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Hey everyone, thank you so much for the contributions in this thread. It's been extremely informative. Here's a presentation from an MMT economist talking about MMT, Green New Deal, and Jobs Guarantee https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2215506248664842&id=100006164658767 Here's the slides from the presentation https://t.co/ysycBcjUGD
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Jan 28, 2019 23:46
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Dead Reckoning posted:Because poverty is isn't an existential threat. If the relationship between spending and inflation is abstract, how do you convince elected representatives who barely understand how cell phones work to rein in their spending? In order to use MMT productively we would need to make the relationship between spending (of various kinds) and inflation reasonably concrete. If we can't, we might as well keep our current system, or pick programs to fund/cut by throwing darts. Then we we would need to ingrain that relationship in voter consciousness, which is non-trivial in a world where many people don't understand, say, marginal tax brackets. If that concrete relationship is established, it gives a new (ideally more true-to-reality) model for how to evaluate the costs of programs or taxation. Perhaps some social programs become more desirable / politically feasible under that accounting, but you still need to see the numbers first. People shouldn't blindly say that MMT gives the gov't total carte blanche to fund their preferred social agenda, but that does seem to be happening anyways.
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Jan 29, 2019 00:53
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CrypticTriptych posted:If we can't, we might as well keep our current system, or pick programs to fund/cut by throwing darts. Or, y'know, fund the things we need? People are dying of starvation so fund food programs. We're behind in education so fund education. Our healthcare is poo poo so fund healthcare. Seems pretty straightforward to me...
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Jan 29, 2019 02:46
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If there was broad agreement on what we "needed" to spend money on at what level and how much we were willing to pay in taxes to achieve it, it really wouldn't matter what macroeconomic theory we were choosing to use to describe it now would it?
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Jan 29, 2019 03:40
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MixMastaTJ posted:Healthcare isn't a "supply/demand" issue like Fig Newtons. If I want a Fig Newtons and the store is out I buy off brand cookies. If I have a gunshot wound and can't get a doctor, I die. Well, how many people are getting shot and need trauma surgery? Probably few enough that having that being a paid-for thing will not use up the capacity of trauma surgeons, who are just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. A better example would be this: Someone has asthma, and getting them a "free" visit to a physician is using spare capacity because we have enough physicians to consult with people about asthma. Our supply can meet the demand. But could we send everyone with basic asthma to consult with a pulmonologist? Probably not, because right now we have a capacity of 12,000 pulmonologists in the US, and 24 million people with asthma. My point wasn't to argue specifically about medicare for all, but to point out that creating money doesn't do anything about the fact that there is a limited supply of something. I actually have a graduate degree in education policy, so I can give you a better example from education: There is no (or little) marginal cost for putting students in a classroom, once you have started a class. If you have a university classroom with 20 seats in it, and you have 10 of those seats filled, it costs little to fill them all up. But then when you have the 21st student, and you can't fit them in the classroom (or, more likely in a higher education setting, the professor doesn't have time to read their papers and help them individually) , then you have run out of supply, and you need to hire another professor and start another class. But if the professor is teaching, say, Japanese at the University of Wyoming, that supply is exhausted. I feel that the two largest economic problems for young people right now are health care and higher education, and both of these are expensive because they have a limited supply of trained people requiring the service, and that while there is some ability to "create money" to pay for the existent supply of labor, at some point it runs out. We might also be having an argument about a fact/value distinction. When I say "Not everyone can have unlimited healthcare", I am not debating at all whether there is a moral right to it, whether it is a human right, whether people "deserve" it...I am stating a fact that thinking something is a moral right doesn't make it physically exist. I personally believe that everyone morally deserves basic health care and education, but I know there are some factual limits on the extant to which people can have access to pulmonologists or Japanese professors. If you can't understand that printing money doesn't make pulmonologists or Japanese professors appear out of thin air, I don't know what else I can say?
