e_angst posted:You completely miss the point there. Doing a nationwide $15/hour minimum wage would make empirical study of that wage level's effects impossible, as it would remove any control group for your study. Any argument about if it was helpful or hurtful, if it was a drag on employment or not, would come down to arguing counterfactuals. The current path, where some areas are implementing it and some aren't, gives you real data that can be studied and compared between areas where it was implemented and where it wasn't. But that doesn't provide empirical data on a national implementation, because moving within national borders is easier than moving internationally and so the employment effects will be distinct from a national implementation. You could get relevant data to extrapolate from, but you can't actually get empirical data specifically on what you're looking to test. Economics, like many academic disciplines, doesn't jive very well with experimental methods. That's not a crime, but it is important for people to understand.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:19
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Effectronica posted:But that doesn't provide empirical data on a national implementation, because moving within national borders is easier than moving internationally and so the employment effects will be distinct from a national implementation. You could get relevant data to extrapolate from, but you can't actually get empirical data specifically on what you're looking to test. Economics, like many academic disciplines, doesn't jive very well with experimental methods. That's not a crime, but it is important for people to understand. Oh come the gently caress on with that goalpost-moving bullshit. Getting data on the effects of a $15/minimum wage as it's implemented in some areas and comparing it with control areas over the same period of time where the minimum wage stays the same (and/or is raised to a lower level) is tremendously useful data to have to better understand its effects if it were to be implemented nationally (especially since there will be plenty of other information about spending and job levels between the two different areas that can be used to understand the basic differences between the two areas and account for those differences and single out the effect specific to the wage increase). This kind of study has been done in the past, and the data that results has proven very worthwhile. At this point you're just making GBS threads on economics as a principal because everyone isn't joining you in your wild bloodlust for $15 right-this-minute-no-exceptions. Suddenly deciding that this type of study is especially disingenuous when you consider that you were originally posting... Effectronica posted:You should learn what words like "empirical" mean so you don't end up saying silly things like "We can't implement this policy in the real world until we have data from its implementation in the real world." You don't give a poo poo about data or about rigor, you have a political ax to grind and a cause you want to champion and if the data helps then the data is great and if it doesn't (or if there is still studying to be done) then the data is all bullshit. e_angst fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 14, 2015 21:42
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e_angst posted:Oh come the gently caress on with that goalpost-moving bullshit. The data is worthwhile, but it's not empirical analysis. Economics is not amenable to empirical analysis for most things you want to test, so different approaches are necessary. That you consider this "making GBS threads on economics" makes it clear that you view empiricism as a magical totem rather than as an approach to thinking and doing research. Or you just have an unreasoning bias, which would be disheartening if I hadn't quickly realized that the best and brightest of ordoeconomics don't post here.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:52
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Whenever I see someone say "political axe to grind", I know that they are opposed to democracy and will not stop ceaselessly working to create aristocracy, at best. At worst, they're totally amoral.
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Oct 14, 2015 21:57
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Effectronica posted:I said that saying "this guy said it and he's smart" is an appeal to authority. I am right in that statement. quote:I said that empiricism is concluding based on observations, and I am right in that statement. I said that confusing empiricism with other forms of reasoning is sloppy thinking, and I am right in that statement. And kreuger is stating that we don't have sufficient observations of the effects of a $15 dollar minimum wage to conclude that a national $15 minimum wage would be positive. So you must be engaging in sloppy thinking to assert he's not engaged in empiricism. quote:The simple fact of the matter is that, if I take you as knowledgeable about economics, economics is nonsense. If I take you as an idiot, you're not worth talking to. If I take you as a monomaniac, discussion requires some prerequisites. Which of the three is true, JeffersonClay? Apparently your understanding of economics is based on a guilt by association fallacy? Effectronica posted:But that doesn't provide empirical data on a national implementation, because moving within national borders is easier than moving internationally and so the employment effects will be distinct from a national implementation. You could get relevant data to extrapolate from, but you can't actually get empirical data specifically on what you're looking to test. Economics, like many academic disciplines, doesn't jive very well with experimental methods. That's not a crime, but it is important for people to understand. The pills I take were never tested on my body. They were tested on animals that have some similarity with me, and then some other humans who have more similarity with me, and there were enough of these tests that medical researchers felt confident that I would be safe taking them, despite the fact that there was no direct empirical data about how the drug would affect me.
