For Tiny, why Friedman was misguided

Maybe I should change my handle to ecciewinner950,000. The range of time and the incompetence of our president, multiplied by the exceptionalism we hold so dear, I couldn't see the number being so low. I remember lowering it at one point, then reassessed.

It was somewhat of an arbitrary number. I've questioned weather or not I should post my question to you: May I make George Floyd as my plus one? Ooohhh! Too soon? No. It's not.

Tangent.

Rant: when you've seen, and been a victim of, police brutality, you can say it. Post it. Even make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laaauuugh.

Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

1974? When Nixon was under attack by a House and Senate majority of democrats for a simple break in perpetrated by some clowns. Yep, the dems had controlled both houses for years and race relations were great under Robert K Byrd and fellow segregationist J William Fulbright. Don't worry though, a new guy named Joseph Biden just arrived from Delaware and, like Maude, he'll sew the country back together.

Dense WSND. Ranoebsy thinks he’s going to shoot his way out of another corner he painted himself into, eh?

Every post chock full of personal insults.

Nothing cogent or constructive.

Like tRump, a narcissistic personality hungry for self fulfillment.

Get help Ramboebsyl. Or not. Originally Posted by HoeHummer

ya think OEB is rambo? lol your mind is playing tricks on you.

.


I fully agree, eccieuser9500! Professor Friedman showed that he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Just look at this:


https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/new...s-income-jobs/


https://www.thenation.com/article/ar...y-great-again/


Wow! The first link claims that his ideas, if implemented, would produce as many as 26 million jobs. Nirvana!


OK, not so fast.


https://lettertosanders.wordpress.co...st-cea-chairs/


Oh, well. Maybe there's no magic to Professor Friedman's fairy tale economic policy proposals after all. (Note that the "open letter" linked above was written by left-leaning economists.)


Oops! Sorry, eccieuser9500. Wrong Professor Friedman. I guess I got a couple of economics professors confused. Easy to do. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez seems to have done that recently.


https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-...uk-town-2020-2


Here's a recently completed piece of fine art depicting New York Representative Che Ocasio-Cortez:





"The Cutest Little Communist in Congress"


Hey, Tiny.


Didn't you post a poll asking whether the readers would like to boink Congresswoman Che? Or, judging from some of your posts over the years indicating that you're interested in discussing economics, perhaps you'd like to get her views on the teachings of Milton Keynes?



Or maybe John Maynard Schumpeter?


One of the more interesting and controversial thinkers of the late 20th/early 21st century is, of course, the estimable Professor Thomas Sowell Krugman.


If you read the works of these three iconic economists, you may have a hard time discerning whether they are liberal or conservative.


Yeah, I know. As Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez can surely tell you, economics is hard. And confusing as fuck!


.

Hey, Tiny.


Didn't you post a poll asking whether the readers would like to boink Congresswoman Che? Or, judging from some of your posts over the years indicating that you're interested in discussing economics, perhaps you'd like to get her views on the teachings of Milton Keynes?



Or maybe John Maynard Schumpeter?


One of the more interesting and controversial thinkers of the late 20th/early 21st century is, of course, the estimable Professor Thomas Sowell Krugman.


If you read the works of these three iconic economists, you may have a hard time discerning whether they are liberal or conservative.


Yeah, I know. As Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez can surely tell you, economics is hard. And confusing as fuck!


. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Yes Captain Midnight, and an overwhelming majority of the posters here would like to boink the aforementioned Congresswoman.

And while Milton Keynes, John Maynard Schumpeter and Thomas Sowell Krugman all sound like lovely places to visit and interesting people to find out about, I'd much prefer to learn all about Modern Monetary Theory from the young Congresswoman. I understand she's an expert and one of its greatest proponents. It sounds so cool! You can create lots of money out of thin air. You'd be able to pay for whatever you want to buy. A lobster in every pot and a Gulfstream G700 in every back yard!

https://www.businessinsider.com/econ...-theory-2019-3

Start with this one...

