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^^^^ Hear, hear!
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Aug 27, 2019 23:16
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:We don't have a loving clue what the real rate of inflation is because CPI is a dumb metric. It sounds like you really don't give a poo poo about inflation then, but want to keep track of an entirely different thing? It's like getting mad at a ruler for not being able to measure the mass of things well.
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Aug 28, 2019 00:07
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Orange Devil posted:What you do is you say "actually gently caress you creditors you don't get to hold entire generations hostage for life, that poo poo is detrimental to the society I'm trying to build here and moreover I am the loving state, I have an army, come at me". Generally a lot of debt is domestic so now you’re cancelling debt owned by your own pension funds or banks that then fail and wipe out your own savings. On a national scale it doesn’t really matter as it just shifts wealth around within the country from bondholders to taxpayers but it’s super unpopular nonetheless. Or you just cancel foreign debt and become locked out of lending markets because foreign governments also have armies and can say “No actually your debt still exists”. So now you can’t borrow and have to cut spending a.k.a. austerity. There’s a reason Argentina eventually made deals with their creditors and Greece didn’t unilaterally declare their debts didn’t exist anymore: If you can’t borrow you’re doomed to perpetual austerity. I’m not advocating for that system but until it is destroyed it is the system we have and the reality is that you can’t cancel debt without serious repercussions.
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Aug 28, 2019 00:21
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fishmech posted:It sounds like you really don't give a poo poo about inflation then, but want to keep track of an entirely different thing? It's like getting mad at a ruler for not being able to measure the mass of things well. Wut? Am I about to be fishmeched? Is CPI also used to measure mass in Germany? That's pretty advanced. Germany Consumer Price Index (CPI) In Germany, the most important categories in the consumer price index are Housing, water, electricity, gas & other fuels (32 percent of the total weight), Transport (13 percent), Recreation, entertainment & culture (11 percent) and Food & non-alcoholic beverages (10 percent). The index also includes Miscellaneous goods & services (7 percent), Furniture, lighting equipment, appliances & other household equipment (5 percent), Restaurant & accommodation services (5 percent), Health (5 percent) and Clothing & footwear (5 percent). The remaining 7 percent of the index is composed by Alcoholic beverages & tobacco, Communication and Education. " Spot the problem.
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Aug 28, 2019 01:24
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:Wut? Am I about to be fishmeched? Yeah there's no particular problem there? You have to decide on baskets of goods in order to have any hope of tracking inflation of currency. That's what the whole concept is about. You seem to be demanding that something else be measured since you hate the idea of tracking consumer prices when consumer prices are the inflation that's relevant.
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Aug 28, 2019 01:33
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fishmech posted:Yeah there's no particular problem there? You have to decide on baskets of goods in order to have any hope of tracking inflation of currency. That's what the whole concept is about. No, I said that the cpi is a stupid metric, because it's components are weighted in ways that don't make sense, or lag the real world "weight",sometimes by years. Housing, for example , is the big elephant in the room. Stuff like the HICP is much better at this. COLI is much better at dealing with te substitution problem. Or the billion price index from MIT. And yet we still use CPI to calculate drat near everything,from gdp to government spending .
