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JeffersonClay posted:Free trade is the core of the neoliberal ideology, except when it's not. It's at the core of it, but that doesn't mean it's synonymous with it. e: For example, austerity is another common feature of neoliberalism, yet LBJ was pretty far from being an austerity hawk. Majorian fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 03:04
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Majorian posted:It's at the core of it, but that doesn't mean it's synonymous with it. Obama's and Clinton's years in government saw higher spending on social services as a % of GDP than LBJ's. They were pretty far from being austerity hawks, too. And yet they are the face of the neoliberal menace.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:25
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JeffersonClay posted:Obama's and Clinton's years in government saw higher spending on social services as a % of GDP than LBJ's. They were pretty far from being austerity hawks, too. And yet they are the face of the neoliberal menace. Guess who pushed for and signed the loving laws that led to those social services? You're trying to equivocate LBJ with Obama and Clinton, but for gently caress's sake the latter two were just administering the laws that the former enacted. What's so hard for you to understand that it's about the degree of Hillary's embrace of neoliberalism that people in this thread are disgusted about? The fact that other leaders had some general policies in common does NOT make them the same!
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Dec 28, 2016 03:43
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MooselanderII posted:Guess who pushed for and signed the loving laws that led to those social services? You're trying to equivocate LBJ with Obama and Clinton, but for gently caress's sake the latter two were just administering the laws that the former enacted. What's so hard for you to understand that it's about the degree of Hillary's embrace of neoliberalism that people in this thread are disgusted about? The fact that other leaders had some general policies in common does NOT make them the same! LBJ was good for passing the great society laws meaning the federal government spent more money on the poor. Clinton and Obama were good for spending even more money on the poor than LBJ did. None of them are bad, and "neoliberalism" is a nonsense narrative that disintigrates under the slightest scrutiny.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:49
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JeffersonClay posted:LBJ was good for passing the great society laws meaning the federal government spent more money on the poor. Clinton and Obama were good for spending even more money on the poor than LBJ did. None of them are bad, and "neoliberalism" is a nonsense narrative that disintigrates under the slightest scrutiny. You seriously don't think the domestic priorities of the Democratic party have changed since 1968?
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Dec 28, 2016 03:56
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I don't pretend to be able to do intertemporal telepathy so I just look at policy, actions, and other measurable outcomes.
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Dec 28, 2016 03:58
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JeffersonClay posted:I don't pretend to be able to do intertemporal telepathy so I just look at policy, actions, and other measurable outcomes. Then your analysis of such actions and outcomes is pretty bad if you can't detect any meaningful difference between the 1960s Democratic party and the party today.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:02
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MooselanderII posted:Then your analysis of such actions and outcomes is pretty bad if you can't detect any meaningful difference between the 1960s Democratic party and the party today. There are a lot of differences in the policies they advocate, but those differences sure don't support the "neoliberalism" narrative.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:04
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The concept has been explained to you in detail several times now. It's not our fault if you choose to be willfully ignorant on the matter.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:16
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JeffersonClay posted:Obama's and Clinton's years in government saw higher spending on social services as a % of GDP than LBJ's. They were pretty far from being austerity hawks, too. And yet they are the face of the neoliberal menace. This is intellectually dishonest, there are far more old people taking Social Security and people on SSDI now than there were in the 1960s . 12.5% of the United States population received Social Security benefits in 1970 and 18.5% of the population did in 2014. Also you're ignoring the time when the only thing that prevented Obama from cutting Social Security and Medicaid was the Tea Party throwing a fit that they weren't cutting it enough. For all you talk about people rewriting history in here you have a habit of ignoring things that don't fit your narrative.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:18
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He's being loving disingenuous. gently caress it I'll just quote the Wikipedia page cause that's all he's worth is the minute it took me to look that up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism Wikipedia posted:Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism)[1] refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.[2]:7 These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The implementation of neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with the financial crisis of 2007–08 as one of the ultimate results.[10][11][12][13][14]
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Dec 28, 2016 04:30
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rscott posted:This is intellectually dishonest, there are far more old people taking Social Security and people on SSDI now than there were in the 1960s . 12.5% of the United States population received Social Security benefits in 1970 and 18.5% of the population did in 2014. Also you're ignoring the time when the only thing that prevented Obama from cutting Social Security and Medicaid was the Tea Party throwing a fit that they weren't cutting it enough. For all you talk about people rewriting history in here you have a habit of ignoring things that don't fit your narrative. If you're talking about austerity, which was the claim , looking at the budget in terms of GDP is the only honest way to make comparisons. readingatwork posted:The concept has been explained to you in detail several times now. It's not our fault if you choose to be willfully ignorant on the matter. Every explanation is different. For a long time it was "free trade is the core of neoliberalism" but whoops LBJ and Carter were both free traders so lets try again!