Originally Posted by lustylad

Thanks for the tip. I downloaded it to my Kindle.

.


I fully agree, eccieuser9500! Professor Friedman showed that he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Just look at this:


https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/new...s-income-jobs/


Oops! Sorry, eccieuser9500. Wrong Professor Friedman. I guess I got a couple of economics professors confused. Easy to do. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez seems to have done that recently.


https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-...uk-town-2020-2

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Just read your links and the two above are hilarious. I retract what I said. Professor Friedman is an idiot.

Yes Captain Midnight, and an overwhelming majority of the posters here would like to boink the aforementioned Congresswoman.

And while Milton Keynes, John Maynard Schumpeter and Thomas Sowell Krugman all sound like lovely places to visit and interesting people to find out about, I'd much prefer to learn all about Modern Monetary Theory from the young Congresswoman. I understand she's an expert and one of its greatest proponents. It sounds so cool! You can create lots of money out of thin air. You'd be able to pay for whatever you want to buy. A lobster in every pot and a Gulfstream G700 in every back yard!

https://www.businessinsider.com/econ...-theory-2019-3 Originally Posted by Tiny

That's what it has always been about with AOC and Marxist ideology, promise paradise and put up a parking lot. It's all about what you can get people to believe and if history tells us anything, poor people want to believe the likes of AOC just like they wanted to believe Chavez and Castro promising a workers paradise and it does work for the first few days and goes down hill fast from there which is why I give the Democrats two years to show us paradise and when they can't, their ass will be right back were it belongs, in second place.


We are in for a bumpy road no matter who wins. I'm about as insulated as anybody can be, not needing a job, nobody to answer to and enough money to get me to the end no matter how bad this economy gets and my little patch of grass is far from the madding crowd right now.

HF - i believe your are correct if the DPST Marxist take the Congress and POTUS - but - they will then pack the SC with radical judges to control all legal review to their marxist narrative.

they will shut down any freedom of speech, second Amendment rights. and institutue One party marxist control - and can do it in two years with the political advantage.



And - they will do it.



socialism can be voted in - but cast off only by force of Arms.

Harris , and her ilk, are starting a Civil War in america .

I fully agree, eccieuser9500! Professor Friedman showed that he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Just look at this:

https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/new...s-income-jobs/


https://www.thenation.com/article/ar...y-great-again/

Wow! The first link claims that his ideas, if implemented, would produce as many as 26 million jobs. Nirvana!

OK, not so fast.

https://lettertosanders.wordpress.co...st-cea-chairs/

Oh, well. Maybe there's no magic to Professor Friedman's fairy tale economic policy proposals after all. (Note that the "open letter" linked above was written by left-leaning economists.)

Oops! Sorry, eccieuser9500. Wrong Professor Friedman. I guess I got a couple of economics professors confused. Easy to do. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez seems to have done that recently. Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Oh dear! How did I miss this humiliating public smack-down of such an esteemed member of the U. Mass-Amherst Department of Marxism four years ago?

In future, please remind me to pay more attention to the far left's circular firing squad!


An Open Letter from Past CEA Chairs to Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman

Posted on February 17, 2016

Dear Senator Sanders and Professor Gerald Friedman,

We are former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers for Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. For many years, we have worked to make the Democratic Party the party of evidence-based economic policy. When Republicans have proposed large tax cuts for the wealthy and asserted that those tax cuts would pay for themselves, for example, we have shown that the economic facts do not support these fantastical claims. We have applied the same rigor to proposals by Democrats, and worked to ensure that forecasts of the effects of proposed economic policies, from investment in infrastructure, to education and training, to health care reforms, are grounded in economic evidence. Largely as a result of efforts like these, the Democratic party has rightfully earned a reputation for responsibly estimating the effects of economic policies.

We are concerned to see the Sanders campaign citing extreme claims by Gerald Friedman about the effect of Senator Sanders’s economic plan—claims that cannot be supported by the economic evidence. Friedman asserts that your plan will have huge beneficial impacts on growth rates, income and employment that exceed even the most grandiose predictions by Republicans about the impact of their tax cut proposals.

