even in the same pot, water in some places is more useful than water in others. Water near the roots nurishes the plant, water far away from the roots does not. But we’re stretching this analogy. You are maintaining dogmatically that there is absolutely no difference to the economy where the wealth is. That seems unlikely; you seem willing to admit that money in a shoe-box is less beneficial than money in a bank, right? So if we took the money from the person keeping it in a shoe-box, and put it in a bank, wouldn’t that improve things? We also have the economist from Moody’s and the Economist that PK cited that endorse redistribution. These are experts, they spend their lives running the numbers on things like this; they might be wrong, but their conclusions are hardly -worthy.
Now, shortly after “production drives consumption”, you acknowledge that “propping up the typewriter industry” wouldn’t create a demand for typewriters. Don’t those statements contradict each other? if production drives consumption, then putting money into the typewriter industry should drive the consumption of typewriters. If it doesn’t, then we can rule out that “production drives consumption” (A->B, ~B |- ~A).
Next, let’s look at the claim that “if you consume X then you had to produce X”. Babies consume for years without producing anything. So, you don’t need to produce X to consume X, QED. Again, it takes consumption to produce.
I think you also go astray with your claims about earning interest on investments. For one thing, most people have been losing money on their investments for the past year. Investing more money won’t change that. Assest are decreasing in value. What’s more, even if people are earning money from the market, it doesn’t mean that they are improving the market. If I win the lottery, I earn money; have I created? Payout doesn’t necessarily improve the market.
The history of the US and socialist and capitalist societies won’t really help you, I don’t think. The US has thrived, no doubt, and it is one of the more capitalist nations. However, it also had a lot going for it, much of it very socialist. For decades, enough land existed that everyone who wanted a plot could have land and extremely low cost. That’s an essentially socialist situation, where everyone starts on a highly equal playing field; during the revolution, multiple governments paid US workers to outfit their armies; Slavery enabled high productivity at very, very low cost; and other wars continued government investment in private industries. We’ve also got schools, police, social workers, tax collectors, garbage collectors, parks, airports, etc. etc. funded by government, and long have. And our progress, while good for productivity, has left us with lower average quality of life than many poorer societies.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very pro-market (so is Obama). But there are good theoretical and practical reasons why government intervention in the economy is a good thing. The government defines the market, by making laws, protecting some properties and rights over others, and establishing legal tender. Market Socialism can achieve Pareto efficiency, and has advantages over pure capitalist economies. The model is not without its criticisms, but neither is capitalism. The major point is that the ideas are economically sound.
Yes, and next they will probably say that freedom of speech only means that you are allowed to chat with your friends on a private basis inside your home. That decision is null and void because it is a tort to the constitution and all that it stands for. Those justices knew that when they wrote it. They are criminals, and should be arrested for treason.
I think you are underestimating how shitty our government is. Do you really think that things will continue the way they are except less of this, or less of that. You are making it sound like it will only be as bad as WWII rationing. What is going to happen is shitloads of Americans will lose their homes and starve on the streets. There won’t be any food in the grocery stores because the dollar won’t even buy food anymore. It will be like the Weimar Republic in 1930 where a wheel barrow full of cash equals a loaf of bread. What the government will do is call it a federal emergency, open up all of the FEMA camps (which they are mass building right now), and herd everybody in there by force under martial law. Likely they will have already confiscated everybody’s guns. We will all be shoved into concentration camps and forced to eat genetically modified ultra-processed foods cooked in aluminum pots/pans and forcefully given innoculations to “make sure nobody gets sick”. Then we will all start dying from malnutrition, and the government will tell us that the solution to our suffering is a new world order.
I tell you what, they will shoot me before that ever happens!
I can’t believe that! I am a Libertarian. Why do you want our troops to be used like pawns for the global oligarchy? All we are is the muscle for the NWO and Israel. I am FUCKING SICK OF FIGHTING ISRAEL’S WARS FOR THEM! FUCK ISRAEL! I HOPE HAMAS PULLS OFF A MIRACLE AND TAKES THEM OUT!
You want security? We need to get rid of the banking oligarchs. They are the biggest known threats to national security. Jefferson himself said so. We spend more on defense then the other 5 top defense spending nations in the world. How much fucking security do you need? SHEESH!
But I agree 100% on the socialists. We need to oust them. Unfortunately, our country is socialist.