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Aug 28, 2019 02:49
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:No, I said that the cpi is a stupid metric, because it's components are weighted in ways that don't make sense, or lag the real world "weight",sometimes by years. So you have no problem with CPIs besides wanting minor adjustments? The HICP is just one of many many global CPIs which isn't necessarily the best for tracking inflation in one particular country. Also no, you don't use CPIs to calculate GDPs. You compare CPIs between different countries to attempt to adjust their respective GDPs to provide a purchasing power parity adjustment on the GDP values! And you seem to be missing that the HICP is already what's being used to govern your currency as that is explicitly the ECB's CPI measure used to control Eurozone economic policy. That's also why it's not necessarily better for measuring inflation in any particular country over time over existing country-level CPIs, since it's trying to manage a still relatively heterogeneous mixture of economies. And finally: there is extremely minimal difference in the HICP and German domestic CPI figures for inflation in Germany in particular over the past 20-odd years that arereadily visible - they're within 0.10% and 0.03% in most years from each other. fishmech fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Aug 28, 2019 03:37
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fishmech that poster's initial gripe was exactly that cpi is a bad measure of inflation, so it does make sense that they'd prefer something that measured sort of the same thing but more precisely to be clear i am making no statements here about the relative merits of inflation estimators
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Aug 28, 2019 06:07
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V. Illych L. posted:fishmech that poster's initial gripe was exactly that cpi is a bad measure of inflation, so it does make sense that they'd prefer something that measured sort of the same thing but more precisely But the vaunted better measurements he lists result in very very minor changes in inflation rates - because of course they would, these are relatively refined CPI models by now. They're all going to be CPI based because measurements that only deal with prices for government or prices for business tend not to be useful for targeting monetary policy - and rawer systems like just looking at the size of the money supply can't tell you how prices or any other value metrics of the money have been affected on their own. It looks like what he wants is really not an inflation measure at all but some sort of nebulous affordability measure - which no pure inflation metric can get you. That is instead the domain of things like tracking wages versus inflation vs employment/benefit availability rates. Or other such multifactor approaches.
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Aug 28, 2019 06:45
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Nocturtle posted:Thanks for the replies. I find it increasingly weird that we tolerate the existence of billionaires in our society. 99.99% of people should be on-board with taxing them out of existence, it shouldn't be a fringe opinion. It's impossible to be both a billionaire and a morally decent human being at the same time.
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Aug 28, 2019 07:25
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Let's also drop the guillotine pretense, a guillotine is far too kind, it's for killing foppish French aristocrats. The people we have now deserve something from earlier centuries.
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Aug 28, 2019 08:52
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 Get into the bull, Wolfgang
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Aug 28, 2019 09:14
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Shibawanko posted:Let's also drop the guillotine pretense, a guillotine is far too kind, it's for killing foppish French aristocrats. The people we have now deserve something from earlier centuries. Foppish wouldn't be the word I'd use to describe the brutal repression of the ancien regime tbh. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Aug 28, 2019 09:42
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Orange Devil posted:Foppish wouldn't be the word I'd use to describe the brutal repression of the ancien regime tbh. Yeah but even that is not on the order of "causing human extinction" or "running eugenicist pedo ring".
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Aug 28, 2019 09:46
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In a bit of current EU news, what with Von der Leyen now selecting her Commissioners etc. As you (probably?) know, the Greens/IFA group in parliament voted against her confirmation as EC president, mainly on the basis that they believe that she won't be active enough on climate change. This was a bit of a pickle because there's an overall sense that because the Greens gained so many seats in the EP, they should also have at least one Commissioner from a party in the Greens group - I mean, it's literally the least they can do so they intend to do just that. Want to guess how VDL went about finding a 'Green' commissioner? This is a really good example of how Brussels' sausage actually gets made. quote:Top Green MEP says Commission pick not 'green' enough So he's not a green, he's mostly a farmer (though that doesn't always, necessarily mean it can't overlap) and he votes to the right of actual greens. A nice, symbolic gesture of absolutely nothing. Now why on earth don't the Greens trust that the next round of Commissioners won't actually want to, I dunno, preserve life on earth? Junior G-man fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Aug 28, 2019 09:52
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we're loving doomed
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Aug 28, 2019 09:56
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Owling Howl posted:Generally a lot of debt is domestic so now you’re cancelling debt owned by your own pension funds or banks that then fail and wipe out your own savings. On a national scale it doesn’t really matter as it just shifts wealth around within the country from bondholders to taxpayers but it’s super unpopular nonetheless. Or you just cancel foreign debt and become locked out of lending markets because foreign governments also have armies and can say “No actually your debt still exists”. So now you can’t borrow and have to cut spending a.k.a. austerity. There’s a reason Argentina eventually made deals with their creditors and Greece didn’t unilaterally declare their debts didn’t exist anymore: If you can’t borrow you’re doomed to perpetual austerity. Debtors don't have savings, creditors do. So, yup, working as intended. Also I do want to point out that radical as I am, I am not advocating for the cancelling of all debt everywhere forever. What I will say is that debt is deliberately used as an instrument of capitalist rent extraction, exploitation and subjugation. Those are the debts which are clearly harmful to what I'd consider the only legitimate political goal: building a society in accordance with Rawlsian principles of distributive justice. And thus those have to go. You're right though, the whole international monetary system and its institutions (hello there World Bank and IMF) are designed to enforce precisely this rent extraction, precisely this exploitation and precisely this subjugation by the creditors (regardless of nationality) and the states they control (almost all of them) upon the working class of the world. And if you are middle class you're being paid off with a pittance to be complicit or at the very least look the other way while billions of people are crushed. And they absolutely will use violence to keep this gravy train rolling. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Aug 28, 2019 |
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Aug 28, 2019 10:18
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V. Illych L. posted:we're loving doomed love to see the fruits of over 20 years of neoliberal discursive hegemony and complete institutional capture to the point that even with visible signs of poo poo going down wrt global warming all they manage to do is nominate some lukewarm figurehead who will be noncommittally talking about taking action while central authorities do nothing of note.
