Romney on green cards

(as well as you) haven't gotten the memo.

Rightwing dimwits like to think that Keynes has been "totally discredited". What they haven't noticed is that what Keynes basically said was that the market wasn't perfect, and that what every economist who disagrees with him says is "Oh yes it is" because if the market isn't perfect, their economic models don't work - as they don't, but they do make predictions that suit people who've got a lot of money.

Since Keynes published his theories, other people - notably Daniel Kahneman (who has got a Nobel Prize in economics for his work) - have demonstrated in detail how and why the market is imperfect, but right wing nitwits don't like the consequences of taking this kind of work seriously and continue to ignore it.

y for that matter) is like me buying stuff on my credit card to raise my st andard of living. Works great until the first credit cardbillcomes due.

Wrong. Kenysian stimulus spending is the government borrowing money to create the illusion of economic activity, which persuades people with capital to invest it in productive enterprises, rather than leaving it under the mattess until the recession goes away. Only irrational idiots would fall for such a transparent trick, but we are - collectively - just such economic idiots. It works. It helps if the governemnt gives the stimulus money to people who can be relied on to spend it all - which is, in practice, the very poor - which maximises the Kenyesian multiplier

Right wing nitwits - as exemplified by the Tea Party - don't understand this and insist on directing any economiuc stimulus to people who will vote for them and fund their electoral campaigns. It's a waste of money, but right wing nitwits don't understand much and see all government spending as a pork barrels which are their's to exploit.

sinesses that provide value added in the form of products, services or inte llectual property. Government borrowing merely competes with capital that o therwise will go to private industry.

Except during a recession, when private capital stays safely under the mattress, until the government fools the potential investors into thinking that the economy is out of recession so that it seem to be worth investing again.

other liberal moron try's them again.

Keynesian pump-priming is scarcely only Obama's policy. It was started under Dubbya, at a time when every competent economist around the world was encouraging their governemnt to do the same. In the US it reversed the 1.6% per quarter decline in the US GDP within a few months, and has managed to sustain weak but persistent economc growth ever since then.

This isn't the success that a better directed stimulus pacakge could have achieved, but it isn't the failure that Hoover managed to engineer from 1929 to 1932, when the economy shrank by 6% per year -

Be careful what you wish for. Elect an idiot like Romney and the Tea Party clown car and you might live to regret it.

Debt isn't good prima facie, but " borrowing money to raise wealth in America (or any other country for that matter) is like me buying stuff on my credit card" is a pretty basic error.

As a historical example, the British have debt left over from the Napoleonic Wars. They don't pay it off because after a while, it becomes, I suppose, a tradition. the actual pound amounts are not that much.

For that matter, SFAIK, the US is still carrying bonds from WWII; the British aren't.

That's for sure. But in a climate where people have doubts about

that's much harder to show. *Right now*, it's not true - there's a glut of investment capital rotting in hedge funds. They've taken to speculating on commodities - *horrors*! and not putting it into productive investment because... well, nobody really seems to know.

That, and the fed paying interest on reserves ( IOR ) mean that we have a weird stag-flationey thing, without the "-flation" ( or with periods of deflation ).

(as well as you) haven't gotten the memo. Government borrowing money to rai se wealth in America (or any other country for that matter) is like me buyi ng stuff on my credit card to raise my standard of living. Works great unti l the first credit card bill comes due.

sinesses that provide value added in the form of products, services or inte llectual property. Government borrowing merely competes with capital that o therwise will go to private industry. This is why Obummer's policies have f ailed - and will ALWAYS fail if some other liberal moron try's them again.

Bill just makes all that stuff up. Opposite to Bill's narrative, Obama has been exactly directing most of that money into the pockets of the poor, now that he mentions it. They spend it, then it's gone. And Obama has focused a river of money directly at his favorite 1% too, e.g. Buffett, and all those green company guys: Solyndra, A123, Fisker, etc.

The only rescue for what Bill wished would happen is to invent some new alien, strawman, or super-natural power that thwarted Keynes' magic mojo. You know, like the Tea Party.

Maybe some day we'll jolt Bill into thinking about it more clearly.

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I am not quite so instudious as that. But somewhat foolishly overly depending on IMF's own press releases.

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s (as well as you) haven't gotten the memo. Government borrowing money to r aise wealth in America (or any other country for that matter) is like me bu ying stuff on my credit card to raise my standard of living. Works great un til the first credit card bill comes due.

businesses that provide value added in the form of products, services or in tellectual property. Government borrowing merely competes with capital that otherwise will go to private industry. This is why Obummer's policies have failed - and will ALWAYS fail if some other liberal moron try's them again .

