Presidential election, 2016

[pbrower2a]

(01-12-2017, 02:45 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-11-2017, 08:04 AM)Odin Wrote:

(01-10-2017, 09:22 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-10-2017, 05:53 PM)Odin Wrote: Wait "supply-side theory" is a credit theory? I thought it was a claim that supply was more important than demand as a limit to economic growth, which is why it is considered BS on the left since the demand side has been dominant since the Industrial Revolution? I always hear it claimed to be a mere justification for cutting taxes on the rich.

Supply side economics is about what the consequences of supply side stimulus are, and how they differ from demand side stimulus.  For example, demand side stimulus is inflationary and supply side stimulus is deflationary, which has implications for when they are most appropriately used and how they are most appropriately coordinated with monetary policy.

The purest forms of supply side tax cuts are for everyone who pays taxes:  examples are the Bush tax rebates of 2001 and the bipartisan temporary Social Security tax cut from 2011-2012 inclusive.

The whole "for the rich" thing is a red herring that is pushed by various factions for political reasons unrelated to economic theory.  The left pushes it to try to prevent the use of supply side stimulus since they'd rather have demand side stimulus to increase the size of government.  And certain segments of "the rich", specifically investors, push the myth that it's about capital gains tax cuts because they want the right to focus the tax cuts on their taxes rather than on taxes on the general population.

Thanks!

I'm happy to see Warren put up a clean summary of his views.  I just wouldn't confuse Warren's viewpoint, however much or little merit it might have, with what you read in the main stream press or hear from politicians.  While the above is a respectable position, it is not a good match for how others talk to everyman about economics.  Few have put enough effort into economics and politics as Warren, so most reporters and politicians don't try to express the above.  Judging from the comments of some real economics guys, an awful lot of politicians and press aren't just talking down, they really believe in the everyman version of things.  In short, they haven't a clue.

There are a couple of questionable motives involved in the above.  One suggests that the left wants to increase the size of government rather than provide effective services that will please and attract voters.  I'd consider this motivation to be propaganda from the right.  This isn't to say there aren't empire builders in the federal bureaucracy.  There are.  This isn't to say that the empire building got way out of hand towards the end of the Great Society era.  Leave any party and philosophy in charge for too long and it becomes corrupt.  However, the typical blue guy has no great interest in bloating this or that bureaucracy.  They just want results.  If I were starting some sort of mythical common sense party, I'd make trimming any bloat a non-partisan goal that ought to be welcomed from both left and right.

"Supply" is no longer the problem. We can buy all the bric-a-brac from cheap-labor countries that anyone could possibly want. Does America become a better place by becoming a cheap-labor country? I doubt it. Many of us are not made to do mind-numbing toil to create stuff that simply ends up in a landfill. Humanity has won the struggle of production except in the most isolated parts of the world, and that is more a question of access to markets  than to potential productivity.

The problem in the American  economics is mal-distribution of the fruits of economic efforts. It is as if an economic elite has determined that the rest of Humanity exists solely to indulge that elite. It effectively imposes private taxes in the form of monopoly profits -- and now effectively denies us representation or even service by the Government (or seems intent on such).

Donald Trump and the Reactionary Party majorities in both Houses of Congress offer a solution to the distress that extreme inequality of economic result -- even more inequality of result. It's as if people with lung cancer are told to smoke or people with cirrhosis are told to have some more booze. Watch the GINI coefficients.

Quote:There is also a view that the nature of the deficit doesn't matter.  Some propose that the blue dislike of tax breaks for the rich is just propaganda, with no economic truth.  While this might be true in Warren's understanding of things, I disagree.  If the corporates can already get enough investment money to keep their companies afloat, if the investment class has enough money to make good investments, and extensive supply side stimulus keeps being poured into the top of the economy, the investment class ends up making bad investments, dot com stocks, housing debt, because you have to put the money somewhere.  The result is often a bubble and a bust.  Supply side stimulus can be over done, should be a part of a balanced policy.  It should not be pushed for the sake of pushing it any more than you grow a bureaucracy for the sake of bigger bureaucracies.  There come times to stop stimulating and buy down the deficit.