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Jan 29, 2019 03:49
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Dead Reckoning posted:These are not universally accepted or empiricly proven. What, that income inequality is bad for the economy? Yes it is. CrypticTriptych posted:In order to use MMT productively we would need to make the relationship between spending (of various kinds) and inflation reasonably concrete. If we can't, we might as well keep our current system, or pick programs to fund/cut by throwing darts. But it's not concrete now.... Why would it have to be concrete under MMT, which again by the way is just describing how things already function? What do you mean might as well keep our current system? The Fed has been doing quantitative easing for a decade. CrypticTriptych posted:People shouldn't blindly say that MMT gives the gov't total carte blanche to fund their preferred social agenda, but that does seem to be happening anyways. I don't think anyone is saying that except for a couple people propping up the argument so they can dispute it. If your main objection is that people are idiots and our representatives suck well sure but by that logic might as well never try to improve the way anything works ever. People don't understand marginal tax brackets because our education system has been a gutted piece of poo poo for decades (by design) not because humans are just too stupid to get it. glowing-fish posted:. If you can't understand that printing money doesn't make pulmonologists or Japanese professors appear out of thin air, I don't know what else I can say? I mean... what a strange conclusion. Free education demonstrably produces more doctors and cheaper healthcare IE the rest of the modern world outside the USA. Of course you can't just buy skilled labor but you can create conditions more conducive to social mobility. COMRADES fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 03:58
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e: q is not e
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Jan 29, 2019 04:00
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You can put money into making more medical professionals and teaching staff and improving conditions for both helps greatly with retention of ones you train. Lack of supply is lack of investment, also solved by spending money. You can specifically incentivize particular careers by mandating the creation of schools for them and offering generous packages for enrollment. Also in the short term you can absolutely buy labour via immigration though you should look to create domestic supplies too because it isn't the job of the rest of the world to staff your own systems because you're too stingy. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 04:05
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Dead Reckoning posted:If there was broad agreement on what we "needed" to spend money on at what level and how much we were willing to pay in taxes to achieve it, it really wouldn't matter what macroeconomic theory we were choosing to use to describe it now would it?
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Jan 29, 2019 05:06
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COMRADES posted:But it's not concrete now.... Why would it have to be concrete under MMT, which again by the way is just describing how things already function? What do you mean might as well keep our current system? The Fed has been doing quantitative easing for a decade. COMRADES posted:I don't think anyone is saying [MMT gives the gov't total carte blanche] except for a couple people propping up the argument so they can dispute it. MixMastaTJ posted:Or, y'know, fund the things we need? People are dying of starvation so fund food programs. We're behind in education so fund education. Our healthcare is poo poo so fund healthcare. Seems pretty straightforward to me... COMRADES posted:If your main objection is that people are idiots and our representatives suck well sure but by that logic might as well never try to improve the way anything works ever. People don't understand marginal tax brackets because our education system has been a gutted piece of poo poo for decades (by design) not because humans are just too stupid to get it. My problem is that I'm having trouble understanding what advancement MMT provides as a model, especially if inflation effects are too complex to math out in advance / at all. Am I missing something? Does this just let economists sleep better at night, knowing the country is not literally going to run out of money? Does it actually affect any decision-making? CrypticTriptych fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 07:35
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CrypticTriptych posted:My problem is that I'm having trouble understanding what advancement MMT provides as a model, especially if inflation effects are too complex to math out in advance / at all. Am I missing something? Does this just let economists sleep better at night, knowing the country is not literally going to run out of money? Does it actually affect any decision-making? Oh. Ah... No afaik at the moment it more just describes how digitized fiat currency economies actually work versus being a proscription to do anything particular. I think the question of what to do with the information is more up in the air. quote:Does this just let economists sleep better at night, knowing the country is not literally going to run out of money? Kinda yeah. Highlights how dumb certain political issues like 'what if we go into default' are though (we can't unless congress just decides to do it on purpose). I think the actual real main tangible thing is that we don't need to issue bonds to 'take on debt' and then buy them back via the Fed's printed dollars, we can just print the money directly to pay for things if necessary. The end result is the same either way. I guess there's an argument to be made for Fed officials might be better at it than a bunch of rear end in a top hat representatives. COMRADES fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Jan 29, 2019 |
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Jan 29, 2019 08:07
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twodot posted:but it solves the policy problem of shutting down people who think balancing the budget of a currency issuer is a thing we should care about. Yeah, but only because it replaces it with a requirement to care about the balence an even more complex and abstract system
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Jan 29, 2019 13:10
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glowing-fish posted:I personally believe that everyone morally deserves basic health care and education, but I know there are some factual limits on the extant to which people can have access to pulmonologists or Japanese professors. If you can't understand that printing money doesn't make pulmonologists or Japanese professors appear out of thin air, I don't know what else I can say? COMRADES posted:What, that income inequality is bad for the economy? Yes it is. COMRADES posted:Oh. Ah... No afaik at the moment it more just describes how digitized fiat currency economies actually work versus being a proscription to do anything particular. I think the question of what to do with the information is more up in the air... theblackw0lf posted:This also means that, and one reason I've become so enthused about it, that there’s little reason, economically speaking, why we can’t have an extremely generous M4A program, free college, GND, etc.. We can create ambitious programs, and not tie ourselves into knots figuring out how we’re going to pay for all of it. In fact it was learning about MMT that led me to embrace Bernie's generous M4A program. Also, if control of monetary flows is in the hands of the Fed rather than congress, then the Fed is setting either the federal budget or tax rates irrespective of Congress' wishes.
