Do We Need To ""Pay For" Federal Programs? Talking Modern Monetary Theory

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do We Need To ""Pay For" Federal Programs? Talking Modern Monetary Theory

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Also "build fewer tanks" is the conventional understanding, under MMT the answer on how to pay for medicine could be to build fewer, more or the same number of tanks with no particular clarity on how to even know what the answer is.

It may be the case that you personally can't understand the inflationary effect of building tanks that provide no actual economic utility, but please stop pretending that other people couldn't understand that. (Hint: it is extracting resources out of the economy while also increasing the money supply)

# ¿ Jan 28, 2019 20:19

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:26

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

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?

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.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 05:06

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Yeah, but only because it replaces it with a requirement to care about the balence an even more complex and abstract system

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.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2019 22:24

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

I mean, is the idea that you personally are uniquely smart

No, my position is that you are very commonly stupid, and that people setting macroeconomic policy should not give a poo poo about what you think is complicated and abstract.

Dead Reckoning posted:

I was responding to the specific suggestion that we should just "fund the things we need", which is incredibly facile because, among other reasons, there isn't even broad agreement on what we as a society "need."

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.

Then you have no problem with my argument, because the entirety of my argument is MMT tells us we don't need to balance budgets, and people demanding that we should balance budgets should shut the gently caress up.

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.

Is your position straight up "Bad policy is better so long as it is more comprehensible to voters than good policy"? Hint: my position is that good policy is always better.

twodot fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jan 30, 2019

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 06:15

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Why is it good policy? Is it because you like leftist policy but don�t like being taxed and think you found a secret code that if you complicate tax formulas enough that will make everything free? Instead of paying for things by collecting money from people that have enough money?

Wait, is your question straight up "Why is it good policy that the United States of America's macroeconomic policy isn't comprehensible to the average voter?". The answer to that is because you are the average voter and you have no chance of understanding this, and this isn't a college class. If you want to understand more, learn more.
edit:
I can imagine you arguing "This isn't better" or "You haven't demonstrated this is better", but "It's your duty to demonstrate to voters it's better before beginning advocacy" is just clearly ridiculous.

twodot fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jan 30, 2019

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 06:30

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

You know what's an easy policy to explain? "Tax the rich to pay for services that you need." You and all MMT proponents oppose this.

Ok, so you've completely missed the conversation. The conversation we're having is whether we should tax the rich to pay for services or whether we should tax the rich to control money supply. Keep putting words in my mouth or actually participate in the conversation. It's up to you.
edit:
Wait, I guess I should issue a follow up. If your response is "Who cares about money supply?" then my response is "You are an idiot."

twodot fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 30, 2019

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 06:46

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

So do you support or oppose permenant funding for M4A?

While I support providing healthcare and all basic needs to all humans, what possible relevance can you imagine that has to macroeconomic policies of the US or any other nation that issues debt in their own currency?
edit:
To re-iterate a previous edit:

twodot posted:

edit:
Wait, I guess I should issue a follow up. If your response is "Who cares about money supply?" then my response is "You are an idiot."

twodot fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Jan 30, 2019

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 06:57

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

Because without permenant funding

Permanent funding is a completely made up thing that has no relevance to macroeconomic policy. Funding is either protected by majority votes by the legislature (which is basically all funding) or by the Constitution (which is basically no funding). The source of that funding being tax dollars from the general fund (or specific taxes that the legislature can revoke at any moment) or printed dollars given to the general fund has nothing to do with anything.
edit, EXTREME:
Like just recently our entire government was shut down by either incompetence or malice, take you pick. By what measure do you imagine that "permenant[sic] funding" exists?

twodot fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jan 30, 2019

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 07:05

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

Social Security and Medicare A and B still existed through the shutdown.

Do you imagine this happened though magic or because a majority of the legislature agreed that should happen? Assuming you aren't an idiot, what do you imagine stops future programs from enjoying such protections, regardless of the source of their funding?

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 07:26

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

Matter in a political sense or matter in a monetary sense? In a political sense it matters because then the existence of these programs becomes threatened by the annular budget markup process.

So I think this is a thread about macroeconomics, so I'm going to be restrained in my posts about this topic, but literally no voters are thinking "I'm pro Social Security because it isn't used to negotiate annular budgets". This is partially because voters are idiots, and partially because it is objectively wrong, see: "The Grand Bargain". If you want to talk macroeconomics do it, if you want to make made up facts about non-permanent permanent funding, gently caress off.
edit:

Dead Reckoning posted:

OK, so if the sum total of your argument is that balanced budgets don't matter, what about MMT tells us that M4A and free college are more desirable policies than the Republican preference of slashing taxes on the wealthy and corporations to near zero and printing Lockheed Martin a trillion dollars to make G.I. Joe Laser Planes, and why can't we do all of these things at once?

MMT is an economic theory, it will never tell you whether slaughtering children is good, that's a conclusion you need to come to outside of economics.

twodot fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jan 30, 2019

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 07:35

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

There is no policy that can commit a future Congress to appropriate money for a program other than dedicated taxes

This is just objectively incorrect, because any future Congress can entirely cancel those taxes or repurpose those taxes for literally anything.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 07:43

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

karthun posted:

Only through new legislation. Absent any new legislation the program will still exist. Not so with the annular budget markup process. That's why the government shut down and SS and Medicare A and B did not. Do you think that SS and Medicare should have shut down?

Look, through whatever mechanism it is that you imagine Social Security and Medicare A and B survived, I'm proposing that future programs funding by printing money also survive. The thing I know for sure is that they didn't survive due to some magic legal mechanism because any hostile Congress could have ended them immediately. If you're telling me there is s a super secret password that prevents Congress from defunding programs, my response is "Use that password on programs we need to fund by printing money".

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 07:57

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

silence_kit posted:

Agreed. It isn�t a very useful �policy design model�, to use lingo from engineering, because one of the key inputs to the model, inflationary risk, is hard to predict.

I�m not sure how you meaningfully apply the model to make government decisions in real time, except if you don�t think about it too much, and just want to say:

You use the same process that lets you apply "Let's pretend like we're going to balance the budget, and then not actually ever have a balanced budget" as though that is a valid way to finance government. It really doesn't matter how hard measuring inflationary risk is, it's going to have better outcomes than just sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending money supply isn't a thing that requires active management.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2019 20:34

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

MSDOS KAPITAL posted:

Frankly I don't think "we're taking their money because they have too loving much of it" is all that bad a take. I'm convinced. It's shorter and simpler and more to the point than having to justify whatever you're going to pay for with the taxes.

Especially when "the reason we need to capture your money is to bomb people for no reason".

# ¿ Mar 6, 2019 08:29

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:26

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

If USD inflation gets so bad people stop wanting to accept it as payment, we're in trouble, but the solution to that is for policy makers to not make USD inflation so bad people stop wanting to accept it as payment. Which (again) is a thing our government needs to care about under any sort of economic analysis, because inflation exists independent of how you examine macroeconomics.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2019 07:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Do We Need To ""Pay For" Federal Programs? Talking Modern Monetary Theory