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Oct 14, 2015 22:18
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It goes back to the old question in the minimum wage thread about how close you can get to a median wage without it having adverse effects. At this point, Danish and Swedish (unionized) minimum wages around around $16.5 to 17 a hour. Of course both countries have a higher cost of living but certainly there is wiggle around there especially if you live in a coastal city or state in the US. A living wage in San Francisco at this point is probably closer to $20 a hour. I think the big worry is regional cost of living differences, and in the US the differences have gotten quite huge. $15 in San Francisco doesn't go the way it goes in rural Mississippi. That said, critics of a $15 minimum wage haven't come up with much of a solution either than simply keeping it universally low and hoping the problem fixes itself.
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Oct 14, 2015 22:51
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icantfindaname posted:pictured: no fundamental economic problem preventing growth: I was eyeballing demographics after my last post seeing how much they should impact things. If you try to come up with a number for GDP per worker things look slightly better for Japan but actually demographics aren't terrible yet. The workforce leveled off but so did population mostly (with population growing a little faster than workforce). So I don't think it's the main answer. Though it could be having a ripple effect. Well it's a pretty blurry line but there are certain separations between political and economic questions. For example general instability and corruption are political with economic consequences (and I think this generally explains why some poor countries can't get off the ground). Other economic policy like labor laws trade agreements, tariffs etc I'd say is both political and economic. Ardennes posted:Much of it is about demographics, specifically you need young people to consume (providing a domestic market) and hopefully work (feeding tax revenue back into the system). Ultimately, they need some time of income for this to work and yes, while growth is only part of the equation, you do want a expanding economy. (Sidenote: MMT falls apart when you get to issue of trade balances and exterior purchasing. Sadly enough Venezuela kind of killed MMT.) To be clear young workers save at a higher percentage than older citizens. An aging demographic increases demand relative to the workforce because they're not working and thus spending down savings on average (not to mention healthcare spending and government benefit payouts etc). The fact that demand isn't dominant in is the reason a younger and more productive workforce is beneficial for growth. If you're trying to connect an ageing demographic with lower demand that would be a mistake (I'm not quite sure if you are). That's not the problem of an ageing demographic. Bryter posted:It captures mechanics, but the wrong way around. Well it's fine to discard existing models for better ones. I'd just note that in this case it's not just a model, it's also history. Guavanaut posted:Like, capital demands growth, and you could theoretically deliver overall growth by forced breeding, wage slavery, and mandatory consumption, but I think we can agree that would be a pretty bad thing even if it delivered results. Much like under mercantilism you could secure ongoing growth by a process of stealing other people's poo poo. This is the type of financial junk that makes zero sense. If we could force growth we'd already be doing it all the time and if mandatory consumption were beneficial we'd print money and mail it to people but we don't for a myriad reasons. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Oct 15, 2015 |
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Oct 15, 2015 01:30
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Ardennes posted:I think the big worry is regional cost of living differences, and in the US the differences have gotten quite huge. $15 in San Francisco doesn't go the way it goes in rural Mississippi. That said, critics of a $15 minimum wage haven't come up with much of a solution either than simply keeping it universally low and hoping the problem fixes itself.