What stuff? You appear to be commenting on soar2mor's reaction, not what I wrote in the post to which he is responding.

If he had, their incomes would have risen since he came to power. You've demonstrated that they have fallen.

The Republican majority in Congress has had quite a bit to do with that. Obama wanted to stop the Bush tax cuts for the rich, but didn't have the votes in Congress to make it happen.

There's nothing super-natural about the Tea Party - it does go in for fair bit of wishful thinking, a failing that James Arthur shares, but as an organisation it is depressingly human.

James Arthur does have these delusions. His own thinking is perfectly transparent - Republicans good, Democrats bad - if a trifle superficial. I'm susceptible to facts that don't fit James Arthur's world view. Thinking more clearly isn't going to make them go away.

Reminds me the party agit-prop agents of the old SovietUnion.

Yup. In the 70's, looking across the Iron Curtain--from a bright, gay, West German town full of flowers, cars, color, and life--into the empty, dull, lifeless, sad, gray East German sector of that same town, we saw a sign advertising how happy and successful the East Germans were.

That may be true for some large industries, but not for all businesses, esp ecially small ones. I hear constantly from small businessmen (and women) th at can't get financing for their businesses. And it is small businesses tha t will lead us out of this employment recession.

James Arthur fits that picture rather better.

This is the same James Arthur who told us the Obama's stimulus package isn't working, because the median US income isn't rising.

When you go to the government web-site that tells you the US median income, it also tells you that the income of the top 5% of the US income distribution is rising at about 5% per year, which is to say, Obama's stimulus package is working, but almost all the benefits are being creamed off by the top 5%; the peole who fund the Tea Party's electoral expenditure.

This means that the the stimulus package isn't going where it would stimulate the economy most effectively - poor people can be relied on to spend any money they get, which maximises the Keynesian multiplier

- but the Republican majority in Congress blocked Obama's attempt to repeal the Bush tax cuts, which would have been a small step in the right direction.

James Arthur likes to claim that I make stuff up, which doesn't happen to be true, and he's not above a little selective quotation on his own account.

His grip on the moral high ground is rather less than secure,

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I'm sure that engineers weren't the only people competing for house in Silicon valley, and that some people could still afford to hire expensive enngineers, so there certainly would still have been engineers in Silicon Valley - it just stopped being a good place for most start-ups.

It's depressing to see that you haven't yet mastered reasoning from facts to conclusions.

Sydney isn't cheaper than Nijmegen. The flat we live in here is comparable with the flat we still own in Nijmegen, but cost twice as much - admittedly, it's in a much more attractive location, and has a view of the harbour (and half the Opera House, from the extreme right- hand end of the balcony).

Sydney definitely isn't cheaper than San Francsico - in fact it is about 20% more expensive

This probably reflects the fact that Australia is exporting loads of coal and iron to China, and the US is importing loads of consumer durables from China, but at the moment you have opted for the cheap option.

Hardly. He is not the one trying to ignite class warfare. That seems to be your Party assignment.

No, but he's peddling misleading propaganda.

A bizarre misperception. I'm just pointing to the US figures on income distribution

which show (on page 8) that the top 5% of the income distribution got

This isn't exactly trying to ignite class warfare - and it were the US Cencus service would be guilty of the same crime.

It is suggesting that your system of government isn't working to the benefit of the bulk of the population, but it shouldn't take a war, or even a revolution, to fix that. I'm a Fabian by inclination (though I'm certainly not a member of the U.K. Fabian society, nor never have been) and would think that the current system of democratic representation in the US (flawed though it is) is perfectly capable of revising the tax system in a way that would distribute more of the national income to the less well off.

The US GINI index - at 45% - is way higher than that for most advanced industrial countires - closer to 30%

and your economy would almost certainly benefit if you could get it down a bit closer to those of your competitors.

Relecting Barak Obama would probably be a small step in the right direction, while electing Romey would be an equally small step in the wrong - far-right - direction. Neither choice involves any kind of war.

So what? Why do you care what others make? Perhaps you should also try to work more and smarter to make more money, too, instead of peddling your envy as some noble and worthy goal.