The true Libertarians embody the principles of our founding fathers. Read my Franklin quote. That explains why we need less government. A free people will regulate themselves just like the free market does. Interference fucks it all up just like in the free market. I will take freedom over security any day, because only freedom will actually give me the security that I need. Even if the police did five times as good of job as they currently do, only I could stop my house from being robbed or my wife from being raped. That is why I will never give up my second amendment rights just for the sake that a few criminals MIGHT not be able to get guns because I sacrificed my liberty.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is why the smaller the government, the better. The less government, the less corruption. This includes criminal or otherwise. The cops should be only there to take out criminal gangs and arrest known criminals. Other then that, it is up to the people to protect themselves. That is part of life. If you can’t protect yourself then you get killed or taken advantage of. It is natural selection, and it happens in the wild as well. Having some large agency protect you leads to even bigger problems. Who will guard the guards? Who will protect you from the protectors? As soon as a position of power over others opens up, the criminals who covet such power line up in anticipation. That is why we need a smaller more limited government. People need to govern themselves to an extent. It has been so long that we were free that people have forgotten what freedom really means. Freedom is independence. If you can’t live independently then you will never be a free man. Period.
That is TOTAL BS! Nobody can legally overrule the constitution except through the process of amendment where a 3/4 majority of the states have to ratify the amendment. The whole point in writing the constitution was so that we would have a constitutional republic, not a democracy. The founding fathers thought democracy was trite and just as bad as monarchy. What is the difference between one tyrant or 1000 tyrants? Democracy is just mob rule. We don’t have mob rule in this country. Yes, there are SOME democratic processes where some things are voted on. But there are certain rights that cannot be taken away no matter how much you vote on them. You can’t vote to take my freedom of speech. You can’t vote to take my guns. You can’t vote to spy on me illegally, or force me to incriminate myself.
That is what makes a constitutional republic great and a democracy total shit.
YES! This gets to the heart of the economic problem! Everything our government has done thus far is just shuffling debt around. In order to improve the economy, rather then just shuffling debt around we need to bring new money in. The best way to do this is through technology since technology sells and earns the best profit. But next to that we need to produce goods. If we were to take some of this money and upgrade and re-open the steel mills in Pittsburgh then that would be a huge step in the correct direction. We are vastly in debt, so the proper thing to do is get off our asses and produce something, not add more debt!
I have been advocating this for some time. We could take all the banks out in one fell swoop! Then we could start from the bottom and build a new capitalist economy from the ground up. It is an EXCELLENT idea. The banks are the problems. We need to get rid of them.
DS,
Many of the founding fathers were conservatives: they favored the continued rule of the american aristocracy. Many were loyalists, but ultimately sided with the radicals and voted to throw off British power in order to maintain their privileged stations. That meshes perfectly with a constitutional republic, but not your contradictory support of a low-of-the-wild nation where you either protect yourself or have all your property stolen and ‘your’ women raped (your wife can’t defend herself?). What kind of ideal society is that? Sartrian freedom to self-destruct is really not much in the way of freedom.
The constitution only stands as long as it is supported by the people. The US was founded, lond before the Constitution or anything like it, on the consent of the governed. If the governed withhold their consent, the Constitution no longer weilds any force.
And, because the constitution must be interpreted to be applied, the Supreme Court has the authority to rule on the interpretation of the Constitution. They are the authority that determines what the language of the Constitution means. How can they be criminals?
(p.s., Can I make a friendly request? That you put your thoughts into one post, and take other replies into consideration when you reply to posts from days ago? It throws off the tempo of the discussion when someone posts eight replies to posts from last week. Thanks )
You are misunderstanding what I am saying. Regardless of whether or not it is the duty of the police to protect you, you STILL have to protect yourself. Even if you call the police the very second a criminal breaks into your home, the criminal is going to be able to hurt you and do whatever it is they intend long before the police get there. So I am not saying that is the way it should be, I am saying that is the way it IS. Yes, the founding fathers were all of different belief systems and backgrounds, but they all rallied around one cause that is still to this day the thing which defines our country: Freedom.