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Jan 29, 2019 17:44
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yeah, but only because it replaces it with a requirement to care about the balence an even more complex and abstract system
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Jan 29, 2019 22:24
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twodot posted:Again, I understand that you personally don't understand macroeconomics, but your idea that macroeconomic policy should be simple enough for you to understand is just dumb I mean, is the idea that you personally are uniquely smart so the system would work because you personally will be in charge or is the idea that from now on you will refrain from ever voting or supporting policies because it's not your business to question? Or will you just do what literally everyone will do and just say the programs you want are the free kind and the programs you don't like are the expensive kind then point to whichever economics professor says whatever you said then call the one that says different a liar?
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Jan 29, 2019 23:43
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twodot posted:If you thought a balanced budget was for some reason necessary, then theories of macroeconomics don't matter, because you have to balance the budget regardless of your theories. MMT says "balanced budgets aren't poo poo", so if your objection to a policy is "We can't balance the budget" the proper response is "Who cares?". This doesn't solve the political problem of "Will voters agree MMT is right?", but it solves the policy problem of shutting down people who think balancing the budget of a currency issuer is a thing we should care about. Here's the problem I have with your argument: even if government expenditures don't have to match revenues, MMT still countenances limits on government spending. Under MMT, increased spending beyond a certain limit still has to be "paid for" somehow, even if that isn't by directly appropriating dollars. The lesson that some folks seem to have taken from MMT is that, when someone asks how Bernie plans to pay for M4A and free college, they can say, "shut up, nerd, defects don't matter" but have not put any thought into it beyond that. Some people have argued that democratic policy priorities are inflation neutral irrespective of spending, but I find that argument suspicious: it supposes that, since the 70s, it has been within the power of the government to massively increase services without raising taxes or any other consequences, but no one has done it. Since such a move would be broadly popular with voters, it seems odd that no one until Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had the courage to eat this free lunch that has been sitting on their plate for decades.
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Jan 30, 2019 00:00
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twodot posted:Again, I understand that you personally don't understand macroeconomics, but your idea that macroeconomic policy should be simple enough for you to understand is just dumb. Further caring about money supply is a thing we already need to do and actually do, we just have this bonus concept of "what if we pretended like the government had a literal checking account", which is wrong, unnecessary, and damaging. In a democracy, it's probably a good thing if we adopt a macroeconomic policy that isn't incomprehensible to the average voter? "Tax people in order to pay for programs" is pretty comprehensible.
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Jan 30, 2019 00:38
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Dead Reckoning posted:Do you really need me to link to a bunch of policy wonks saying, "some income inequality is good for the economy"? You can if you want but being policy wonks they are wrong and idiots. You can link me a bunch of wonks saying trickle down works too but outside the cheerleaders for capital circles no one thinks it does and it is a joke. And even so I doubt anything you link will say anything more than a little bit of inequality is good. What we have is orders of magnitude worse than the Pharoahs and farmers in ancient Egypt. Last year 8 people, like 5-6 of whom were American, controlled 50% of the wealth of the entire planet.