As much as we wish it were so, no credible economic research supports economic impacts of these magnitudes. Making such promises runs against our party’s best traditions of evidence-based policy making and undermines our reputation as the party of responsible arithmetic. These claims undermine the credibility of the progressive economic agenda and make it that much more difficult to challenge the unrealistic claims made by Republican candidates.


Sincerely,

Alan Krueger, Princeton University
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2011-2013

Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago Booth School
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2010-2011

Christina Romer, University of California at Berkeley
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 2009-2010

Laura D’Andrea Tyson, University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers, 1993-1995



Did they really call the dim-retards the "party of responsible arithmetic"?


Ok, let's flash forward to 2020.

Other than Fauxcahontas, few of the dim-retard candidates bothered to put detailed price tags on their extravagant promises or explain where the tens of trillions in extra revenues needed to pay for them would originate. As for the fake Indian, the WSJ had fun blasting her arithmetic.


Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan, Oh My

She may not win the nomination, but her ideas show where the American left wants to go.

By The Editorial Board
Updated Dec. 27, 2019 9:48 am ET

She’s the candidate with a plan for everything: That’s Elizabeth Warren’s brand. But even that sells her ambitions short, as we discovered after a tour of her 60-some policy papers. Ms. Warren is proposing a transformation of American government, business and life that exceeds what the socialist dreamers of a century ago imagined.

Her standing in the polls has fallen after missteps over Medicare, but she is still in the top candidate tier. Her ideas deserve to be taken seriously because they show where the American left wants to go:

• Wealth tax: Tax net worth over $50 million at 2% a year, and 6% above $1 billion. To prevent the rich from yachting off, add a 40% “exit tax” on assets over $50 million upon renouncing U.S. citizenship. Estimated revenue: $3.75 trillion over a decade from 75,000 households. Most economists, including many Democrats, call that number a fantasy. Courts might also find the tax unconstitutional.

• Medicare for All tax: Charge companies with at least 50 workers an “Employer Medicare Contribution,” equal to 98% of their recent outlays on health care, while adjusting for inflation and changes in staff size. These varying fees “would be gradually shifted to converge at the average health care cost-per-employee nationally.” Estimated revenue: $8.8 trillion over a decade. If receipts fall short, add a “supplemental” tax on “big companies with extremely high executive compensation and stock buyback rates.”

• Global corporate tax: Raise the top business rate to 35%. Apply this as a world-wide minimum on overseas earnings by U.S. companies. Businesses would “pay the difference between the minimum tax and the rate in the countries where they book their profits.” Apply a similar minimum tax to foreign companies, prorated by the share of their sales made in the U.S. Estimated revenue: $1.65 trillion over a decade.

• Corporate surtax: Tax profit over $100 million at a new 7% rate, without exemptions. This would go atop the regular corporate rate. Estimated revenue: $1 trillion over a decade from 1,200 public companies.

• Slower expensing: “Our current tax system lets companies deduct the cost of certain investments they make in assets faster than those assets actually lose value.” Closing this “loophole,” she says, would raise $1.25 trillion over a decade.

• Higher capital gains taxes: Tax the investment gains of the wealthiest 1% as ordinary income, meaning rates near 40% instead of today’s 23.8%. Apply the tax annually on gains via a “mark to market” system, even if the asset hasn’t been sold. Estimated revenue: $2 trillion over a decade.

• Finance taxes: Tax the sale of bonds, stocks and so forth at 0.1%. Estimated revenue: $800 billion over a decade. Charge big banks a systemic risk fee, raising $100 billion more.

• Individual tax increases: There’s no detailed proposal, but Ms. Warren’s clean-energy plan is “paid for by reversing Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and giant corporations.” She’s budgeted $1 trillion.

