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At the macro level, there are a lot of ideas about what may happen, but very little certainty - it gets very complicated very quickly. There is a potential multiplier effect but likely pretty small and that is only one of the forces at work - most other factors are negative.
This getting a little off topic, but the $3.5 T "budget bill" is not really $3.5 T cost or $3.5 T taxes to cover or even a budget bill. I covered this some in post #85 "Well the $3.5 T version is actually more like $5 to $5.5 T and the means to pay is closer to $2 T than the $3.5 T advertised according to information from OMB and CBO. Combined that means that the real budget gap on the proposal is about $3 T not the $0 advertised." A $3 T gap is not minor - they are using budget tricks to make it more palatable. The other objection of the CoC is that most of the cost falls on small businesses.
An argument in favor of the Build Back Better agenda might be: that in the face of a coming demographic crunch we KNOW is going to happen, as well as climate change and technological disruptions, we need to make these investments to increase per capita worker productivity.
From what I'm reading, the worker shortage may never fully resolve. Sonwe need every worker we've got producing at peak potential. They need education. Badly. Instead they are getting less and inadequate education.
How are we going to handle whole swaths of our country becoming unproductive due to climate change? It looks like will happen to the west coast in the next 30-40 years; its agriculture is going to be devaststed. This will be REALLY bad because California produces a lot of our ag produce.
Add to that we have an aging population in need of ever more care...
Well we need our existing workers to be as educated as possible, as comfortable with having kids as possible, and we need infrastructure up to date. So the education supports, the child care supports, the climate mitigation and the hard infrastructure we definitely need.
We also need immigration... Japan shows what happens when there are not young people to take care of the old.... which is where we are headed. The baby bust of the 00s is already manifesting in our labor shortage...it is going to be BAD in 20 years when the pandemic era babies are supposed to be entering the workforce and they prove to be basically non-existent.
So... save 3.5T now, or let our country get really screwed up by doing nothing?
... I grow tired of people who would be overwhelmed by intermediate classroom macro-economics pretending that they are onto something when reality is they don't know enough to know they don't know what they are talking about....
This forum, and especially this thread, is for amateur musings to ponder, just for fun. Nothing more, nothing less. If you expect post-doctoral academic treatises here, well, that's just funny. Condescending gatekeeping here is a sad waste of time.
And even if academic papers were published here it wouldn't matter because you and I know that economics is a BS-filled pseudo-science that's a sad mix of philosophy, social studies and math awkwardly mashed together. Real science has tightly controlled experiments that can be reproduced independently. Can't say that about economics. Many economics books and papers are nothing more than densely written pretentious meanderings that have little or no real world value. A dismal "science" indeed.
Oh, by the way, here's an article that rips economists for not fully adopting a systems approach that incorporates feedback.
This forum, and especially this thread, is for amateur musings to ponder, just for fun. Nothing more, nothing less. If you expect post-doctoral academic treatises here, well, that's just funny. Condescending gatekeeping here is a sad waste of time.
And even if academic papers were published here it wouldn't matter because you and I know that economics is a BS-filled pseudo-science that's a sad mix of philosophy, social studies and math awkwardly mashed together. Real science has tightly controlled experiments that can be reproduced independently. Can't say that about economics. Many economics books and papers are nothing more than densely written pretentious meanderings that have little or no real world value. A dismal "science" indeed.
Oh, by the way, here's an article that rips economists for not fully adopting a systems approach that incorporates feedback.
2. The bit you linked while silly, naive and unattributed also only deals with freshman and maybe sophomore level economic constraints. IOW the author does not know what s/he is talking about.
Speaking of feedback............this is the automotive version of your claim(s). DEI........
Have to say.... I was wondering where the inflation was all last year and we finally found it. I was thibking last year that maybe inflation wasn't a thing anymore? I mean it was so weird for the gov't to spend 6 trillion, the markets to go up 70%... and nothing happen? But I guess I took for granted how badly the pandemic affected aggregate demand (obliterated it).
