Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Keep in mind, that, counter to all evidence, the overwhelming majority of humankind believe in a supernatural god or gods.

I'm not looking to debate or discuss religion here, but lack of supporting evidence is not the same as having evidence to the contrary. Belief in the supernatural, therefore, isn't the same as (say) belief that the world is flat. We have abundant hard evidence to disprove the latter. We can neither prove nor disprove the former, so we can't really say "counter to all evidence" in the former... can we?

There's a difference between belief in the unprovable and belief in the provably false.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

How is this different from K-12 education where administrators get newer facilities and larger salaries, but teachers and students get shafted? Or for that matter how is this different from management and labor? Are you not talking about the two-sets-of-rules system of America as we know it? Somehow the problem doesn't appear to be rising tuition costs or inflated salaries, but gross inequity.



Cheers.

You'll get no argument from me there! It absolutely is a labor-management issue, no different than for K-12.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Something very weird is going on with Ann Coulter. This column combines all-out attacks upon Newt with a fawning attitude towards Romney that is worthy of the candidate's own wife. It's not that I have any respect for her, I don't, I'm just fascinated by the depth of her feeling, especially since Romney is hardly the kind of politician she usually likes. Coulter has a reputation as a pretty free spirit herself. I can't help wondering if she and Newt might have a past.

My take is that Gingrich with his horrible past and with his prickly personality is likely to lose to Obama , if Gingrich is GOP nominee. Romney has his own set of issue, but looks to be a stronger GOP candidate.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Something very weird is going on with Ann Coulter. This column combines all-out attacks upon Newt with a fawning attitude towards Romney that is worthy of the candidate's own wife. It's not that I have any respect for her, I don't, I'm just fascinated by the depth of her feeling, especially since Romney is hardly the kind of politician she usually likes. Coulter has a reputation as a pretty free spirit herself. I can't help wondering if she and Newt might have a past.

Ha, ha. Sure, why not? You could be on to something there, David. I could see the two of them hitting it off initially. One is just as mean spirited as the other. Birds of a feather...and all that.

Originally Posted by ASB65

Ha, ha. Sure, why not? You could be on to something there, David. I could see the two of them hitting it off initially. One is just as mean spirited as the other. Birds of a feather...and all that.

The oddest thing to me is that Coulter seems like she'd be part of the "Romney is a liberal" wing of the Republican base, doing anything she could to put a "true conservative" (read: "Tea Party Reactionary") into office.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

The oddest thing to me is that Coulter seems like she'd be part of the "Romney is a liberal" wing of the Republican base, doing anything she could to put a "true conservative" (read: "Tea Party Reactionary") into office.

I was under the impression that she did not like Romney at all. I remember a few a months ago her saying (I think it might have been about Cain) that people needed to support him because if not, Romney would end up being the nominee and that would be just horrible. (Or something to that effect. I realize I'm not quoting her exactly.) I would have assumed that she would be a strong supporter of Gingrich, since she was in the anyone but Romney camp.

But then, I also understand that people who know Gingrich and have worked with him in the past don't really like him at all, and there is a reason for that. This includes many Republicans. I don't think Gingrich has all that many friends on the Republican side. And it's not necessarily because of his political beliefs, as much as has to do with the fact that he is just plain mean and has made a lot of enemies.

36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes.

Do they have no shame at all after all the talk about fairness?

I guess taxes are for the little people.

James50

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

I'm not looking to debate or discuss religion here, but lack of supporting evidence is not the same as having evidence to the contrary. Belief in the supernatural, therefore, isn't the same as (say) belief that the world is flat. We have abundant hard evidence to disprove the latter. We can neither prove nor disprove the former, so we can't really say "counter to all evidence" in the former... can we?

There's a difference between belief in the unprovable and belief in the provably false.

I guess i failed to make the point I really wanted to make. Like religion, macro-economics isn't fully objective. It follows the rules of evidence, but the whys and wherefores are based on analysis, which can be flawed. If that wasn't true, there wouldn't be several schools of thought on the subject. By the same token, assigning a probable outcome to an event or situatin based on belief rather than empirical evidence relies on a willingness to overlook evidence to the contrary. People who expect God to intervene in their llives are wishful thinkers. With the possible exception of a few anecdotal and unprovable cases, this never happens. The same applies to macro-economics, albeit on a diffrent scale.