• Social Security: Increase benefits by $2,400 a year across the board. Raise them further “for lower-income families, women, people with disabilities, public-sector workers, and people of color” by changing “outdated” rules that Ms. Warren says disadvantage them.

Pay for this by lifting the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax, which today covers wages below $132,900, to 14.8% on wages above $250,000. Establish a matching 14.8% surcharge on net investment income, paid by those earning more than $250,000.

• Lobbying tax: Tax “excessive lobbying” over $500,000 a year at rates up to 75%. Ms. Warren says this would have raised $10 billion over the past decade, although it probably runs headlong into the First Amendment’s right to petition the government. Use the revenue for “a surge of resources to Congress and federal agencies.”

• Medicare for All: Mandate government coverage for everyone, including for illegal immigrants, with no copays or deductibles. Phase out the private plans of 170 million Americans. She says this would cost $20.5 trillion over a decade, which most economists say is $10 trillion short of reality. Keep the growth of health spending below 4% a year with tools like “population-based budgets” and “automatic rate reductions.” Pay doctors at “Medicare rates” and hospitals at 110% of that.

This means cutting payments 25% or more relative to private insurance, per the Mercatus Center’s Charles Blahous. Trim rates further on “overpaid specialties.” To save 70% on branded prescriptions, “negotiate” with drug makers by threatening excise taxes and “public manufacturing” after “overriding the patent.”

• Green New Deal: Spend $3 trillion, including $1.5 trillion on industrial mobilization, $400 billion on research, and $100 billion on a Marshall Plan. By 2030 hit 100% carbon-neutral power and 100% zero-emission new cars. Retrofit “4% of houses and buildings every year.” For “environmental justice,” put a third of the funds into “the most vulnerable communities.”


• An end to fossil fuels: Ban fracking. Halt new drilling leases on federal land. “Prohibit future fossil fuel exports.” Kill the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. “Subject each new infrastructure project to a climate test.” Give “workers transitioning into new industries” a “guaranteed wage and benefit parity” and “promised pensions and early retirement benefits.”

• K-12 education: Add $450 billion to Title I, $200 billion for students with disabilities, $100 billion for “excellence grants,” and $50 billion for school upgrades. “End federal funding for the expansion of charter schools.”

• A “right” to child care: Build a federal network of local providers, subject to national standards. Give free care to the “millions of children” whose households are under 200% of poverty, or $51,500 for a family of four. For everyone else, cap child-care spending at 7% of income. Estimated cost: $700 billion.

• Free college: “Give every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees.” Add $100 billion to Pell Grants and $50 billion for historically black colleges, tribal schools and more. Estimated cost: $610 billion.

• Student-debt forgiveness: Write off $50,000 for households with incomes under $100,000. This would phase out as income rises toward $250,000. Estimated cost: $640 billion.

• Housing: Spend $500 billion “to build, preserve, and rehab” millions of affordable-housing units. Condition such funding “on repealing state laws that prohibit local rent control.” Paid for by lowering the death-tax exemption to $7 million from $22 million per couple. At the same time, “raise the tax rates above that threshold.”

• Unions: Overturn “so-called ‘right to work’ laws” in 27 states. Guarantee public employees an ability to “bargain collectively in every state.” Amend labor law to aid “sectoral bargaining.” Give the National Labor Relations Board “much stronger” powers, such as “to impose compensatory and punitive damages.”

• Corporate governance: Make companies with revenue over $1 billion obtain a new federal charter—separate from the current state charter system—that requires them to “consider the interests of all corporate stakeholders.” Give workers 40% of board seats, and put CEOs under “a new criminal negligence standard.”

• Industrial policy: Manage the dollar’s value “more actively” to “promote exports and domestic manufacturing.” Create a Department of Economic Development, and have it write a National Jobs Strategy. Expand the Export-Import Bank. Impose a “border carbon adjustment” fee—that is, new tariffs—on imports from countries that don’t align with U.S. climate policies.