I'm not a huge MMT supporter and I don't even fully understand it. But I do think we can safely carry up to 150% of debt to GDP and it won't bother us that much if at all (we are currently at 108%). Maybe more, pushing 200%, but nothing we need right now would cost nearly that much.
You hit the nail on the head......nails even.
FWIIW no one understands MMT because there is no real theory or posit to read let alone review and understand.
March, April and May last year were the econometric equivalents of something like Dante's 8th level of darkness......we were immersed in boiling pitch, split from chin to groin, heads buried legs on fire - all the fun stuff. Demand stalled (IIRC from late Feb. - late April '20 GDP contracted more than $3 trillion dollars). That said even massive Keynesian spends whether on say war goods, liquidity injections into the banking system or direct payments to citizens in the face of deflation don't cause inflation until later.
Anyone with a thimble's full of feeling for economics will tell you that it's better to fight inflation later than to deal with the unmitigated disaster of deflation once deflation has really taken hold.
Finally, I think our buddy mathjack is correct in that most current inflationary pressures will prove to be transient caused by supply and demand noise.......lack of computer chips, ships at anchorage, maldistribution of natural gas, toy and ammunition shortages etc.
FWIIW no one understands MMT because there is no real theory or posit to read let alone review and understand.
March, April and May last year were the econometric equivalents of something like Dante's 8th level of darkness......we were immersed in boiling pitch, split from chin to groin, heads buried legs on fire - all the fun stuff. Demand stalled (IIRC from late Feb. - late April '20 GDP contracted more than $3 trillion dollars). That said even massive Keynesian spends whether on say war goods, liquidity injections into the banking system or direct payments to citizens in the face of deflation don't cause inflation until later.
Anyone with a thimble's full of feeling for economics will tell you that it's better to fight inflation later than to deal with the unmitigated disaster of deflation once deflation has really taken hold.
Finally, I think our buddy mathjack is correct in that most current inflationary pressures will prove to be transient caused by supply and demand noise.......lack of computer chips, ships at anchorage, maldistribution of natural gas, toy and ammunition shortages etc.
.....unless we can't fix the labor problem. Then we'll both be paying (fewer) people more and there will be fewer goods and services.
FWIIW no one understands MMT because there is no real theory or posit to read let alone review and understand.
It doesn't help there's a wall of close-minded academics (and forum posters) who reflexively shoot it down before it's had to chance to be fully developed.
It doesn't help there's a wall of close-minded academics (and forum posters) who reflexively shoot it down before it's had to chance to be fully developed.
Negative. If I thought MMT would work long term I'd be all for it. For all manner of technical reasons* using variable tax rates as the primary means to squelch inflation is a non-starter.
The modern version of MMT has been around for decades and its antecedent Chartalism for more than 100 years.
Mitchell and his juggling clown act have had more than enough time to develop working papers at a minimum.
*Chiefly timing issues, congress adjusting tax rates on the fly and the big one A. controlling inflation via contracting money supply alone has never worked well anywhere as an inflation control device. B. contracting the money supply by increasing taxes would work even less well.
An argument in favor of the Build Back Better agenda might be: that in the face of a coming demographic crunch we KNOW is going to happen, as well as climate change and technological disruptions, we need to make these investments to increase per capita worker productivity.
From what I'm reading, the worker shortage may never fully resolve. Sonwe need every worker we've got producing at peak potential. They need education. Badly. Instead they are getting less and inadequate education.
How are we going to handle whole swaths of our country becoming unproductive due to climate change? It looks like will happen to the west coast in the next 30-40 years; its agriculture is going to be devaststed. This will be REALLY bad because California produces a lot of our ag produce.
Add to that we have an aging population in need of ever more care...
Well we need our existing workers to be as educated as possible, as comfortable with having kids as possible, and we need infrastructure up to date. So the education supports, the child care supports, the climate mitigation and the hard infrastructure we definitely need.
We also need immigration... Japan shows what happens when there are not young people to take care of the old.... which is where we are headed. The baby bust of the 00s is already manifesting in our labor shortage...it is going to be BAD in 20 years when the pandemic era babies are supposed to be entering the workforce and they prove to be basically non-existent.