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Oct 15, 2015 02:55
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asdf32 posted:To be clear young workers save at a higher percentage than older citizens. An aging demographic increases demand relative to the workforce because they're not working and thus spending down savings on average (not to mention healthcare spending and government benefit payouts etc). https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=...0,d.bGg&cad=rjt Usually consumption goes down as the older one gets not higher. Certain services (such as health care) goes up, but in Japan those prices are very strictly managed. In most cases, older people simply purchase less consumer goods because their needs and attitudes are different when they are younger. As far as savings versus income this is also unclear, but ultimately the issue is spending itself. To be honest, I never heard that assumption though. Cicero posted:We could always tie it to the median income by state/county, possibly with an absolute floor and absolute ceiling. Well to be honest I doubt we would ever see a wage ceiling in the US even if you didn't cap "compensation." Nevertheless, the big take away is wages often need to be local but that the federal government needs to make sure that certain localities aren't "left behind." I think the answer would still have a federal minimum but allow some flexibility by a small a locality as possible, this may include even have a wage lower than the minimum in certain states/counties by at the cost of a higher minimum in certain states/counties. Also, there may be some headroom for localities to press it a bit further if they so choose. That said, looking at many heavily unionized Scandinavian states, many places in the US could probably sustain a wage even higher than $15 and that local minimum versus median wages can be quite high even in the .75 - .80 range. France is around .73-.75. That more or less correlates to a national wage of $12.5 (2013-2015 wages) and $14.5 to $15 in a state like California. Krueger wants wages (like the Democrats in the House) for wages to more or less to go to $12 a house by 2020, which in all honestly may still be too conservative. He his hewing to the UK as an example, while the French/Scandinavian examples show mildly more assertive approach is possible. That said, it might be true that a national wage of $15 is untested (and he his skeptical of suggesting it) but either a $12.5 wage today or a $14-$14.5 wage by 2020 should be doable. Certain states should already have a $15 dollar minimum wage. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Oct 15, 2015 |
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Oct 15, 2015 08:51
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JeffersonClay posted:"Here is a researcher at the top of his field's conclusions about the sufficiency of evidence for an economic proposition" is the good, non-fallacious, kind of appeal to authority. Congratulations on figuring out that empiricism is not the only means by which research can be conducted. Now you need to stop treating empiricism as a magic word that will make economics chemistry. Because, you see, there is no way to accumulate empirical data on something like this, because there's no way to isolate controls. You can simply model and collect analogical data to extrapolate from. Now, we could get back to the original point, which is that it's just as much "faith-based" to insist that 15/hr would be disastrous, or imply so fervently that it amounts to an insistence. And then we could move to looking at the range of possible effects and their relative likelihoods to determine what should be implemented, once we are all on the page of a living wage, which I doubt will ever happen.
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Oct 15, 2015 15:46
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So now you're arguing that medical research isn't empirical? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_experiment quote:A natural experiment is an empirical study in which individuals (or clusters of individuals) exposed to the experimental and control conditions are determined by nature or by other factors outside the control of the investigators, yet the process governing the exposures arguably resembles random assignment. Thus, natural experiments are observational studies and are not controlled in the traditional sense of a randomized experiment. Natural experiments are most useful when there has been a clearly defined exposure involving a well defined subpopulation (and the absence of exposure in a similar subpopulation) such that changes in outcomes may be plausibly attributed to the exposure.[1][2] In this sense the difference between a natural experiment and a non-experimental observational study is that the former includes a comparison of conditions that pave the way for causal inference, while the latter does not. Natural experiments are employed as study designs when controlled experimentation is extremely difficult to implement or unethical, such as in several research areas addressed by epidemiology (e.g., evaluating the health impact of varying degrees of exposure to ionizing radiation in people living near Hiroshima at the time of the atomic blast[3]) and economics (e.g., estimating the economic return on amount of schooling in US adults[4]).[1][2] This is the third time someone has tried to explain this to you. Alan Kreuger has studied the natural experiments which occur when a state raises its minimum wage but a neighboring, comparable state does not. Those empirical studies demonstrated convincingly that small to moderate minimum wage increases did not cause employment losses, and caused only small increases in prices. But he also believes those studies are not sufficient to prefict the effects of a $15 national minimum wage. And a national $15 wage would destroy future natural experiments on the effects of that wage by eliminating all states and localities with a sub-15 minimum wage that could serve as a control.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:24
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asdf32 posted:This is the type of financial junk that makes zero sense. If we could force growth we'd already be doing it all the time and if mandatory consumption were beneficial we'd print money and mail it to people but we don't for a myriad reasons. That's not addressing the main thrust though: Is overall growth (both economic and population) desirable if it means that each person overall is worse off? Would overall economic decline be okay if it was accompanied by population decline such that each person is better off?