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Dec 28, 2016 04:30
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KomradeX posted:He's being loving disingenuous. gently caress it I'll just quote the Wikipedia page cause that's all he's worth is the minute it took me to look that up I'm well aware of the actual economic definition of neoliberalism, here I'll quote myself using it in this very thread. JeffersonClay posted:Yes he was also talking about gutting regulations, massive tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, repealing the ACA, school vouchers, deporting immigrants, global warming is a hoax, and privatizing infrastructure. JeffersonClay posted:Free trade isn't any more a core component of neoliberalism than gutting regulations or lowering taxes, sorry. Repeating yourself ad nauseum does not make it so. JeffersonClay posted:I'm not brushing it aside, I'm suggesting it's not more important than the other elements like cutting regulations, cutting taxes and privatization, which it isn't. I'd argue it's the least harmful of the four, but regardless it isn't worse than the other three combined. The problem is the actual economic definition of neoliberalism makes grouping Reagan and Obama under a convenient umbrella impossible.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:41
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It's almost like LBJ was still an advocate of social reforms that would minimize the negative impact of free trade on Americans, while the Democrats post Reagan have given up on the concept of the New Deal and universal programs for Americans
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Dec 28, 2016 04:42
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Democrats after Reagan were and are willing to spend more money on social services than LBJ ever did.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:49
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JeffersonClay posted:If you're talking about austerity, which was the claim , looking at the budget in terms of GDP is the only honest way to make comparisons. When the biggest source of spending on social services is locked in and is/was known as a third rail of politics simplistic analysis like this doesn't tell the whole story. Rhetorically speaking both Clintons and Obama borrow heavily from neoliberal concepts like a balanced budget being an important thing to strive for, and the federal debt as some sort of short to medium term problem that needs to be addressed over the needs of so many other things. Both economically speaking prioritize lower inflation over economic stimulus, which is why we get dumbshit monetary stimulus plans like QE over actual economic stimulus. There's the fundamental faith in markets to efficiently provide services like schooling and health care which harm the poor while lining the pockets of their donor class. These are all policies that benefit the already wealthy over people who own very little or are in debt.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:52
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not everything comes down to the gdp. this is why the democrats lost: they ignore material effects of economics for the everyday person and policies that actually affect them (low wages, income disparity) in favor of specific measures they can point to and say that things are going better like the gdp going up and spending staying apace even when general economic confidence and satisfaction are plummeting.
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Dec 28, 2016 04:55
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JeffersonClay posted:Democrats after Reagan were and are willing to spend more money on social services than LBJ ever did. You do realize that absent a repeal of the laws enabling those programs, that spending is NOT discretionary?