• Antitrust: Break up Amazon, Facebook and Google. “Unwind” their mergers with Whole Foods, Instagram, DoubleClick and more. Regulate as a “platform utility” any online marketplace with global revenue of $25 billion. Reverse agriculture consolidation, “including the recent Bayer-Monsanto merger,” and create a “supply management program” to “guarantee farmers a price at their cost of production.”

• Banking: Pass “a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act that breaks up the big banks.” Let the U.S. Postal Service “partner with local community banks” to provide “basic banking services like checking and savings accounts.”

• Gun control: Create a “federal licensing system for the purchase of any type of firearm or ammunition.” Raise taxes to 30% on guns and 50% on ammo. Ban sales of “assault weapons,” and make current owners “register them under the National Firearms Act.” Pass a law to let shooting victims “hold the manufacturer of the weapon that harmed them strictly liable.”

• Centralized elections: Use federal money to “replace every voting machine in the country.” For federal elections, mandate early voting and same-day registration. If state elections follow the same rules, they can be “fully funded by the federal government,” with “a bonus for achieving high voter turnout.” Estimated cost: $20 billion, paid by “closing loopholes” in the death tax.

• Miscellaneous: Spend $100 billion “to end the opioid crisis,” $85 billion “to massively expand broadband access,” $25 billion on “health professional shortage areas,” and $7 billion “to close the gap in startup capital for entrepreneurs of color.” Double the foreign service and the Peace Corps.

Give congressional staff “competitive salaries.” Recruit 10,000 people to “a 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps.” End entry fees at national parks. Buy flood-prone houses “for low-income homeowners at a value that will allow them to relocate.” Plus much more.

All of this adds up to such an expansion of government that the temptation is to dismiss it as fanciful. But Ms. Warren is a shrewd and disciplined politician who isn’t supporting these ideas on an ideological whim. She believes they have enough political support to help her win the Democratic nomination and then the White House against a vulnerable Donald Trump.

Her only real policy difference with Bernie Sanders is that she has the courage to offer more details. As for getting it all enacted, she has a plan for that, too: Kill the legislative filibuster, so she can pass her agenda with a simple Senate majority.

The question for Democrats: Is this the agenda they want to put forward in 2020? Or will Ms. Warren’s radical plans scare voters into resorting to Mr. Trump again?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabe...my-11577404548


Oh well, who cares at this point? The bitch lost out to Sleepy Joe, right?

So who wants to start a thread on Joe Biden's "responsible arithmetic"?

If biden wins - Fauxahontas wants the treasury secretary post - to institute her above economic plans
which will bankrupt and destroy america.

She plans a marxist revolution - it is already started in the DPST fomented and supported Violence in DPST cities.



Take note - america - we are destroying our representative democracy from within!

.


Scattershooting while wondering what happened to the legacy of Joseph Schumpeter (with apologies to the late Blackie Sherrod!):

Just read your links and the two above are hilarious. I retract what I said. Professor Friedman is an idiot. Originally Posted by Tiny

Professor Gerald (Friedman) certainly is! I love the magical thinking that went into the claims that Bernie's big-spending initiatives would boost growth to virtually unprecedented levels. Almost like magic!

...I'd much prefer to learn all about Modern Monetary Theory from the young Congresswoman. I understand she's an expert and one of its greatest proponents. It sounds so cool! You can create lots of money out of thin air. You'd be able to pay for whatever you want to buy. A lobster in every pot and a Gulfstream G700 in every back yard! Originally Posted by Tiny

Hot damn! That sounds like the greatest thing since the invention of the microchip!


Have any of you folks read Stephanie Kelton's new book on MMT?





"The People's Economy" -- I mean, who could oppose that? (Certainly not those who act as though they'd like to change the name of our nation to "The People's Republic of America.")



The subject of this book came up in a video conference I participated in a couple of weeks ago. Although it seemed clear that no one present was ideologically in the same area code as Professor Stephanie, some had read the book -- apparently feeling that if MMT was going to be front and center in economic policy debates, we might as well get an explanation of just what the hell it is straight from the horse's mouth!