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Oct 15, 2015 16:39
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JeffersonClay posted:So now you're arguing that medical research isn't empirical? You're too retarded for your condescension to be anything other than a sick farce. You're presenting, in biological terms, a study of foxes as a study of dogs, because the differences between international and international borders are substantial. You seem to not understand why I am making this distinction, pedantic as it may seem- it's because you're using the technical jargon as a magic spell, which is quite simply damaging to the rest of the academic world. You are also dishonestly implying that it's obviously far more credible for a 15/hr minimum wage to be disastrous in employment effects than benign, but too cowardly to actually state this out loud. Screw your courage to the sticking place, the worst that can happen is words.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:46
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Effectronica posted:You're too retarded for your condescension to be anything other than a sick farce. You're presenting, in biological terms, a study of foxes as a study of dogs, because the differences between international and international borders are substantial. You seem to not understand why I am making this distinction, pedantic as it may seem- it's because you're using the technical jargon as a magic spell, which is quite simply damaging to the rest of the academic world. I don't think you're being pedantic, I think you're being desperate. Kreuger does empirical research. You are wrong. quote:You are also dishonestly implying that it's obviously far more credible for a 15/hr minimum wage to be disastrous in employment effects than benign, but too cowardly to actually state this out loud. Screw your courage to the sticking place, the worst that can happen is words. Again, you're desperate for some shred of an argument where you haven't been proven wrong, and have been reduced to arguing with figments of your imagination rather than the words I or anyone else has posted.
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Oct 15, 2015 17:48
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Ardennes posted:https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=...0,d.bGg&cad=rjt Well relative to supply. When older people leave the workforce they stop producing (or produce less) but keep consuming. In the context of say China, where people like to point to their economy being unbalanced in terms of domestic consumption, an aging population could be a balancing factor by moving people from the the producer category to the consumer category. But it's true that this obviously shouldn't increase overall GDP. But it does something akin to stimulus from the perspective of the remaining workforce. Guavanaut posted:I'd hope we wouldn't if the only ways of doing it were abhorrent, although I suppose there's always going to be societies that try to prove me wrong on that one. Yes I think we're going to have to become comfortable with and prepared for declining or stagnant overall GDP in cases where the workforce declines. In that case we could shift to a metric of GDP per working age adult which will better capture the performance of the economy. Most people would want that number to continue going up.
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Oct 16, 2015 00:15
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JeffersonClay posted:I don't think you're being pedantic, I think you're being desperate. Kreuger does empirical research. You are wrong. See, you should read posts before responding to them, because I didn't say anything about whether Krueger did empirical research directly. Indirectly, I said that he did, because my point is that there is no way to conduct empirical research on something like national minimum wages, and that claiming there is is a misuse of the term. Instead, you can extrapolate from analogous empirical research that can be conducted. Given that the very limited ability of economics to conduct experiments is generally accepted by economists, the conclusion where you're not a loving idiot is that you've already made up your mind that I'm wrong, and so argue from that as an axiom. I hope that you are merely an amateur or undergraduate, and not polluting academic research with your brain problems.
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Oct 16, 2015 00:25
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No one in economics thinks a national $15 minimum wage is a good idea for a range of reasons based on real life research perhaps combined with a little bit of reason (this includes people like Kruger and Piketty).
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Oct 16, 2015 00:48
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Robert Reich and Paul Krugman both support a $15 dollar minimum. http://www.budget.senate.gov/democratic/public/_cache/files/89efe4b6-8934-4375-bc96-758fcc791622/minimum-wage-petition-july-21.pdf It's a minority of economists but not zero.