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Jan 30, 2019 00:40
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Dead Reckoning posted:According to the OP & MixMastaTJ, that information means that we can/should spend massively on new social programs without raising taxes: As has been explained several times you can reduce inflation without raising taxes and also govt spending doesn't even cause inflation in a direct manner. So... ? Pay for a new social program, raise the reserve ratio by a few percentage points if for some reason that spending doesn't result in a multiplier on the private sector side and money supply grows faster than the economy. What's the problem? Govt spending already isn't the major source of new money supply in the economy. It is from fractional reserve banking. And I don't think any of this is so complicated it can't be understood by a high school student who isn't worried about their home situation or where their next meal is coming from and who has sufficient attention from a qualified teacher. I don't get why they fully need to get how the sausage is ground either, by the way. Most people, as was said, don't even get how progressive tax brackets work and yet we have a progressive tax bracket system that works just fine because the IRS and accountants do know how it works because they specialized in that. You don't need to know the intricacies of how the Fed operates in order to take a loan out do you? Most people pay taxes because if you don't you go to prison (or are otherwise forced to), not out of some moral understanding reached after careful study of our economic system. What does it really matter if your physical 0s and 1s transfer from you to the IRS to various govt accounts vs if they just vanish and the Fed creates new ones in those govt accounts later? COMRADES fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jan 30, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 00:42
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In general the idea that we can't continue evolving our society and government because of some arbitrary line drawn that says 'humans can understand this and no further' seems erroneous a f If you introduced our financial system to a banker from 1800 they'd piss themselves in terror and yet here we are.
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Jan 30, 2019 00:57
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Gnumonic posted:In a democracy, it's probably a good thing if we adopt a macroeconomic policy that isn't incomprehensible to the average voter? "Tax people in order to pay for programs" is pretty comprehensible. That isn't how our government currently works, and the only people that pretend that it does are Republicans when they want to pull stunts with the artificial debt limit.
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Jan 30, 2019 00:58
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Gnumonic posted:In a democracy, it's probably a good thing if we adopt a macroeconomic policy that isn't incomprehensible to the average voter? "Tax people in order to pay for programs" is pretty comprehensible. I'm not sure adopting whatever economic policy is easy to explain regardless of its veracity is necessarily the best foundation for a democracy... I mean it's how the world works, sure, but it's a bit silly to pretend it's democratic when you're suggesting "tell people nonsense platitudes to get them to vote for you"
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Jan 30, 2019 01:05
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COMRADES posted:If you introduced our financial system to a banker from 1800 they'd piss themselves in terror and yet here we are. but the point stands, and also, don't argue with DR goddamn why would you ever engage
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Jan 30, 2019 02:00
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COMRADES posted:As has been explained several times you can reduce inflation without raising taxes and also govt spending doesn't even cause inflation in a direct manner. So... ? If government spending is decoupled from revenues, how do we keep Congress from overspending or under-taxing?
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Jan 30, 2019 02:01
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COMRADES posted:In general the idea that we can't continue evolving our society and government because of some arbitrary line drawn that says 'humans can understand this and no further' seems erroneous a f The issue isn't that it is some system beyond the limits of the human mind or something. The point is that the whole thing seems to be an effort to obfuscate things by declaring everything free then demanding everyone pay taxes to pay for it but with a weird fanciful claim that you are "Deleting" the money that spending totally different money instead. With the answer to any "well how much taxes would need to be deleted to pay for X program" being some sort of weird "heh, of course I can't tell you that, you just gotta trust me" If donald trump turns on the printing presses and prints 50 billion and builds his concrete wall, how much tax needs to be "deleted" to pay for that. Is the answer 50 billion? If the answer is not 50 billion what is the exact number? Why is that the exact number? If the answer is "there is an exact number, but I can't/won't tell you it" then what is the good of this way of thinking? Even if it's some abstract efficiency if everyone just trusted you? If the answer is 50 billion why is this a worthwhile system and not a semantic game?
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Jan 30, 2019 02:45
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Given that a big concrete wall isn't what you'd call an effective long term economic stimulus the answer is almost certainly "a lot more than you would need to delete if you funded an education program"
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Jan 30, 2019 02:52
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So is there any way to know in advance exactly what either of those numbers would actually be?