So I read it, too.



Here's her message in a nutshell:


Since we borrow in our own currency, and therefore cannot "go broke" in the usual sense (since we can just print up all the currency the Treasury needs and spend it), we need not be concerned about deficits and debt accumulation. However, Professor Stephanie rambles on and on about various things without trying to tell us at what point between where we are now and an infinite amount of debt accumulation some sort of problem or constraint could arise.


If you are expecting to see any rigorous analysis or solid mathematics that undergird her arguments, you will be very disappointed.



The "People's Economy" includes just what you expect it would -- federal job guarantees for everyone, very large (unspecified) "infrastructure" projects, most elements of the "green new deal." tuition-free college, greatly expanded free or heavily subsidized health care, and possibly some version of UBI.


Apparently the only constraint would be the resurgence of inflation, which will eventually erupt if your pour almost unlimited demand into the economy. The MMTers' "solution" then is to raise taxes in order to suck some demand out of the economy and dampen inflation. (Sure! Good luck with that!)


This is why Liz Ann Sonders (and many others in the investment community) have been referring to MMT as the "magic money tree."

Oh dear! How did I miss this humiliating public smack-down of such an esteemed member of the U. Mass-Amherst Department of Marxism four years ago?

In future, please remind me to pay more attention to the far left's circular firing squad. Originally Posted by lustylad

Did you happen to see the snarky exchanges (on Twitter and elsewhere) between Professor Stephanie and far-left IYI economist Paul Krugman? The latter dissed the whole idea of MMT in a couple of columns, prompting Stephanie to post that he did not understand the issue and had no idea what he was talking about. The back-and-forth on Twitter was hilarious!



The Great and Powerful Krugtron does not take kindly to being condescended to by other left-wing economists!


.

Nothing cogent or constructive.
a narcissistic personality hungry for self fulfillment Originally Posted by HoeHummer

Yous wrote the book on it!!

Yous wrote the book on it!! Originally Posted by bb1961

No junior, that was Trump. Hey, how's it HANGGING?

I don't propose to know as much about Modern Monetary Theory as others here, but I am keenly aware of the social impact socially progressive programs feel when ignored.

Trillions of Dollars in Government Spending and Growing Debt


https://www.heartland.org/news-opini...sly-in-the-red

Democrats with vote-getting glee and Republicans more out of fear of seeming to be flint-hearted in an election year decided to open the floodgates of government spending with trillions of dollars of borrowed money. Many in the media and among the pundits discovered the supposedly “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT), which soothingly assured that government neither had to tax to have money to spend nor worry about building up more debt from increased deficit spending.

As long as there is production and employment slack in the economy it’s all “positive,” – jobs and output at no meaningful cost to anything or anyone in society. If “scarcity” were to return and prices in general were to start to rise, then taxes could be used to sop up the “excess” spending causing the price inflation – and especially on “the rich” to help equalize income and wealth in the process. More employment, income, and output are just a few turns away of the handle of the monetary printing press (or its mouse click computer equivalent).

Greed Is Good. Except When It’s Bad.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/b...niversary.html

The shareholder-primacy view of the corporation — which gives little voice to the workers, customers and communities that are impacted by corporate decisions — has been the modus operandi of United States capitalism. Why did this view become so dominant? One rationale was a practical one. Rather than being asked to balance multiple, often conflicting, interests among stakeholders, the manager is given a simple objective function. More important, though, was the naïve belief, dominant in the Chicago school at the time, that what is good for shareholders is good for society — a belief that rested on the assumption of perfectly functioning markets. Unfortunately, such perfect markets exist only in economics textbooks.

Just spend the money wisely.

Just spend the money wisely.


Which, in DPST terms - means straight into the pockets of the nomenklatura .

With all their special privileges the masses in bread lines can only dream of!
After all -9500- remember when you in line - before being taken to the 'Wall' -

Bernie said - bread lines are good"!!!!
Best take him at his word.