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Oct 16, 2015 07:59
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asdf32 posted:Well it's fine to discard existing models for better ones. I'd just note that in this case it's not just a model, it's also history. If you take the multiplier to mean that there's a hard limit on money/credit creation, I don't know that that's really ever historically been the case though. Concerns about solvency and profitability always seem to be the limiting factor. The destabilising effects of this on the money supply have been recognised for quite some time, and in Britain led to the passage of the Bank Charter Act 1844, which prohibited banks from issuing their own currency. This obviously didn't account for the fact that deposits work in basically the same way, and although money wasn't virtual in the modern sense, deposits could be created with a stroke of a pen, and the money moved around via cheques, essentially meaning banks retained their ability to create money. Funnily enough, in 2010, the Governor of the Bank of England acknowledged that the purpose of the act had been undermined and expressed sympathy with the idea of forcing banks to conform to it (i.e. an end to fractional reserve banking). Probably not going to happen any time soon in Britain, but it could be in Iceland.
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Oct 16, 2015 11:23
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asdf32 posted:No one in economics thinks a national $15 minimum wage is a good idea for a range of reasons based on real life research perhaps combined with a little bit of reason (this includes people like Kruger and Piketty). Anyway, that obscures the fact that many if not most economists want a significantly higher minimum wage just not exactly a national $15 one. If anything most would probably be fairly happy with a $12-13 dollar national wage and a higher local wages on top of that. In many ways, it is less about a $15 wage being that unrealistic as a concept, just applying it nationally to what are now extremely different costs of living. If anything how most of the world approaches national minimum wages is fairly broken. asdf32 posted:Well relative to supply. When older people leave the workforce they stop producing (or produce less) but keep consuming. In the context of say China, where people like to point to their economy being unbalanced in terms of domestic consumption, an aging population could be a balancing factor by moving people from the the producer category to the consumer category. But it's true that this obviously shouldn't increase overall GDP. But it does something akin to stimulus from the perspective of the remaining workforce. I think you are trying to say older people leaving the workforce will allow younger people employment and thus a greater ability spend? The problem though is they need everyone to constantly consume as much as possible, while older people no longer compete for the same jobs they also simply spend less that they once did at the same time. In addition, the population overall in China is simply constricted by their own spending power, they simply don't make the wages needed to buy enough goods to keep China's massive factories running. Old people retiring puts more pressure on those factories because as their spending declines, there is simply less domestic spending out there to chase. China used up its exterior markets and its internal market was no where in the shape to handle the transition.
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Oct 16, 2015 11:54
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This doesn't necessarily show "support" from those who disagree, but...
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Oct 16, 2015 12:27
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Bryter posted:This doesn't necessarily show "support" from those who disagree, but... Yeah, if anything there probably isn't a strong consensus on either side simply because most of the data isn't there. Politically however it makes absolute sense to maximize your demands and end up with something that is probably somewhere in between. A good example of this is Oregon where the strong $15 MW movement has put a lot of pressure on the legislature to move the minimum wage to at least $12. It may be possible a $15 dollar MW would actually cost some issues in rural Oregon, but ultimately the state (especially the GOP) by forbidding cities (ie Portland) from instituting their own wages created the dilemma in the first place. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm Anyway according to the BLS weekly median wages is $803 for Q2 2015 (latest date). If you divide this by 40 you get $20.08. If you multiply that by .75 (the share of median wages versus minimum union wages in Scandinavian countries) you get $15.06. France and New Zealand are around .6 at this point which leads to $12 but in 2015 terms. If anything I think $12 by 2020 is a too conservative especially since there are examples of countries that are relatively successful with higher wages than that. Of course the issue is that is a median of the entire country (which I think much of the disagree is about). Nevertheless the question is should you fight to push to the edge of industrialized states for a minimum wage or simply put yourself in the middle of the pack? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 12:53