As for why the supreme justices should be arrested it is really quite simple. Though they were entrusted with those powers, they have abused them. The supreme court justices are supposed to not be swayed by politics at all, and they are supposed to interpret the constitution according to the framers’ intents. When they intentionally misrepresent the framers in such a manner as to alter the constitution in effect then they abused their power. Since the abuse entails an alteration of the document which gives license to govern the American people then it is treason. Sure they have the authority to do that, but they do not have the right to abuse their authority. The constitution itself is clear on this. Let me provide a more obvious example of how these abuses can really get carried away. Lets say I were an evangelist but I was also a supreme justice and I read the “freedom of religion” part of the first amendment and decided "well, most of the framers were Christians, so religion to them meant Christianity, so freedom of religion means that you are free to choose Christianity. Should I be allowed to make that decision? Isn’t that a blatant abuse of my authority? It would be no different then if a cop were arresting a woman, and he asked her to give him a blow job. He has the authority to ask a citizen to follow his orders, so therefore he has the authority to ask the woman to do that. If she does it without fighting or protesting it is consensual. But it is still an abuse of authority by the officer, and should be punished. Same with the supreme court justices, only worse since their abuses defile the constitution itself.
I know I posted too much but I am very passionate about these subjects. The more I read the more I had to type. I couldn’t help it!
But freedom is so ambiguous. For one thing, a large percentage of the founding fathers supported reconcilliation with Great Britain (including Ben Franklin). They wanted freedom from British abuses, but not freedom from Britain. Even those that wanted to sever ties with Britain didn’t all want a total democracy. John Adams favored a strong central government. The Constitution it self was written to replace the Articles of the Confederation, and a big part of what drove it was the aristocracy pushing for a central government through which they could maintain control. That was a large part of what the Federalists were after, freedom from rule by the “riotous mob”.
The difference between the Supreme Court and the police office who gets sexual favors is that the officer is getting something, so the incentives to abuse power are great. The justice who rules to include only Christianity under freedom of religion isn’t getting anything, he’s simply doing what he thinks is right. If three of his six fellow justices agree, then who’s to argue? The supreme court has made decisions like that. Look at the Dred Scott case: the court ruled that African decendents weren’t US citizens, which was clearly the thinking of many of the Founders. If the Supreme Court weren’t allowed to change their interpretation of the law in keeping with the times, we’d still be considering anyone of non-european ancestry as an alien. The process of informal ammendment is an accepted part of constitutional law, and has been practiced throughout US history.
I guess you can’t fault enthusiasm. Fair enough, DS, fair enough.
Yes, they wanted out from mob rule, but they still wanted to retain freedom and liberty so they established a constitutional republic which is a much better form of government then a democracy. I realize there were people who wanted to control the country right off the bat. That is why Patrick Henry “smelt a rat” and refused to attend the constitutional convention. Needless to say, if I had been alive back then I would not have been a “federalist”.
There is no difference between the police offer that asks for sexual favors and the supreme court justice that forwards his own causes. They are both abusing their powers, but the supreme court justice’s abuse is worse. The constitution is clear that political or religious motives are not supposed to enter into their decisions. So the fact that he “is doing what he thinks is right” is an abuse of his power. He isn’t supposed to “do what he thinks is right”, he is only supposed to decide what the framer’s intent was and go by that IF the constitution is not clear on the issue outright. If an evangelist judge makes a decision specifically for the purpose of spreading Christianity and getting rid of other religions, that is a flagrant abuse of power since it is obvious that the framers did not intend that. The same goes with “the tenth amendment does not enforce states rights”. That is BS and they know it. They are specifically saying otherwise out of political motivation.
As for that case, it was overturned by the 13th amendment which bans slavery. Justices now have to take that amendment into account as part of “the framer’s intent”.
There’s a difference between this example and the example where “an evangelist judge makes a decision specifically for the purpose of spreading Christianity”. If the case is ostensibly based in the perceived intent of the Founders, to call it treason is just to say you disagree with their interpretation. No supreme court decisions (that I know of) have relied on a justice’s assertion that they want to see XYZ, but on the constitution and the legal precedent. A lot of the time, what a justice thinks is right is going to color their decision, but that decision must be legally stated.
Of course not. They would be admitting to treason then. But just because they say something doesn’t mean I have to be a dumbass and believe them. There is such thing as lying. In the case of the evangelist supreme court justice that says religion = Christianity because that was the framers intent, he or she is obviously lying.
I disagree. How long did the government fund religion? McCarthyism, which targeted atheists among others, was only 50 years ago. That’s over 150 years when people sure seemed to believe that none of that violated the non-establishment clause. When you say that they are “obviously lying”, don’t you just mean that you think they’re so wrong that you can’t even conceive of how they could legitimately believe something so wrong? And isn’t that just to say that you disagree with their ostensible interpretation of the Constitution?
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