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Jan 30, 2019 03:01
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I mean yeah probably you could look at previous investments in similar economic situations and seeing what the results were, or looking at what your economy needs in terms of skills and train people towards that? Is it a super exact science? No. But again this is how it actually works, supposedly so whether or not you like the level of inexactness it's unfortunately what you have to work with? You have time to be reactive, regardless. If your currency is changing value at a rate you don't like you can just make changes to adjust the rate? Economies of major first world countries are, on the whole, fairly robust things? They generally work regardless of how loving incompetent the politicians are. It takes serious effort to actually break them, they're not gonna keel over because you decided to spend money on things you know are going to be in some way useful to the economy, as almost all government investment in productivity is. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Jan 30, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 03:04
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The issue isn't that it is some system beyond the limits of the human mind or something. The point is that the whole thing seems to be an effort to obfuscate things by declaring everything free then demanding everyone pay taxes to pay for it but with a weird fanciful claim that you are "Deleting" the money that spending totally different money instead. With the answer to any "well how much taxes would need to be deleted to pay for X program" being some sort of weird "heh, of course I can't tell you that, you just gotta trust me" Yeah I think this is a better way of phrasing my problem. I don't think that the issue is, exactly, that we should choose our monetary theory based solely on how easy it is to understand. Rather, my concern is that, in the absence of an empirically well-established method, MMT seems to mandate that we place some blind faith in...someone... who has an oracular power to predict the inflationary effects of a given policy. Even if MMT is in some academic sense a more accurate description of how money works in our fiat currency system, it makes the relationship between spending, inflation, and taxation too complex and abstract for a reasonably informed citizen to make an informed choice. I guess I should qualify that I don't think any aspect of economics is an exact science in the way that physics is, and even if it were, I don't believe in a strong principle of explanatory exclusion. It's possible, IMO, for two theories to be true enough for all practical purposes. If we have two theories that are good enough, and one allows for informed decision making by citizens, whereas the other makes that basically impossible, we should prefer the former for practical reasons. Dead Reckoning posted:So is there any way to know in advance exactly what either of those numbers would actually be? This. I'd really like someone to respond to my post on the first page where I ask if there is an empirically established method for predicting the effects of inflation. Cuz if that doesn't exist then... I don't see any advantage whatsoever to a MMT based analysis.
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Jan 30, 2019 03:14
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You can't make an informed choice if you're using a system that's wrong, either... Just because you have a bunch of words you can say in response to a question doesn't mean you're actually right about it... If you're operating under the notion that there is such a thing as truth then it's really weird to follow that up by "except it's complicated and that makes me uncomfortable" Maybe you just have to accept that you can't actually make informed choices? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jan 30, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 03:16
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OwlFancier posted:Given that a big concrete wall isn't what you'd call an effective long term economic stimulus the answer is almost certainly "a lot more than you would need to delete if you funded an education program" Okay, but that is the exact problem. If we talk in conventional terms a 50 billion dollar wall is 50 billion dollars. I can say exactly how many text books and how many ipads and how many teachers 50 billion can buy. If trump starts building a wall and president bernie sanders cancels it I can say that exactly 50 billion - exactly what was spent can be reallocated to buy babies formula or whatever. Likewise if the wall is built over 5 years I can say it needs 10 billion of taxes a year and if it's built over ten years it needs 5 billion taxes per year raised. If we move to "all the money is free, we just need to delete enough taxes to make inflation the right number" then like. All I can know is one thing is bigger than the other, maybe? I can't know how much taxes need to be raised, or how that changes if it's 5 vs 10 years, I can't compare two things, or know easily if cutting one program frees money for another program. And the answer for that seems to be "heh, learn some macroeconomics" from people that also seem to be unable to actually provide or support any numbers at all, beyond 'well SOMEONE can figure it out" then the assurance that it will ultimately say the thing they want it to say.
