So, back the free stuff utopia. I believe most people are by nature curious and want to explore and be creative, so knowledge will advance, which is the real goal.
The goal of business, of course, is to make the individual subservient to the corporation. Even what you do on your own time has to conform to company policy. "Company Man!"
The solution is more welfare, enough to provide a decent standard of living, then let biz pay what it wants. So if you want to enter the market you can; if you don't want to play that game, you're free to innovate on your own, and enter challenges.
1) Comparing the US to the Weimar Republic is ridiculous. Germany had just lost a world war. To the US! If you've just lost a world war, and have to make onerous reparation payments, then worry about hyperinflation. Consider that after WWII, the US instead of demanding reparations gave money to Germany and Italy (as well as the Allies) with the Marshall Plan.
2) Saying taxes fund the government is like saying deposits fund bank lending. In fact banks are highly leveraged, and roll over their funding daily. Then you have shadow banks that don't even have regular deposits, yet they manage to create money and roll over their funding. Government can use the same tactic, especially with the Fed which by law returns interest to the Treasury. Taxes aren't needed to fund the government.
Free stuff utopia. Government provides a basic income to all who want it, financed at zero cost through the Fed. Biz pays whatever low wages it wants so there's no wage-price spiral. Challenges stimulate individuals to innovate disruptively on their own without having to work for a business (unless they want to). Standards of living rise faster, there is more leisure time, and poverty is eliminated.
Government should be investing much more in alternative energy, because the private sector is too short-sighted to do it. Whether giving money to a private corporation is as good as just giving money directly to individuals and creating challenges is debatable. I think the latter is better.
But the idea that the government has no money left, or that the taxpayer pays for everything, is ludicrous. Government can and should fund itself like the private sector does, through borrowing (at zero cost, from the Fed).
Government contributes disruptive innovation (computers, USDA contributions to agriculture, GPS, the internet, etc.) that has created a lot of surplus productivity. Your story lacks historical support.
Make your assumptions explicit, then. To claim that economics doesn't make assumptions about scarcity, marginal utility, rational behavior, and risk is to create a new discipline. To call it economics is an abuse of language. Economics is fundamentally tied to money and money is a psychological invention of humans.
Biology doesn't have concepts of debt, or futures contracts, or inflation. If there is suddenly twice as much food, that doesn't mean that calories are devalued. But economics makes that assumption.
The shadow banking system is rich. What is their currency? IOUs, backstopped with public money in a crisis, because the Fed buys their IOUs when the market devalues them.
So a few people are living very well off of "leaves" that are just promises to pay, and are often (in the case of CDS, etc.) lies. But the government steps in to make good the promises backing up those lies.
So one way is to simply substitute what the huge cash pools really want, which is T-bills. But there aren't enough T-bills so they create "quasi T-Bills" which end up tanking, and the Fed backstops them.
Instead, just let the government create more T-bills.
The government/Fed is going to end up paying for the privately-created IOUs anyway, when the next crisis comes. Why not simply create the government debt now, which is what the huge cash pools are looking for anyway, and use the T-bills to spend on social services? Backstop individuals now instead of corporations later.
This is a very disingenuous response. Economics makes assumptions about rational behavior, marginal value, scarcity, and other purely psychological characteristics. How does marginal value apply to gravity, for example? Will a star profit less by acquiring more mass per unit? Gravity doesn't work that way. And the idea of "profit" is purely human, and intricately tied to money, a human invention.
Trying to apply such economic assumptions to biology results in a gross misinterpretation of nature.
Free market traders calling each other up on the phone to ask a favor in changing the interest listing so they can make millions, is the essence of the free market.
There were many crashes and panics before the US created the Fed. The private system evolved Clearninghouses to act as centralized authorities. But clearinghouses were in a position to help their friends and hurt their enemies, regardless of the assets of the friends/enemies. So the Fed was created to act more equitably so we wouldn't have to rely on J.P. Morgan again as we did in 1907.
The market is all about inefficiencies and personal relationships and inflicting pain without any thought of the General Welfare. Government swears to provide for the General Welfare, but no CEO does.