Sometimes the best that anyone can hope for is that deficits quit growing with respect to the population.  Sometimes, as in a war or a depression, huge deficits are inevitable.  If one has huge deficits to sponsor a speculative bubble, as under Dubya, then beware the ensuing financial panic and the economic meltdown that ensure. Any 'prosperity' that Donald Trump is likely to promote is of that type.

Quote:On an entirely different front, I posted recently about my prior exchanges with a Christian Fundamentalist.  As with many world views, his way of looking at things involved basic truths which were unquestionable.  In this case, the literal truth of the bible is a good example.  He also had blind spots which had to be maintained as otherwise his basic truths would fall.  A good example for fundamentalists is the rejection of evolution.  You just have to reject it, or one's world view collapses like a house of cards.  The amount of doublethink involved in denying evolution seems quite absurd to those with different values systems.

It is telling that Catholic schools teach evolution. The Catholic Church has enough problems keeping youth faithful, and having to support the least defensible, least relevant, and having the least moral teaching would make a shambles of objective teaching necessary to promote the success of Catholic youth in the real world.  Protestant fundamentalists may be convinced that no human suffering and no ignorance is excessive so long as people are spared the menace of Hell that awaits rationalists and others who believe 'evil'.

Doublethink is necessary for people who either choose to or are compelled to believe absurdity.  

Quote:More recently I had an exchange with a modern Communist.  Again, there were basic unquestionable principles, that revolution was the way to change cultures, that said revolutions come in a given order.  Again, we got involved in a blind spot.  To cling to classic Marx, he seemed to think he had to deny the famines that occurred under Stalin and Mao.  Again, the amount of double think and twisted logic involved was quite clear to most everyone not a Communist.  It is fairly easy to see the other guy's blind spots, sometimes impossible to perceive one's own.

I remember the fellow. I too argued with him, even using the position of the contemporary Communist Party of the USA that now recognizes Stalin as a murderous criminal. But this is where the True Believer of Eric Hoffer  comes into play: extremists are far more alike, and their cultural veneer is easy to shed. It should not surprise us too severely that he has gone from admiring Enver Hoxha to admiring Donald Trump (see Jacques Doriot, an ex-Commie who became a leader of Vichy) or that after World War II, fascist thugs became Commie thugs.  A liberal like me is far more likely to keep his culture intact but align with anyone who supports  humanistic rule of law. We are not likely to ever use gangsters to achieve our political ends.

Quote:After watching Mikebert's posts for many years, I have him pegged as having a scientific world view.  He is very much into data points and math.  I was pleased and amused watching his recent economic exchanges with Warren.  I haven't got the economic background to match Warren in the details of an mathematical economic exchange, any more than I could out Bible quote the Fundamentalist.  The core of my worldview and my areas of study center elsewhere.  However, what I saw was someone hitting one of the other guy's blind spots.  Even with two people whose view of truth was deeply involved in numbers and data, there was an inability to communicate.

When it gets to personalities and core values, there are no data points. Churchill needed no scientific study to recognize that Hitler was completely untrustworthy even if both shared respect for some traditional values. Trump isn't Hitler, and might not be able to get away with as much even if he were, but I catch patterns of behavior that scare the Hell out of me. I remember the juvenile delinquents in high school, and I knew enough to avoid them. They had nothing to teach me, and they weren't going to learn anything from me.  I enjoyed college in part because I never had to deal with them.. but could meet people who had tales to tell worth listening to.

Donald Trump shows the arrogance, the hurt feelings, and the cruelty of people that I wish that I might never see again. But now the juvenile delinquent who has simply gotten elderly is now the all-powerful leader of the world's greatest military power and in command of the biggest economic enterprise to have ever existed -- the federal Government.