Originally Posted by James50

36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes.

Do they have no shame at all after all the talk about fairness?

I guess taxes are for the little people.

James50

This reminds me of when David Stockman, Reagan's finance wizard, hadn't paid his student loans in years. He wrote a check--and fast.

Originally Posted by annla899

This reminds me of when David Stockman, Reagan's finance wizard, hadn't paid his student loans in years. He wrote a check--and fast.

Or a Treasury secretary that had unpaid taxes at the time he was nominated. Where do they find these guys? It shows that Washington is way out of touch and thinks they are elite with a different set of rules, regardless of party.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Or a Treasury secretary that had unpaid taxes at the time he was nominated. Where do they find these guys? It shows that Washington is way out of touch and thinks they are elite with a different set of rules, regardless of party.

When I read the full article, it pointed out how many federal workers owed back taxes. That made me wonder how many people of different professions owe back taxes and for how many years back does it go? After my mom died and I inherited some money, I owed back taxes because I was clueless. (Of course I paid right away.)

Originally Posted by annla899

When I read the full article, it pointed out how many federal workers owed back taxes. That made me wonder how many people of different professions owe back taxes and for how many years back does it go? After my mom died and I inherited some money, I owed back taxes because I was clueless. (Of course I paid right away.)

Yeah. I mean, to get a job you have to deal with piss tests and background checks and even the smallest indiscretion from long ago can disqualify you, but it doesn't seem like currently owing back taxes is a disqualifier. But heaven forbid you test positive for something you took years ago or had a stupid non-violent misdemeanor when you were 19, that brands you for life...

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I am not one of those historians!

New owners; same debt.

Replaced by electrons, no doubt. Same money.

Cash or electrons; money is money.

No problem with your analysis there, and I agree; obviously, recession is the problem today.

I still don't follow you; you haven't convinced me. Taxes are collected; the checks are deposited in the Treasury and it sends electrons to the agencies that spend the money, which then is back in the economy.

Not much chance of that!

I do agree that jobs are more important than the debt.

Okay, we agree on many things, and this may be just talking past one another.

Let me boil this down, and just give it some thought on occasion.

Federal spending is not constrained by tax revenue. If it was, then there could be no federal deficits - $15T debt is pretty clear evidence on that.

Likewise, Federal spending is not constrained by its borrowing. You can only buy a US Treasury bond with dollars, nothing else. A lender to the US govt needs dollars first in order to lend. Where did his dollars come from? They had to come first from federal spending. Whatever comes first is not dependent on what comes later.

So if the Federal govt's spending is not constrained by its tax revenues or by its borrowing, what is the economic (not political) constraint?

Check out the link in my soon response to M&L.

Originally Posted by annla899

You're right. I am cynical. The chair of the finance committee of the Board of Trustees at my college has donated exclusively to Republican politicians, most of whom are on the extreme right, like Eric Cantor. As far as I can tell, the only moderate politician he has donated to (for more than $1000) is Mark Kirk of IL, who seems like a decent representative. I've researched board members' political donations, which like mine, are accessible publicly.

I have said repeatedly that I cannot justify the sky rocketing costs of college tuition. You claim it's because student loans have become too easy to get, I know that in the past 10 years the increase in upper administrators has been astronomical, to the point that, where I work, even a paid consultant noted it. A consultant who was paid a quarter million dollars which could have and should have gone to student scholarships. But us teachers don't get say in where the college tuition goes.

All I know is that my salary has been the same since May 2008,before the crash, although the president of my college got a a couple of large bonuses during a time of decreased enrollment--a matter of public record. I know my job is in jeopardy. My pension has been frozen since 2002.

Don't worry, James. We're feeling it in higher education. We know we're screwed. At least those of us who actually teach people know we're anachronistic and we certainly don't pay our way. We're superfluous. Pretty soon college classes will be taught only by adjuncts who are paid (poorly) per class and who don't and who shouldn't have a stake in long term curricular planning, because they are not paid to. But they don't get benefits, thus they cost less. And they have no power. Which, in the view of not just a few, is good.

You're right; not much different from the corporate world and the chain stores.