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Ardennes posted:Anyway, that obscures the fact that many if not most economists want a significantly higher minimum wage just not exactly a national $15 one. If anything most would probably be fairly happy with a $12-13 dollar national wage and a higher local wages on top of that. Ok. Most economists want it higher. Almost none want it at $15. quote:I think you are trying to say older people leaving the workforce will allow younger people employment and thus a greater ability spend? The problem though is they need everyone to constantly consume as much as possible, while older people no longer compete for the same jobs they also simply spend less that they once did at the same time. If you're trying to say that the chinese economy is unbalanced in terms of production capacity versus consumption an ageing demographic may help that. On you're next point you understand that GDP is money spent on goods AND money earned by people in the economy? So by definition they collectively have the earnings to consume their production. On top of that they also have huge financial reserves which could be used to consume if they had to be. The "problem", is that savings rate. They simply chose not to consume as much as they currently produce (thus relying on foreigners to make up the gap). Though note that in the long term, unless they represent a new breed of human, they're probably going to flip that switch at some point (otherwise they're essentially packaging and shipping us iphones for free). I'm arguing that it's not as much a problem as it seems because it's probably going to balance out at some point and in the short term the pattern of export they're following is not really in danger. EDIT: This captures two aspects of what I'm talking about. First, Korea was a huge saver like China while they were growing. That stopped and now they're notable consumers. Second, that savings rate decline coincided with retirement of an older generation. Effects of Population Aging on Economy and Car Market: http://www.koreafocus.or.kr/design2/layout/content_print.asp?group_id=104209  asdf32 fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 13:21
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asdf32 posted:Ok. Most economists want it higher. Almost none want it at $15. Data shown above shows there is actually a lack of consensus on that fact at least on its effect on unemployment. I do think there is a wide band of opinions on the subject and a lot of it seems to be exactly which countries do they feel present better models. Krueger seems to prefer the UK and Krugman/Reich prefer a more Scandinavian direction. quote:On you're next point you understand that GDP is money spent on goods AND money earned by people in the economy? So by definition they collectively have the earnings to consume their production. On top of that they also have huge financial reserves which could be used to consume if they had to be. Who is the "they"? Consumers or the government? I wouldn't conflate the two. quote:The "problem", is that savings rate. They simply chose not to consume as much as they currently produce (thus relying on foreigners to make up the gap). Though note that in the long term, unless they represent a new breed of human, they're probably going to flip that switch at some point (otherwise they're essentially packaging and shipping us iphones for free). Well it is already in danger of reduced growth, and their exports period are already beginning to stagnant. It is happening in real time. quote:EDIT: quote:Population aging and the resultant reduction in workforce, consumption expenditure and investment will lead to the fall in potential growth rate in the end. The OECD estimates that Korea’s potential growth rate, which stands at 3.4 percent in 2012, will fall to 2.4 percent in 2016-2026 along with the rapid population aging, and drop further to the 1-percent range in 2031-2050, the lowest level among its 34 member countries. This is the quote that goes under that image. Anyway one issue is of growth, Korea is that population growth has been pretty constant through that period, young people generally replaced the old. While the fertility rate wasn't that different, Korea simply had a significantly faster growing population. From 1990 to 2010 South Korea's population grew 15%, Japan's grew 3%. While South Korea's population is still growing, Japan's is shrinking.