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Jan 30, 2019 03:21
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OwlFancier posted:I mean yeah probably you could look at previous investments in similar economic situations and seeing what the results were, or looking at what your economy needs in terms of skills and train people towards that? Also, who is "making changes to adjust the rate?" Do you understand why elected officials are incentivized to allow inflation to continue unchecked rather than attach their names to a tax hike, especially if the degree of their contributions to that inflation are difficult to accurately quantify? I agree that the way MMT models the government's interaction with the economy is essentially correct, but our form of government isn't "one guy playing with sliders on a computer screen." For it to be a useful model, the discussion of what policy changes that understanding should drive needs to take in to account the reality of our existing government. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Jan 30, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 03:25
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Okay, but that is the exact problem. If we talk in conventional terms a 50 billion dollar wall is 50 billion dollars. I can say exactly how many text books and how many ipads and how many teachers 50 billion can buy. If trump starts building a wall and president bernie sanders cancels it I can say that exactly 50 billion - exactly what was spent can be reallocated to buy babies formula or whatever. Likewise if the wall is built over 5 years I can say it needs 10 billion of taxes a year and if it's built over ten years it needs 5 billion taxes per year raised. You can very clearly know how much something costs... The concept of calculating how much money you need to spend to do a thing does not cease to exist because the mechanism by which you acquire the money is disputed... What you can do with an MMT approach is look at what you're spending money on and consider what it's likely to do to the economy. So it's not "we need to tax 50 billion dollars right now to pay for 50 billion dollar thing" and instead it's "if we spend 50 billion dollars on thing and it produces economic growth, we do not necessarily need to tax 50 billion dollars to pay for it, also we can absolutely do it in that order, because we effectively borrow against ourselves and the economy as a whole can flex to accomodate that amount of deficit easily." If you prefer the first view of things then that's... nice for you but you're still fundamentally arguing that because it's a system that makes intuitive sense to you and doesn't require further investigation, that must be how things work. Dead Reckoning posted:Do you understand why having the MMT "real" cost of every federal program, i.e. of how much it contributes to inflation, being "I dunno, it's abstract, ask your favorite economist" creates perverse incentives? I get that balance budgeting is a lie for any country that issues its own currency, but it at least allows a comparison between alternatives in a quantifiable way. A quantifiable and wrong way. What do "perverse incentives" have to do with it when you're instead suggesting adopting an incorrect model because it gives you numbers to compare that don't actually reflect real things? Does having the numbers just make you feel better regardless of whether they have any basis in reality? Even if you adopt the simplistic model it begs the question of how any given investment is going to affect future tax revenue, you're obviously wilfully removing elements under that system to make prettier numbers. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jan 30, 2019 |
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Jan 30, 2019 03:27
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OwlFancier posted:You can't make an informed choice if you're using a system that's wrong, either... Just because you have a bunch of words you can say in response to a question doesn't mean you're actually right about it... If you're operating under the notion that there is such a thing as truth then it's really weird to follow that up by "except it's complicated and that makes me uncomfortable" It's an inefficiency. I am absolutely sure some perfect nonpartisan ultracomputer could run a country on infinite free money and perfect domination of inflation and deflation, handing out random tax bills for seemingly random amounts to seemingly random people at just the right times for just the right time that it perfectly counterbalances the ripple effects. But that doesn't seem like a realistic system for a bunch of guys in a democracy to do. Which means we have to use a less efficient and less perfect system. Like you don't have to calculate time dilation every time you drive somewhere even if you know that doing so would give you a more right answer. Just like the UK can tax £125 billion then spend £125 billion and get universal health care and have it work good enough as a way to pay and have it be a real thing that exists in the world even if some perfect understanding of deleting taxes could get them a discount and only need 122 billion (or 100 billion or 87 billion or 135 billion or zero or a trillion or whatever it ended up being)
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Jan 30, 2019 03:34
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It's an inefficiency. I am absolutely sure some perfect nonpartisan ultracomputer could run a country on infinite free money and perfect domination of inflation and deflation, handing out random tax bills for seemingly random amounts to seemingly random people at just the right times for just the right time that it perfectly counterbalances the ripple effects. But that doesn't seem like a realistic system for a bunch of guys in a democracy to do. Which means we have to use a less efficient and less perfect system. So your argument is literally that it's too complicated for humans to understand because it doesn't work exactly the same way your bank account does?
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Jan 30, 2019 03:35
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OwlFancier posted:You can very clearly know how much something costs... okay tell me then? Fill in the blank "to pay for a 50 billion dollar wall we will need to collect _____ dollars of taxes".
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Jan 30, 2019 03:39
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OwlFancier posted:You can very clearly know how much something costs... The concept of calculating how much money you need to spend to do a thing does not cease to exist because the mechanism by which you acquire the money is disputed... OwlFancier posted:A quantifiable and wrong way.
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Jan 30, 2019 03:46
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How Does Government Spending Affect Inflation?
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Jan 30, 2019 04:03
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MMT is like quantum mechanics. You can try to explain it, but some people just refuse to believe things work that way.
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Jan 30, 2019 04:09
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Lumpy posted:MMT is like quantum mechanics. You can try to explain it, but some people just refuse to believe things work that way. It just doesn't tell us anything useful about how to actually run our government day-to-day: Gnumonic posted:I'd really like someone to respond to my post on the first page where I ask if there is an empirically established method for predicting the effects of inflation. Cuz if that doesn't exist then... I don't see any advantage whatsoever to a MMT based analysis.
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Jan 30, 2019 04:44
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