The problem is not that student loans are easy to get; the problem is that so many students need them, that they are so big, and that they take too long to pay off-- if at all. All this because costs are too high in the Reagan economy, in which we have decided the public should not help support higher education; it is now something for the upper class only. All this suits the Reaganoid trickle-down purposes perfectly. It all started with Reagan's attack on the University of California, which James says is now the biggest political donor.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

I'm not looking to debate or discuss religion here, but lack of supporting evidence is not the same as having evidence to the contrary. Belief in the supernatural, therefore, isn't the same as (say) belief that the world is flat. We have abundant hard evidence to disprove the latter. We can neither prove nor disprove the former, so we can't really say "counter to all evidence" in the former... can we?

There's a difference between belief in the unprovable and belief in the provably false.

Or more accurately, known by different methods of knowledge.

M&L refers to economics, the dismal science. Pretty much all theory; you can take your choice among the different ones.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Okay, we agree on many things, and this may be just talking past one another.

Let me boil this down, and just give it some thought on occasion.

Federal spending is not constrained by tax revenue. If it was, then there could be no federal deficits - $15T debt is pretty clear evidence on that.

Likewise, Federal spending is not constrained by its borrowing. You can only buy a US Treasury bond with dollars, nothing else. A lender to the US govt needs dollars first in order to lend. Where did his dollars come from? They had to come first from federal spending. Whatever comes first is not dependent on what comes later.

So if the Federal govt's spending is not constrained by its tax revenues or by its borrowing, what is the economic (not political) constraint?

I can't disagree with those points. There is no limit on how much our government can spend; the Fed and/or the Treasury just needs to choose to do so. Too often this spending is used to prop up capitalist cronies, as David Stockman is pointing out now. The sound money folks like Ron Paul say the Fed should be abolished because of this lack of constraint. The other side of the coin from yourself!

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I know you like the image of electrons as money, but technically, the electrons go nowhere. Using "photons" is closer to accurate but still wrong. The real activity involves a conversation (typically through the exchange of secure IP packets) that consists of a serieis of amplitude and phase changes travleing to and fro. In other words, the money moves by the equivalent of electronic hand waving. Nothing of substance is involved.

Okay, you just stripped away my remaining vestages of Newtonian sanity. That's okay though, I can handle it now that Rani is prescripting to me the right drug mix.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

IThis assumes that the entire concept of the accounting identity is flawed or, worse, a myth. Sorry, this I can't buy. Keeping score is a fundamentally human trait. We will not allow a good (X) without a corresponding cost (Y), because it runs counter to our genetic wiring. It may be intellectually honest and might even be a better way, but it will never be accepted by the masses.

Keep in mind, that, counter to all evidence, the overwhelming majority of humankind believe in a supernatural god or gods. Nothing you can say or do will alter that, except for a tiny minority who coincidently have no power. This falls in the same category.

Good/cost - it is there in the individual transaction of a dollar given for a good and that dollar going on with its new owner to purchase other goods. At the macro level, the fed cost is its debt for the goods it purchased (either directly or through others, e.g., Medicare payments) -if you prefer, that cost is in the form of a bond that commits the fed to paying interest. However, I'm comfortable with that cost (the bond) never having been issued because I'm not constrained by having the monetarily-sovereign entity behave as a household - I do understand, however, how genetically-wedded folks are to that quaint notion.

There's been a very recent split in the MMT community primarily over the prescriptive aspect relating to the Employer of Last Resort (ELR) also known as the Job Guarantee (JG) program. The split seems to reflect whether one came to MMT from the Keynesian side or from the Classical Economics or Austrian School sides. To give you a sense of the breath of that discussion, it started on the CNBC senior financial editor's blog but most fully captured now on a Daily Kos diary with 16 chapters and dozens if not hundreds of blogs in between. You can get a flavor of that starting here -

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/0...n,-Conclusion-

There's now been an 'official' statement of a MMT splinter group calling itself "Monetary Realism" -

http://traderscrucible.com/2012/01/2...alism-and-mmt/

While the JG and other differences may be of interest to you, I would like to point out the one that most relates to what you as well as Eric and others (maybe even Justin) have been wrestling with in accepting MMT notions - center around federal debt and currency value/credibility. I believe the new Monetary Realism group may be appealing to you all and here it is -

http://pragcap.com/resources/underst...onetary-system

- particularly this part that begins with this -

What Gives Fiat Money Its “Value”?