Latest BIS report shows $710 trillion in derivatives. The Fed expanded its balance sheet from $1 trillion to $4 trillion. Money is not a scarce resource. Eliminate the debt ceiling and fund govt at zero cost.
Fed funds and repo markets. The way the private sector borrows everyday to meet cash commitments. Borrowing is the life blood of the private sector.
In House of Cards by Cohan, he describes a Bear Stearns executive characterizing the daily repo desk activity as "dialing for dollars." This is how much of the financial sector survives, by rolling over overnight loans, or "kicking the can down the road."
Government can be immune from private sector influences. It can and should use fiscal policy to provide each individual with a choice whether they want to enter the private sector, or pursue their own ideas outside of business. Challenges can stimulate individuals to create disruptive technologies on their own, which business is not so good at (being better at incremental innovations such as making computers smaller, rather than inventing computers in the first place).
Finance the fiscal policy of a basic income through the Fed, the same way it finances the private sector by rolling over loans at no interest forever.
Again, the cost of subsidizing housing was not the problem. Mortgage defaults by themselves were not enough to cause a crash. It was the inflation of mortgages by the private sector, with their innovations, that caused such a large amount of money to be taken out of the market suddenly. The Fed backed it up, and the banks who created the inflation didn't suffer.
A much better policy would have been to bail out the homeowners.
Slashdot Mirror
So the solution is to give power to corporations directly, and dispense with the idea of one-man-one-vote and unalienable rights altogether?
So, back the free stuff utopia. I believe most people are by nature curious and want to explore and be creative, so knowledge will advance, which is the real goal.
A coworker was fired for refusing to work overtime. Isn't that infringing on what you want to do outside of the contracted workday?
And there are many examples in the news of employers firing people for social media posts.
Employers want robots. So let's give it to them. Have government provide a basic income, and hold challenges to automate jobs. Win-win.
The goal of business, of course, is to make the individual subservient to the corporation. Even what you do on your own time has to conform to company policy. "Company Man!"
The solution is more welfare, enough to provide a decent standard of living, then let biz pay what it wants. So if you want to enter the market you can; if you don't want to play that game, you're free to innovate on your own, and enter challenges.
1) Comparing the US to the Weimar Republic is ridiculous. Germany had just lost a world war. To the US! If you've just lost a world war, and have to make onerous reparation payments, then worry about hyperinflation. Consider that after WWII, the US instead of demanding reparations gave money to Germany and Italy (as well as the Allies) with the Marshall Plan.
2) Saying taxes fund the government is like saying deposits fund bank lending. In fact banks are highly leveraged, and roll over their funding daily. Then you have shadow banks that don't even have regular deposits, yet they manage to create money and roll over their funding. Government can use the same tactic, especially with the Fed which by law returns interest to the Treasury. Taxes aren't needed to fund the government.
Free stuff utopia. Government provides a basic income to all who want it, financed at zero cost through the Fed. Biz pays whatever low wages it wants so there's no wage-price spiral. Challenges stimulate individuals to innovate disruptively on their own without having to work for a business (unless they want to). Standards of living rise faster, there is more leisure time, and poverty is eliminated.
Vulcan neck pinch?
Government should be investing much more in alternative energy, because the private sector is too short-sighted to do it. Whether giving money to a private corporation is as good as just giving money directly to individuals and creating challenges is debatable. I think the latter is better.
But the idea that the government has no money left, or that the taxpayer pays for everything, is ludicrous. Government can and should fund itself like the private sector does, through borrowing (at zero cost, from the Fed).
Government contributes disruptive innovation (computers, USDA contributions to agriculture, GPS, the internet, etc.) that has created a lot of surplus productivity. Your story lacks historical support.
And your solution is to make election by the wealthy and powerful blasting the airwaves with propaganda the law?
Government should create money, as the private sector does all the time, everyday.
Government is of the people, by the people, for the people. Business's sole purpose is to serve those with money.