Besides, what is this "the top 5% of the income distribution got 5% more in 2011" business? They got it from whom? From the government, or they earned it themselves? This shows you to be a socialist who thinks that people's earnings belong to the "Big Collective" from which then they "get" whatever they end up keeping. I hope guys like you never get into any kind of position to actually have the power to implement your collectivist ideas. That's one good reason to send Obama packing, too.

Slowman is an unemployable leech. Work more? He could hardly work less. Posting here is as close as he's come to work in a decade.

The problem is that we *are* governed by socialists. Obama is just one of many.

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The big problem is information. Three levels of redundancy, breached-- - schools: a generation of The People don't understand their government, basic economics, or free enterprise. The administration promotes that $1 in food stamps is $2 to the economy, and Sloman believes it. - media: is advocating, not informing, not holding accountable. - the President, constantly misleading.

If the People knew, they'd throw it off. That was the Founder's plan. When the Peeps don't understand / know they're vulnerable to free-lunch schemers, like this one.

I don't care. I do think it strange that your Keynesian stimulus package is going to the group least likely to use the extra money to stimulate the economy immediately - this is a rather large tactical error.

I've applied for a couple of jobs in Sydney - I only got here ten days ago, and I'm only just out of jet-lag - and I'd be delighted if they used up some of time I currently devoting to trying to educate the retarded on this user group. Envy doesn't come into it. If we'd been prepared to relocate to the US we could have set up there rather than in Sydney, but who wants to live in in failing society?

The data doesn't say. Since the US governemnt is running a deficit- financed stimulus program, and the the top 5% are the only group in socoeity who are doing better, it seems likely that they got it from the government, but that won't be obvious to them.

A bizarre misconception. I am a socialist - of the modern European stamp (which is to say no kind of communist) - and I do believe that peoples' earnings depend both on the social and economic environemnt in which they work and their own efforts. This may justify collecting a proportion of their income in tax, but that's not the justification I rely on. I prefer the practical point of view which says that running the infrastructure of an advanced industrial society costs money, and the way you get that money is by collecting taxes.

The US isn't collecting enough in taxes, it's not collecting enough in taxes from the well-off, and it's spending a lot too much of what it collects on corporate welfare, mainly in the form of gross over- expediture on its defence forces (where it spends about as much as the rest of the world put together - rather than as much as it's two closest competitors, which is the historical norm). It's not spending enough on social security or primary and secondary education. It's also wasting a lot of money on a very expensive health care system, which costs half as much again per head as the most expensive foreign equivalents, and provides relatively poor health care for the 15% of the population who don't have health insurance, where the competitive systems offer universal health care.

You need to get your act together.

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At 69, I was certainly unemployable in the Netherlands. The only Sydney employment agency I've talked to says that this isn't true in Sydney, but I've had a couple of job application out for a few days now, and as yet have got no response, so he may have been lying.

I've got pension income coming from the thirty odd years that I was employed in industry, so I probably don't count as any kind of leech, but krw is a little too dim to get his head around the concept of an earned pension.

More or less true, but it rather ignores the fact that I never stopped applying for jobs over that decade, and even got a couple of job interviews before I turned 65, not that any of them turend into job offers

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Obama's no socialist.

Neither does James Arthur, but he's convinced that his flat earth economic ideas are right - rather than antiquted nonsense.

Nancy Pelossi actually said $1.88.

She might actually be right, but when the incomes of the lowest four quintiles of the income distribution are dropping rather than increasing, it would seem that anything that is being handed out in food stamps is being taken away by other mechanisms, rather defeating the point.

The media isn't advocating James Arthur's nonssense as enthusiastically as he'd like, which is a blessing, but they aren't pointing out that the Tea Party are a bunch of deranged lunatics pushing logn exploded ideas either, which means that they aren't doing their job properly either.

If less misleading than Romney.

The founding tax evaders wanted to set up a system where the poeple that owned the country ran the country - and they succeeded all to well, even though the poeple that own the country don't run it as well as they might to maximise their own advantage, let alone the advanatge of the country as a whole.

The current free-lunch scheme is the one that delivers almost all the benefits of the Keynsian stimulus package to the top 5% of the income distribution, who are the group least likely to spend it on stimulating the economy. They are doing very well at everybody's expense, even their own - because it's in theor long term interest to see the economy expanding at 3% per year, rather than the 1% per year which is all that the curent mis-directed stimulus package can achieve.

Why are you still looking for employment at 69? You should be retired by now, unless you goofed off all your life and didn't get enough savings for retirement. I am not surprised no employer is responding to your query. They probably figure you just looking for a sinecure job with a nice retirement package.