What backs these notes we created? What gives them value? Ultimately, these notes represent some amount of output and productivity that can be purchased. The notes in and of themselves have no intrinsic value, but serve as a medium of exchange that allows the citizenry to exchange various goods and services. The willingness of the consumers in the economy to use these notes is largely dependent on the underlying value of the output and/or productivity, the government’s ability to be a good steward of the currency and the ability to enforce its usage. I like to think of this as an interconnected bond between these various forces. If any link in the bond is broken the nation’s currency is at risk of collapse. Importantly, productivity sits at the top of this bond. After all, if a nation has nothing to produce then the formation of a monetary system serves little purpose. Further, a system that does not evolve via production can expect to become increasingly unstable over time as living standards stagnate.

but goes much farther.


Not a bad read for one really interested in this stuff.

Red State socialism. Grey Badger has some explaining to do. Keep in mind the red-blue determination is based on 2004 presidential election so it is a little off.

As for Georgia, I am still not apologizing for asking the feds to kick in on deepening the Savannah River to handle the new Panamax ships.

"Internal improvements" they used to call it.

James50

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

I'm not looking to debate or discuss religion here, but lack of supporting evidence is not the same as having evidence to the contrary. Belief in the supernatural, therefore, isn't the same as (say) belief that the world is flat. We have abundant hard evidence to disprove the latter. We can neither prove nor disprove the former, so we can't really say "counter to all evidence" in the former... can we?

There's a difference between belief in the unprovable and belief in the provably false.

But we do having living lab experiments unfolding before our very eyes.

Take the British experiment in "expansionary austerity" -



http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/0...epression.html

The British Economy Is Now Doing Worse than it Did in the Great Depression

Yep. This many months after the start of the Great Depression, the British economy was rapidly converging back to its pre-depression level of production under Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain's policy of using stimulative policies to restore the price level to its pre-Great Depression trajectory.

By contrast, the Cameron-Osborne policies of expansion-through-austerity have produced a flatline for real GDP, and the odds are high that British real GDP is headed down again.

In less than a year, if current forecasts come true, the Cameron-Osborne Depression will not be the worst depression in Britain since the Great Depression, but the worst depression in Britain… probably ever.

That is quite an accomplishment.

Now observing these laboratory experiments provide some real practical applications.

For example, any one observing the British experiment would soon realize that they would be bat-shirt crazy to vote for any thing resembling a Republican.

Gawd, I love science!

Originally Posted by James50

Red State socialism. Grey Badger has some explaining to do. Keep in mind the red-blue determination is based on 2004 presidential election so it is a little off.

As for Georgia, I am still not apologizing for asking the feds to kick in on deepening the Savannah River to handle the new Panamax ships.

"Internal improvements" they used to call it.

James50

Oh, yes; New Mexico Congresscritters are judged by their ability to bring home the pork, while our state and local politicians, by their ability to spread it around without going to jail.

Or if you mean me, personally, I make no bones about being a parasite. In an Objectivist state, I'd be frying up a can of dog food in a converted motel room. In a purely Utilitarian one, I'd have been handed a pill and asked to make room for someone productive.

So, no, any explaining that has to be done can wait for another round of Wikileaks - "New Mexico Corruption."

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I know you like the image of electrons as money, but technically, the electrons go nowhere. Using "photons" is closer to accurate but still wrong. The real activity involves a conversation (typically through the exchange of secure IP packets) that consists of a serieis of amplitude and phase changes travleing to and fro. In other words, the money moves by the equivalent of electronic hand waving. Nothing of substance is involved.


This assumes that the entire concept of the accounting identity is flawed or, worse, a myth. Sorry, this I can't buy. Keeping score is a fundamentally human trait. We will not allow a good (X) without a corresponding cost (Y), because it runs counter to our genetic wiring. It may be intellectually honest and might even be a better way, but it will never be accepted by the masses.

Keep in mind, that, counter to all evidence, the overwhelming majority of humankind believe in a supernatural god or gods. Nothing you can say or do will alter that, except for a tiny minority who coincidently have no power. This falls in the same category.

This is probably at the base of what is actually going on with our economic situation. It has occurred to me over the last few years that it is likely that we simply do not need everyone working 40 hours per week, every week to adequately meet the needs of the population. We have compensated by creating "services" to do for people and paper-pushing jobs that may not really need to be done. The rest can't find work. It would certainly get my attention for a candidate (obviously not 2012) to map out a plan for a 30-hour week or one-month on/one month off, etc. Is that a 4T regeneracy type issue or more of a 2T morality issue? It will be a hard sell to hard boiled older Xers, but Millennials will probably be more accepting. It is true that most humans are wary of anyone that is fed and housed without working for it even when you point out the obvious issues with over-saturation, automation and outsourcing.