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Dec 28, 2016 04:56
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rscott posted:When the biggest source of spending on social services is locked in and is/was known as a third rail of politics simplistic analysis like this doesn't tell the whole story. Long-run budget stability is an important thing to strive for, Keynes was not a neoliberal. And LBJ was highly concerned with balanced budgets, too, agreeing to benefits cuts along with tax increases in a grand bargain to balance the budget (just like the neoliberal Obama was planning!) quote:Both economically speaking prioritize lower inflation over economic stimulus, which is why we get dumbshit monetary stimulus plans like QE over actual economic stimulus. No that's the republicans. Obama wanted more fiscal stimulus but couldn't get it through the senate. QE wasn't as good as actual fiscal stimulus, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing. Also QE was explicitly designed to promote some inflation, as were low interest rates. The idea was to keep doing them until some inflation appeared which would signal demand had recovered. I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. quote:There's the fundamental faith in markets to efficiently provide services like schooling and health care which harm the poor while lining the pockets of their donor class. These are all policies that benefit the already wealthy over people who own very little or are in debt. Anyone who's not on the full communism now train believes (regulated) markets can efficiently provide some services.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:07
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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/813945096269860866 Trump has already saved the economy!
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Dec 28, 2016 05:08
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JeffersonClay posted:Obama's and Clinton's years in government saw higher spending on social services as a % of GDP than LBJ's. They were pretty far from being austerity hawks, too. And yet they are the face of the neoliberal menace. Reagan and both Bushes both oversaw higher spending on social services as a % of GDP than LBJ and FDR. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending Does that mean that they were bigger supporters of the welfare state than pre-1980 Democrats?
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Dec 28, 2016 05:16
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MooselanderII posted:You do realize that absent a repeal of the laws enabling those programs, that spending is NOT discretionary? Yes and without Democrats defending them the republicans would have repealed them. Fiction posted:not everything comes down to the gdp. this is why the democrats lost: they ignore material effects of economics for the everyday person and policies that actually affect them (low wages, income disparity) in favor of specific measures they can point to and say that things are going better like the gdp going up and spending staying apace even when general economic confidence and satisfaction are plummeting. You've totally missed the point here. When you're making comparisons about spending/austerity over periods of time, you need to account for the growth of the economy. Clinton and Obama presided over budgets that spent significantly more on social services than LBJ, even correcting for the larger total budget and economy at the time. If we ignore GDP, LBJ looks even worse.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:22
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JeffersonClay's arguments are basically what happens when someone is biased in favor of the status quo and only exhibits strong skepticism towards other ideas. The skepticism isn't itself a bad thing, but it always seems to be aimed at things that deviate from the status quo. It's true that you can't really prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular leftist economic policy will have positive effects, but that's the case for any significant complex change to the status quo. A proper analysis must also involve looking at the harm caused by the status quo instead of merely looking at the potential harm of any changes and using that as an argument against them. edit: btw here is a pretty nice wikipedia article that sums up changes to Democrats in the last couple decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 05:25
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The point of QE was to firm up the bottom lines of financial institutions with tbonds so the next slightest market shock didn't take the whole system down. If it was meant to loosen up lending and stimulate the economy, it didn't do a very good job of it considering the number of banks who did what I said above! Whole point is that it's a supply side tactic. Democrats cut social spending as part of the sequester (b-b-but the mean ole Republicans made them) because they completely bought into republican framing on the national budget and debt because any minute now that hyper inflation is gonna be right around the corner! Leads me to my next point that Keynes wasn't writing in the time of fiat currencies being the name of the day. He also wasn't considering the material circumstances of the people participating in the economy and notions of things like economic equality. LBJ may have cut social service spending but he was operating in a paradigm where the top tax rate on income was literally twice what is now. Back in 1966 the Democrats hadn't bought into Republican framing on economic issues for 30+ years so there was a bit of room for give and take. Now social services are barely functioning in many cases because their funding had been frozen for years or cut to the bone in the name of making compromises with Republicans. Yet you want to treat these situations as precisely equivalent because of some surface similarities? Give me a break.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:38