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Oct 16, 2015 13:54
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Ardennes posted:Data shown above shows there is actually a lack of consensus on that fact at least on its effect on unemployment. I do think there is a wide band of opinions on the subject and a lot of it seems to be exactly which countries do they feel present better models. Krueger seems to prefer the UK and Krugman/Reich prefer a more Scandinavian direction. "They" are the humans in China and the institutions that represent them who's collective spending is domestic consumption. In regards to the question of whether the Chinese economy could consume it's entire output the obvious answer is yes and no, it doesn't matter whether it's government (or businesses) that are doing some of that consuming. Chinese people and domestic entities (representing Chinese people) earn the whole GDP. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Oct 16, 2015 |
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Oct 16, 2015 14:32
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I finished Robert Reich's new book tonight, Saving Capitalism. Basically, the thesis of the thing is that a "free market" still needs a government to set up and enforce the rules of said market (bankruptcy, contracts, property ownership, etc.), so instead of increasing the size of government, we need to change these rules so they work for the middle class/worker class. It's broken up into three parts, the first talking about the building blocks of Capitalism: Property, Monopoly, Contract, Bankruptcy, and Enforcement, and how these rules have been manipulated by the monied elites in America to further work to their advantage. This is where you get talk about the decrease in unions, how bankruptcy law massively favors corporations and the wealthy by not having student loans go away after a bankruptcy, the incredibly weakening of antitrust laws, abuse of copyright laws, and all of the changes over the last 30 or so years that have favored the big banks, wall street, corporations, and the wealthy in general. The second part talks about the myth of people being "worth what their paid", which is only true as a tautology, and how the idea of a meritocracy is flawed. It talks about CEO pay vs. median pay, compensation in ways other than a salary, and more about union busting. The third part, then, is where he gets to the meat of the book: the policy we should enact. He's in favor of a basic minimum income, especially as more jobs end up destroyed or automated, as well as a lot of the Bernie Sanders Plan; he wants to re-enact Glass-Steagal, massively overhaul the copyright/patent system with strict limits to have innovation and invention benefit the general public more quickly, overturn Citizens United and McCutcheon and put some bones back in campaign law. In other words, your basic progressive plan for America. It's a good book, and it's well worth reading, not for any new ideas, but for a slightly different way of looking at them, as well as another thing you can hit your friends over the head with (literally or metaphorically) if they're being dumb.
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Oct 17, 2015 07:15
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Yoshifan823 posted:he wants to re-enact Glass-Steagal Does he give a reason why?
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Oct 17, 2015 09:08
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Bryter posted:Does he give a reason why? Basically as a sort of bank antitrust measure, so you don't have an entity (or small group of entities) that is controlling banking so much so that the general public is hurt, and smaller local/regional banks don't have a significant disadvantage.
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Oct 17, 2015 16:18
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Bryter posted:If you take the multiplier to mean that there's a hard limit on money/credit creation, I don't know that that's really ever historically been the case though. Concerns about solvency and profitability always seem to be the limiting factor. The destabilising effects of this on the money supply have been recognised for quite some time, and in Britain led to the passage of the Bank Charter Act 1844, which prohibited banks from issuing their own currency. This obviously didn't account for the fact that deposits work in basically the same way, and although money wasn't virtual in the modern sense, deposits could be created with a stroke of a pen, and the money moved around via cheques, essentially meaning banks retained their ability to create money. The multiplier doesn't imply a hard limit. The basic 1/R equation for fractional reserve money creation which textbooks love to present [even though that type of mathematical precision is irrelevant] allow near infinite money creation if you're willing to have tiny reserves. So of course solvency and profitability are the limits. And regardless of your model of banking behavior, the money supply is always practically bounded by the productive capacity of the econoomy. Exceed it, and inflation kicks in.
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Oct 17, 2015 17:26
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Yoshifan823 posted:I finished Robert Reich's new book tonight, Saving Capitalism. Basically, the thesis of the thing is that a "free market" still needs a government to set up and enforce the rules of said market (bankruptcy, contracts, property ownership, etc.), so instead of increasing the size of government, we need to change these rules so they work for the middle class/worker class. It's broken up into three parts, the first talking about the building blocks of Capitalism: Property, Monopoly, Contract, Bankruptcy, and Enforcement, and how these rules have been manipulated by the monied elites in America to further work to their advantage. This is where you get talk about the decrease in unions, how bankruptcy law massively favors corporations and the wealthy by not having student loans go away after a bankruptcy, the incredibly weakening of antitrust laws, abuse of copyright laws, and all of the changes over the last 30 or so years that have favored the big banks, wall street, corporations, and the wealthy in general. The second part talks about the myth of people being "worth what their paid", which is only true as a tautology, and how the idea of a meritocracy is flawed. It talks about CEO pay vs. median pay, compensation in ways other than a salary, and more about union busting. How readable is it?
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Oct 18, 2015 04:24
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Veskit posted:How readable is it? Very, it's pretty easy to follow, I took it all in in a day (though I'm a pretty fast reader). I'd highly recommend it for anyone to read, to get a sense of exactly the kind of capitalism that America needs.