Originally Posted by playwrite

The national debt was paid off once, by Andrew Jackson around 1835. It was soon followed by an economic depression that some historians believe was proportionally worse than that of the 1930s.

Actually, did you know the total national debt is paid off about 4-5 times every year. It's right there in the FED's balance sheet. They roll the debt over to new buyers (mostly re-buyers) all the time.

Another interesting fact. Walk into an IRS branch and pay your taxes in actual cash. What do you think happens to that cash? It's shredded.

- Here's a little secret. Federal taxes pay for nothing. Federal taxing destroys money supply. None of it is saved and put in armor cars and transferred to the SS offices, Medicare offices, the Defense Department or any other federal entity. When those federal agencies spend, the Treasury issues a spanking new check or much more likely has the FED credit the appropriate bank account by sending electrons from their computers to the banks' computers.

It's all a spreadsheet on a computer screen manipulated by sending electrons with a key board.

The only issue is whether there are, when combined with private sector spending, too many digits for the amount of goods and services that the economy can provide and inflation becomes a concern or there are too few digits and the economy stagnates at best or worse spirals down into a recession or depression.

Any guess what the situation is today?

Taxing the rich or anybody right now to "help pay for federal spending" is at best a political calculation, it has nothing to do with the actual financing of federal spending. At worst, it's like Rodger suggests - a misdirection to make folks feel better about everyone paying their fair share that will have absolutely no impact on the economy or their economic well being.

I'm telling you all this as someone who is viewed by family and friends as too far to the Left for the Democratic Party; if you think I bought into this new thinking easily, you would be very very wrong about that - nearly as wrong as you are about how a monetarily-sovereign entity like our Federal govt actually operates.

This 4T has little chance of concluding until this understanding is clear and widespread among the public at large as well as our leadership.

I think the depression was actually caused when Jackson got pissed at the rich and nationalized the banking system.

Originally Posted by radind

My take is that Gingrich with his horrible past and with his prickly personality is likely to lose to Obama , if Gingrich is GOP nominee. Romney has his own set of issue, but looks to be a stronger GOP candidate.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

The oddest thing to me is that Coulter seems like she'd be part of the "Romney is a liberal" wing of the Republican base, doing anything she could to put a "true conservative" (read: "Tea Party Reactionary") into office.

Originally Posted by ASB65

I was under the impression that she did not like Romney at all. I remember a few a months ago her saying (I think it might have been about Cain) that people needed to support him because if not, Romney would end up being the nominee and that would be just horrible. (Or something to that effect. I realize I'm not quoting her exactly.) I would have assumed that she would be a strong supporter of Gingrich, since she was in the anyone but Romney camp.

But then, I also understand that people who know Gingrich and have worked with him in the past don't really like him at all, and there is a reason for that. This includes many Republicans. I don't think Gingrich has all that many friends on the Republican side. And it's not necessarily because of his political beliefs, as much as has to do with the fact that he is just plain mean and has made a lot of enemies.

Radind, that makes perfect sense, but if you read the column I linked, my point is, that isn't the way it reads at all. If you substituted Obama for Gingrich and Reagan for Romney in that column, it would sound more like her.

And yes, Romney has never struck me as the kind of Republican she would like. I don't mean to sound like a conspiracist but I think there's some one--Rove maybe?--trying to enforce some sanity among top Republicans and their acolytes in the media like Coulter and Will. Meanwhile, Limbaugh and Hannity, I believe, are standing up for the Newt.

Originally Posted by James50

Red State socialism. Grey Badger has some explaining to do. Keep in mind the red-blue determination is based on 2004 presidential election so it is a little off.

If you check the states with the largest Native American reservations, i.e. North & South Dakota, Arizona, New Mexico, they're all pretty red. One wonders how your simplistic table would look with a bit of Pareto analysis, or analysis of any kind.

Originally Posted by Exile 67'

I think the depression was actually caused when Jackson got pissed at the rich and nationalized the banking system.

WTH happened to Jackson's "many headed monster":



~Chas'88