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Suckthemonkey posted:Reagan and both Bushes both oversaw higher spending on social services as a % of GDP than LBJ and FDR. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending Does that mean that they were bigger supporters of the welfare state than pre-1980 Democrats? It means their governments materially supported the welfare state more than pre-1980's democrats, sure.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:39
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JeffersonClay posted:Every explanation is different. For a long time it was "free trade is the core of neoliberalism" but whoops LBJ and Carter were both free traders so lets try again! OK, fine I'll explain it again. The reason the term is used a bit differently by different people is because it 's used to contrast two sets of historical political attitudes rather than describe a fully-realized political philosophy. It describes the shift in thinking that occurred around the 80's/90's from New Deal economics to more free market based approaches. Free trade was not the only thing that defined neoliberalism but a belief in it's fundamental good was certainly a core feature and reoccurring theme. Ytlaya posted:JeffersonClay's arguments are basically what happens when someone is biased in favor of the status quo and only exhibits strong skepticism towards other ideas. The skepticism isn't itself a bad thing, but it always seems to be aimed at things that deviate from the status quo. It's true that you can't really prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular leftist economic policy will have positive effects, but that's the case for any significant complex change to the status quo. A proper analysis must also involve looking at the harm caused by the status quo instead of merely looking at the potential harm of any changes and using that as an argument against them. Yeah, this is a mistake a lot of people make. You don't really need to be skeptical of outside ideas and people you already mistrust since you will do so by instinct without trying. It's your friends and allies that will (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) get you to believe in bullshit.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:40
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rscott posted:The point of QE was to firm up the bottom lines of financial institutions with tbonds so the next slightest market shock didn't take the whole system down. If it was meant to loosen up lending and stimulate the economy, it didn't do a very good job of it considering the number of banks who did what I said above! I think you're confusing QE and bailouts. quote:Whole point is that it's a supply side tactic. Democrats cut social spending as part of the sequester (b-b-but the mean ole Republicans made them) because they completely bought into republican framing on the national budget and debt because any minute now that hyper inflation is gonna be right around the corner! No, QE was focused on stimulating demand, as were negative interest rates. Democrats agreed to the sequester because shutting down the government is real dumb. quote:Leads me to my next point that Keynes wasn't writing in the time of fiat currencies being the name of the day. He also wasn't considering the material circumstances of the people participating in the economy and notions of things like economic equality. LBJ may have cut social service spending but he was operating in a paradigm where the top tax rate on income was literally twice what is now. Back in 1966 the Democrats hadn't bought into Republican framing on economic issues for 30+ years so there was a bit of room for give and take. Now social services are barely functioning in many cases because their funding had been frozen for years or cut to the bone in the name of making compromises with Republicans. Yet you want to treat these situations as precisely equivalent because of some surface similarities? Give me a break. Goldbuggery, nonsense about Keynes being unconcerned with inequality, special pleading for LBJ and circular reasoning about neoliberalism... this is not convincing in any way.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:48
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It's the exact opposite of goldbuggery actually. When you are the global reserve currency and your economy makes up about a 6th of the entire world's economy traditional "rules" about GDP to debt ratios and printing money don't apply.
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Dec 28, 2016 05:55
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Ytlaya posted:JeffersonClay's arguments are basically what happens when someone is biased in favor of the status quo and only exhibits strong skepticism towards other ideas. The skepticism isn't itself a bad thing, but it always seems to be aimed at things that deviate from the status quo. It's true that you can't really prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a particular leftist economic policy will have positive effects, but that's the case for any significant complex change to the status quo. I disagree, it is possible to use economics to prove leftist policies will have positive effects. That's exactly what happened over the past 20 years with the minimum wage-- research changed entrenched attitudes. What bothers me is people asserting that Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman have the same ideology because they're too ignorant of the issues to realize how absurd that is. readingatwork posted:OK, fine I'll explain it again. The reason the term is used a bit differently by different people is because it 's used to contrast two sets of historical political attitudes rather than describe a fully-realized political philosophy. It describes the shift in thinking that occurred around the 80's/90's from New Deal economics to more free market based approaches. Free trade was not the only thing that defined neoliberalism but a belief in it's fundamental good was certainly a core feature and reoccurring theme. Yes, it's very clear people are using the term without a rigorous definition to push a half-baked historical analysis. They're also using it to identify and attack people they don't agree with in the present day. It's pretty bad.