So... save 3.5T now, or let our country get really screwed up by doing nothing?
You are really getting off topic - The Build Back Better agenda would be an absolute disaster - you ignored the bigger issue - the 3.5T is only part of the cost and the pay for is a bunch of taxes that will hurt everyone. This BBB is just a list of a bunch of liberal wanta do ideas, not a agenda.
What is proposed is not really going to fix anything for climate change - Biden has already done several things to make the situation worse like killing keystone and federal leases - US control of oil allows regulating how green it is. Many experts are saying that a rise in green house gases would make agriculture grow better.
So taking someone out of the workforce to give them Community College so the can drive a tractor, flip burgers or run a cash register is going to get them at peak performance and resolve a purported worker shortage? Daycare is not "education" climate change is not "education".
Expanded child care credits would encourage some to not work - we need more productive member, not unproductive. We also need to have legal immigration, not those that break the law and are low skill - also immigration has already been deemed as not allowable in this bill.
As far as caring for old vs births, deaths exceeded births before tha pandemic and the pandemic caused increase death rate to be even higher over birth rate, many more dying than born. Also might want to rethink the idea of a baby bust - the data is that there was a very minor decrease over the last year in the US but a statistically significant (15% above normal)baby boom is in progress now.
The way to really mess things up is to pass this stupid agenda that poll after poll shows that the american people do not want - Rasmussen poll 53% oppose vs 36% support, or the the latest survey that 71.5% oppose the bill vs 21.8% support.
I think many forget that the original bill was an infrastructure bill that was about $1T, something supported by both sides that has been sidetracked by partisans on the left to add this junk. Let the original bill go through.
You are really getting off topic - The Build Back Better agenda would be an absolute disaster - you ignored the bigger issue - the 3.5T is only part of the cost and the pay for is a bunch of taxes that will hurt everyone. This BBB is just a list of a bunch of liberal wanta do ideas, not a agenda.
What is proposed is not really going to fix anything for climate change - Biden has already done several things to make the situation worse like killing keystone and federal leases - US control of oil allows regulating how green it is. Many experts are saying that a rise in green house gases would make agriculture grow better.
So taking someone out of the workforce to give them Community College so the can drive a tractor, flip burgers or run a cash register is going to get them at peak performance and resolve a purported worker shortage? Daycare is not "education" climate change is not "education".
Expanded child care credits would encourage some to not work - we need more productive member, not unproductive. We also need to have legal immigration, not those that break the law and are low skill - also immigration has already been deemed as not allowable in this bill.
As far as caring for old vs births, deaths exceeded births before tha pandemic and the pandemic caused increase death rate to be even higher over birth rate, many more dying than born. Also might want to rethink the idea of a baby bust - the data is that there was a very minor decrease over the last year in the US but a statistically significant (15% above normal)baby boom is in progress now.
The way to really mess things up is to pass this stupid agenda that poll after poll shows that the american people do not want - Rasmussen poll 53% oppose vs 36% support, or the the latest survey that 71.5% oppose the bill vs 21.8% support.
I think many forget that the original bill was an infrastructure bill that was about $1T, something supported by both sides that has been sidetracked by partisans on the left to add this junk. Let the original bill go through.
"Junk." Of course you would be against anything that helps people, and would rather they work out of desperation. That's how we've run the country for decades and look at how that's working out now.
Climate change is going to screw up the whole world, and you want to do nothing. It is not going to have positive impacts. If Greenland becomes a little more fertile, that is not going to help California's agricultural sector getting destroyed. Visit me in the summer and take a deep breath of the 400 AQI from the forest destruction. It'll give you a new perspective.
I work at a community college by the way, something I devoted my life to and I can assure you it is not "daycare" and we don't teach people to drive tractors. But we do teach them things like how to program GIS to use tractors more efficiently.
I've now blocked you due to your egregious insults, something I should have done long ago. GFY.
Last edited by redguard57; 10-13-2021 at 04:45 PM..
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