Government protects rights that apply to the least popular person as much as to the most popular person. Business gives the rich more rights.
No CEO swears to uphold the General Welfare. Government is mandated to by the Constitution.
Make your assumptions explicit, then. To claim that economics doesn't make assumptions about scarcity, marginal utility, rational behavior, and risk is to create a new discipline. To call it economics is an abuse of language. Economics is fundamentally tied to money and money is a psychological invention of humans.
Biology doesn't have concepts of debt, or futures contracts, or inflation. If there is suddenly twice as much food, that doesn't mean that calories are devalued. But economics makes that assumption.
The shadow banking system is rich. What is their currency? IOUs, backstopped with public money in a crisis, because the Fed buys their IOUs when the market devalues them.
So a few people are living very well off of "leaves" that are just promises to pay, and are often (in the case of CDS, etc.) lies. But the government steps in to make good the promises backing up those lies.
So one way is to simply substitute what the huge cash pools really want, which is T-bills. But there aren't enough T-bills so they create "quasi T-Bills" which end up tanking, and the Fed backstops them.
Instead, just let the government create more T-bills.
The government/Fed is going to end up paying for the privately-created IOUs anyway, when the next crisis comes. Why not simply create the government debt now, which is what the huge cash pools are looking for anyway, and use the T-bills to spend on social services? Backstop individuals now instead of corporations later.
References:
http://www.treasury.gov/initia...
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/201...
And republicans turned the stars upside down on their logo to appeal to Satanists.
This is a very disingenuous response. Economics makes assumptions about rational behavior, marginal value, scarcity, and other purely psychological characteristics. How does marginal value apply to gravity, for example? Will a star profit less by acquiring more mass per unit? Gravity doesn't work that way. And the idea of "profit" is purely human, and intricately tied to money, a human invention.
Trying to apply such economic assumptions to biology results in a gross misinterpretation of nature.
Doug and Dinsdale Piranha, using a combination of violence and sarcasm!
I fear your ideology blinds you to the evidence of history.
Free market traders calling each other up on the phone to ask a favor in changing the interest listing so they can make millions, is the essence of the free market.
There were many crashes and panics before the US created the Fed. The private system evolved Clearninghouses to act as centralized authorities. But clearinghouses were in a position to help their friends and hurt their enemies, regardless of the assets of the friends/enemies. So the Fed was created to act more equitably so we wouldn't have to rely on J.P. Morgan again as we did in 1907.
The market is all about inefficiencies and personal relationships and inflicting pain without any thought of the General Welfare. Government swears to provide for the General Welfare, but no CEO does.
Economics rests on assumptions that don't apply in the real world. Thus, economics cannot model most real world phenomena.
Latest BIS report shows $710 trillion in derivatives. The Fed expanded its balance sheet from $1 trillion to $4 trillion. Money is not a scarce resource. Eliminate the debt ceiling and fund govt at zero cost.
From the Fed, rolling over loans for zero cost funding.
Fed funds and repo markets. The way the private sector borrows everyday to meet cash commitments. Borrowing is the life blood of the private sector.
In House of Cards by Cohan, he describes a Bear Stearns executive characterizing the daily repo desk activity as "dialing for dollars." This is how much of the financial sector survives, by rolling over overnight loans, or "kicking the can down the road."
Government can be immune from private sector influences. It can and should use fiscal policy to provide each individual with a choice whether they want to enter the private sector, or pursue their own ideas outside of business. Challenges can stimulate individuals to create disruptive technologies on their own, which business is not so good at (being better at incremental innovations such as making computers smaller, rather than inventing computers in the first place).
Finance the fiscal policy of a basic income through the Fed, the same way it finances the private sector by rolling over loans at no interest forever.
Again, the cost of subsidizing housing was not the problem. Mortgage defaults by themselves were not enough to cause a crash. It was the inflation of mortgages by the private sector, with their innovations, that caused such a large amount of money to be taken out of the market suddenly. The Fed backed it up, and the banks who created the inflation didn't suffer.
A much better policy would have been to bail out the homeowners.