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Dec 28, 2016 06:01
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If we're framing a little minimum wage as leftist policy then leftism is the word that loses all meaning in this conversation, not Neoliberalism lmao
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Dec 28, 2016 06:09
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rscott posted:It's the exact opposite of goldbuggery actually. When you are the global reserve currency and your economy makes up about a 6th of the entire world's economy traditional "rules" about GDP to debt ratios and printing money don't apply. I apologize for misidentifying the type of bad economics you were pushing, but this is still wrong.
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Dec 28, 2016 06:09
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like is Paul Krugman as far left as we're supposed to go? Is that the acceptable frame of economic discourse, Friedman and Krugman?
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Dec 28, 2016 06:16
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rscott posted:If we're framing a little minimum wage as leftist policy then leftism is the word that loses all meaning in this conversation, not Neoliberalism lmao The minimum wage is leftist policy, insofar as market interventions designed to help the poor are leftist policies.
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Dec 28, 2016 06:19
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rscott posted:like is Paul Krugman as far left as we're supposed to go? Is that the acceptable frame of economic discourse, Friedman and Krugman? I don't care what policies you want to advocate, I just don't want you to conflate two widely divergent economists when doing so.
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Dec 28, 2016 06:20
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When you start classifying government programs "market interventions" you've already conceded the entire loving argument to the right.
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Dec 28, 2016 06:28
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JeffersonClay posted:The minimum wage is leftist policy, insofar as market interventions designed to help the poor are leftist policies. OK now that you've described every politician in support of the 40 hour work week as an economic leftist what exactly are we supposed to learn here? Higsian posted:When you start classifying government programs "market interventions" you've already conceded the entire loving argument to the right. I guess the point is to redefine the center way to the right and pretend like it was always there and democrats definitely didn't move to the right economically speaking over the last 30 years rscott fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 06:29
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Higsian posted:When you start classifying government programs "market interventions" you've already conceded the entire loving argument to the right. Nah rscott posted:OK now that you've described every politician in support of the 40 hour work week as an economic leftist what exactly are we supposed to learn here? The minimum wage is leftist policy. Politicians can support leftist policies without necessarily being leftists. quote:I guess the point is to redefine the center way to the right and pretend like it was always there and democrats definitely didn't move to the right economically speaking over the last 30 years And what is the evidence they did? LBJ was a free trader concerned with balancing the budget. Jimmy Carter was a free trader concerned with balancing the budget. loving FDR was a free trader concerned with balancing the budget. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 06:31
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JeffersonClay posted:loving FDR was a free trader concerned with balancing the budget. I don't know anything about his trade policies, but saying he was concerned with balancing the budget doesn't sound like a fair description of FDR. He campaigned on it in 1932 when anything else was considered anathema, but said (see https://fdrlibrary.org/budget ): FDR posted:To balance our budget in 1933 or 1934 or 1935 would have been a crime against the American people. To do so we should either have had to make a capital levy that would have been confiscatory, or we should have had to set our face against human suffering with callous indifference. When Americans suffered, we refused to pass by on the other side. Humanity came first. It talks about how he flirted with trying the balance the budget again due to Morgenthau in 1937, caused a recession in the process, then backed off afterward. Direct question: FDR went against financial orthodoxy and started a bunch of deficit-powered federal spending programs out of thin air. These programs didn't exist previously; he expanded the scope of the federal government and its capacity for spending. LBJ did similar things. The laws that created these programs were written so that they expanded with population growth, which obviously increased with time. Their fiscal programs were very expansionary. Reagan came decades after, after spending levels had increased several fold with population, and cut welfare expenditures per GDP by 1/3. Do you think that makes Reagan a friendlier president to the welfare state than FDR or LBJ? Edited for clarification. Suckthemonkey fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 06:55
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To be fair, the Democrats did move to the right in the 90s. Third way democrats were a thing, a reaction to Reagan's dominance, but no one is running as a third way democrat at this point.
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Dec 28, 2016 07:02
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Majorian posted:Because the Dems are at this point a few steps from political oblivion. Survival is the primary imperative for the Democratic Party, and the way things have been going, they're not going to survive under the old model.
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Dec 28, 2016 07:46
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