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Aug 28, 2019 10:26
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Orange Devil posted:^^^ A criticism of that kind of tax that my professor for fiscal law (Michel Maus) always used to bring out was the problem of how to correctly estimate someone's taxable wealth. Sure, it's easy for taxes on registered assets like property taxes or taxes on financial assets, but a lot of wealth of the super rich is also stored as valuable collections like wines, paintings, cars. He wrote a couple of articles about it: https://www.demorgen.be/meningen/de-praktische-bezwaren-van-een-vermogensbelasting-zijn-niet-te-overzien~b8c02e4a/ He's kind of a neolib in my experience, and while he has some really legitimate grievances about the Belgian tax-code, I think his criticism here is kinda dumb. He talks a lot about how it's difficult to create a legally speaking non-discriminatory general wealth-tax, and while I get that an ill conceived taxation scheme just leads to a bunch of legal costs, I think he unfairly dismisses the idea on principle.
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Aug 28, 2019 10:37
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persopolis posted:A criticism of that kind of tax that my professor for fiscal law (Michel Maus) always used to bring out was the problem of how to correctly estimate someone's taxable wealth. Sure, it's easy for taxes on registered assets like property taxes or taxes on financial assets, but a lot of wealth of the super rich is also stored as valuable collections like wines, paintings, cars. I think it's a bad objection to a wealth tax. In my view the core purpose of a wealth tax, much like property tax, is not actually to redistribute wealth (thought that it does so certainly is a plus) but to enforce productive use of wealth generating assets. If land is charged a 1% tax on value every year that means it needs to generate a minimum of 1% net value per year to not run at a loss. This is good for society because it means land is used more efficiently, property does not stand as idle and money has a cost more concrete than inflation attached to rotting in safe. Land, property, bonds and organizations are in my opinion all examples of assets that produce wealth by themselves, independent of their speculative value. Cars, painting and gold on the other hand are non-productive assets with an entirely speculative valuation. If a rich person shifts their asset portfolio from say housing, stocks and bonds to jewelry, wine and sport-boats they will in the long-run lose wealth irregardless of a wealth tax simply due to the lack of return on capital. Because the only guarantee of value, and gain in value, of a solely speculative asset is others speculating on its scarcity, it does not generate value by itself. Hoarding jewelry is a bit like hoarding bitcoins. If they were to slip under the wealth tax radar, it would not be the worst thing in the world.
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Aug 28, 2019 11:04
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If the token Green commissioner has to be a farmer, can I nominate José Bové instead? His credentials include going to jail repeatedly for activism, having been expelled from both Israel and the USA, and looking like Georges Brassens.
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Aug 28, 2019 11:06
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^^ Yessss!!!
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Aug 28, 2019 13:38
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Gotta love that European 'we have to balance everything with everything and everyone and so ensure mediocrity throughout'. quote:Von der Leyen looks to overhaul Commission power structure (I dunno if anyone finds this sausage-making stuff interesting, let me know if you don't want to read it anymore?)
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Aug 28, 2019 15:03
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It is interesting; and also I'm glad to read that a structure devised by Selmayr is getting dismantled and rebuilt on saner bases. In other news, BoJo is suspending the Westminster parliament from September 10 to October 14, which is pretty hilarious in a schadenfreude way. I wonder if any British MP who voted against the deal thrice is starting to have remorse or regrets. Probably not.