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Oct 18, 2015 05:30
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asdf32 posted:The multiplier doesn't imply a hard limit. The basic 1/R equation for fractional reserve money creation which textbooks love to present [even though that type of mathematical precision is irrelevant] allow near infinite money creation if you're willing to have tiny reserves. So of course solvency and profitability are the limits. Taking reserve ratios into account, I mean. Yoshifan823 posted:Basically as a sort of bank antitrust measure, so you don't have an entity (or small group of entities) that is controlling banking so much so that the general public is hurt, and smaller local/regional banks don't have a significant disadvantage. Seems like re-enacting the McFadden Act would do a better job of that. I really don't know what to make of the push for Glass Steagall. I don't think it would be a bad thing per se, but I sort of worry that it's the end goal for a lot people pushing financial reform, despite the fact that there's a lot it wouldn't address. Bryter fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Oct 18, 2015 |
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Oct 18, 2015 06:35
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In an interview a couple of years ago, Bill Clinton said that he didn't regret signing Glass-Steagall but did regret signing the 2000 Commodities Modernization Act which deregulated derivatives. If we're going to do something to prevent another crash, might be better to look into that.
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Oct 18, 2015 08:07
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Holy poo poo how much hubris does it take to go on Marketplace and have this interview http://www.marketplace.org/topics/elections/full-interview-dr-ben-carson-economy
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Oct 28, 2015 16:17
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Carson: I'm going to balance the budget, lower taxes, build a missile defense system and buff out the military, and not cut any programs people like. Kai: umm that's impossible Carson: that's what they said about separating craniopagus twins  He has all the evangelical support because they think he can perform miracles.
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Oct 28, 2015 17:18
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JeffersonClay posted:Carson: I'm going to balance the budget, lower taxes, build a missile defense system and buff out the military, and not cut any programs people like. It is a bit terrifying in how many of the candidates don't really seem even give a poo poo about basic details of what they intend to do at this point. He wants a flat tax but has a hard time even coming with a general ballpark number.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:04
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Ardennes posted:It is a bit terrifying in how many of the candidates don't really seem even give a poo poo about basic details of what they intend to do at this point. He wants a flat tax but has a hard time even coming with a general ballpark number. Well now that the debate happened the moderator forced a number out of him, he decided 15%. He based this on the premise that you can just tax the entire GDP 15% somehow and it would work out
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Oct 29, 2015 08:19
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Apparently he's really serious about ending deductions and loopholes and he intends to start taxing churches and hospitals at standard rates!
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Oct 29, 2015 18:13
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JeffersonClay posted:Apparently he's really serious about ending deductions and loopholes and he intends to start taxing churches and hospitals at standard rates! Did he actually say that? I know he came out saying that he definitely supports getting rid of the AMT, which should be fun to see in the next few weeks.
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Oct 30, 2015 11:37
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Mr Interweb posted:Did he actually say that? I know he came out saying that he definitely supports getting rid of the AMT, which should be fun to see in the next few weeks. BEN CARSON: His proposed flat-rate tax, which would have everyone pay an income tax rate of about 15 percent, “works out very well” in budget terms because it would spark enough economic growth to offset the lower rate. THE FACTS: Carson says his proposed tax would not increase the budget deficit because he would tax the entire economic output of the U.S. — the gross domestic product — plus corporate income and capital gains. READ MORE: Insurgents vs. mainstream: Debate highlights GOP’s 2 tracks Carson has not laid out a detailed plan, so it is difficult to measure how it would affect revenues or the economy. But based on what he said, he’s double counting because corporate revenues are part of the GDP. A tax rate of 15 percent would be a huge tax cut for the wealthy. The top income tax rate for individuals is now 39.6 percent. The corporate tax rate for corporations is 35 percent. To help offset the rate cuts, Carson said he would “get rid of all the deductions and all the loopholes.” That’s a bold proposal, considering how popular many tax breaks are, including deductions for interest on home mortgages and charitable contributions, as well as exemptions for health insurance and retirement savings. He also said he was going to tax 15% of GDP at some point. The guy is a economic policy mess.
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Oct 30, 2015 14:46
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