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Aug 28, 2019 16:28
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I find it interesting. Please keep posting. If one doesn't pay attention to the nuts and bolts, one risks becoming one of those idiots that just repeats propaganda about $institution.
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Aug 28, 2019 16:28
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Junior G-man posted:Gotta love that European 'we have to balance everything with everything and everyone and so ensure mediocrity throughout'. It's quite interesting and also makes me want to tell those fuckers to gently caress off.
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Aug 28, 2019 16:37
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Junior G-man posted:Gotta love that European 'we have to balance everything with everything and everyone and so ensure mediocrity throughout'. It is interesting, and I find your personal opinions interesting, so please do keep posting
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Aug 28, 2019 16:39
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Also, you made me discover Selmayr's fate, and, frankly, made my day.
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Aug 28, 2019 16:42
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Junior G-man posted:(I dunno if anyone finds this sausage-making stuff interesting, let me know if you don't want to read it anymore?)  I haven't looked through her career exhaustively, but Vestager seemed to do a pretty good job of smacking around big corps on behalf of EU consumers as competion commissioner, so anything that gives her new position more teeth to keep doing stuff like that doesn't seem all-bad.
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Aug 28, 2019 18:00
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Slashrat posted:I haven't looked through her career exhaustively, but Vestager seemed to do a pretty good job of smacking around big corps on behalf of EU consumers as competion commissioner, so anything that gives her new position more teeth to keep doing stuff like that doesn't seem all-bad. Vestager has probably been the only good egg of the last Commission, gotta give her props.
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Aug 28, 2019 18:12
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Her tenure as head of the Social Liberals left a real mark, though, and not in a good way. When asked about the tens of thousands who'd lose unemployment benefits as a consequence of the austerity measures she enacted, her answer was, "That's just how it is."
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Aug 29, 2019 06:13
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She's ruthless, but at least we've got her pointed in roughly the right direction now.
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Aug 29, 2019 07:44
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I have a general aversion to Danish politicians given uhh, literally everything I hear about their policies over the last few years.
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Aug 29, 2019 09:30
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So what's happening in Italy right now? Salvini being kicked out after crashing the government was fun. What can we expect from a 5-star/Democratic Party coalition?
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Aug 29, 2019 09:45
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Orange Devil posted:I have a general aversion to Danish politicians given uhh, literally everything I hear about their policies over the last few years. And you would be right, but within her remit at Competition Commissioner she's done a very good job and not taken poo poo from the corporate world. I don't know enough about her outside her functioning in the EC.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:28
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Fat Samurai posted:So what's happening in Italy right now? Salvini being kicked out after crashing the government was fun. What can we expect from a 5-star/Democratic Party coalition? Latest update I got was this: quote:Italy’s president gave the 5Star Movement his blessing Wednesday evening to form a new government with the center-left Democratic Party. President Sergio Mattarella’s spokesman Giovanni Grasso said the parties had reached a deal to reappoint Giuseppe Conte, who belongs to neither group but is very close to the 5Stars, as prime minister. Grasso said Mattarella will officially give Conte the mandate to form a new government this morning and Conte will then have a few days to choose his Cabinet.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:33
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Fat Samurai posted:So what's happening in Italy right now? Salvini being kicked out after crashing the government was fun. What can we expect from a 5-star/Democratic Party coalition? Probably for it not to last very long. M5S and PD are two very different parties with different problems, although I guess, if you boiled both of them down to the essentials, I guess my problem with both would be "not nearly left-wing enough to actually solve our real problems".
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Aug 29, 2019 10:35
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On the bright side the fascists are no longer in power. On the less bright side they will now be the main opposition to what is likely to be an ineffective center-left (ish? maybe?) government. So things are better than they were. For now. *cue ominous music*
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Aug 29, 2019 10:39
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EU Politics: the European Union - For now. *cue ominous music*
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Aug 29, 2019 10:40
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The EU is the longest cliffhanger in the history of dramatic writing.
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Aug 29, 2019 10:43
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