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Habibi posted:Hey fellas and ladies - I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, but without a thread-specific search it's tough for me to go back and look for specific stuff that shares keywords with topics being brought up every hour, so: I'm currently discussing the rise of our healthcare costs with my step-dad, a diehard Republican (owns a GBW mug!) who is at least a little annoyed with his party right now (because he's not stupid [graduate of USSR university system as a mathematician], he's just poorly informed and afraid of communism). He is of the opinion that, He is partly right in that our healthcare system has a ton of market failures. Asymmetric information, no price transparency, monopolistic markets, etc. If you don't have an insurance company to bargain for you, you're in a very bad position, and even if you do insurance company payouts vary a lot even within regions and towns iirc. The market failures are probably a big part of healthcare costs, and even though I support single payer, we don't need it to deal with those. Litigation is a really small part of overall healthcare costs though. Oh, and a really big part of our high healthcare costs is that Americans have bad health. lovely diets and unhealthy lifestyles and poverty and all that. It's a more uphill battle for ues than other developed countries. Naive comparisons to other countries with single payer aren't going to prove any points because there's a big omitted variable bias. https://healthaffairs.org/blog is a pretty good resource for some links. Edit: naive as in without controlling for other factors, not a remark on anyone's character Pierat fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 11, 2013 23:05
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e: ^^^ yeah I am not disputing that those are legitimate aspects of the rise of care here. But his position seems to be (awaiting further clarification) that they are the only reasons, and further that they exist in isolation. And yes, I've brought up our lovely health and aversion to preventative medicine. But I also think those things are detrimentally influenced by the for profit system. twodot posted:If the fact that single payer could possibly be better than what we have right now is in dispute, then countries existing that have single payer should be sufficient evidence to prove that is true (since our healthcare is terrible). If it's not, he must have a wrong assertion laying somewhere. Note that this is an entirely different discussion from the cause of our current high costs, which was the subject of your quote. Since I am talking about how a UHC would help reduce costs vs the private system we have now, which is a large part of those extraordinary costs, I don't see why the questions differ? Habibi fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 06:43
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Pierat posted:Oh, and a really big part of our high healthcare costs is that Americans have bad health. lovely diets and unhealthy lifestyles and poverty and all that. It's a more uphill battle for ues than other developed countries. Naive comparisons to other countries with single payer aren't going to prove any points because there's a big omitted variable bias. Australians are tremendously fat and unhealthy, consume massive amounts of fatty fast food, soft drinks and alcohol, smoke like chimneys and, for a not inconsiderable period had an obesity rate HIGHER than the United States. Diabetes, heart disease and other obesity-linked diseases are rampant. Do not try and pretend healthcare in the US costs more because you're unhealthy, because somehow Australian UHC manages to be half the price while taking care of a population making an excellent effort at killing themselves through fat and booze.
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Oct 12, 2013 14:00
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Habibi posted:Since I am talking about how a UHC would help reduce costs vs the private system we have now, which is a large part of those extraordinary costs, I don't see why the questions differ?
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Oct 12, 2013 17:18
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What's the deal with the messages of "Cuba has no children malnutrition" that pop up every now and again? They always claim Unicef as a source but their data doesn't point to that. They have quite good statistics, comparable to Europe even, but maybe i'm not looking at the right thing?
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Oct 13, 2013 00:35
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twodot posted:"Would single payer be better for America than status quo?" and "Would a health insurance industry that was properly competitive instead of being basically monopolies be better for America than the status quo?" are entirely unrelated Well, yes, if you change the question from 'would single payer do more to reduce costs' to 'would single payer be better for America,' I can see how it becomes unrelated. But the only time I mentioned the word 'better' was in the context of financial impact, so...
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Oct 13, 2013 00:51
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Habibi posted:Well, yes, if you change the question from 'would single payer do more to reduce costs' to 'would single payer be better for America,' I can see how it becomes unrelated. But the only time I mentioned the word 'better' was in the context of financial impact, so...
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Oct 13, 2013 06:55
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I don't have the macroeconomic chops to convincingly explain why inflation (especially as related to a fiat currency) is not necessarily harmful and that our current monetary policy (keeping inflation moderately controlled but not prioritizing minimizing it) won't lead us on the way to crisis. This is sort of a broad request, but can someone link me with a blog post/article/review to substantiate that? I remember reading about it in Bad Samaritans, but I can't for the life of me find something with a cursory google search. For reference, here's the exact post I'm responding to: quote:I don't advocate a gold standard. Also, I've not been warning of "catastrophic hyperinflation," though there is a dollar crisis in the future of some kind. I can't tell you "when" because you can't predict these things, you can only prepare for the inevitable based on the current practice. Our money loses value all the time, inflation is real, and depending on how you want to define inflation and how you want to value inflation with respect real world items we all need, like food and energy, which are not used in the "official" calculations for inflation, we have an inflation that is harmful to americans, especially the poor, the dollar buys less and less, and jobs are not keeping pace with wages, because we have an economy that doesn't really make anything any longer.
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Oct 14, 2013 04:05
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gaan kak posted:I don't have the macroeconomic chops to convincingly explain why inflation (especially as related to a fiat currency) is not necessarily harmful and that our current monetary policy (keeping inflation moderately controlled but not prioritizing minimizing it) won't lead us on the way to crisis. Firstly, the whole thing is a bit ridiculous. It's like, "There's no sign of inflation now or in the near future, and there's lots of signs we need to spend more on infrastructure, education and social programs, but let's go ahead and worry about inflation and spending!" ...why, exactly? Also, a little bit of inflation is a good thing. If the dollar holds its value very well, or increases in value, there's not a great incentive to buy assets (which may depreciate in value) or make investments (which aren't as sure a thing as just holding your dollar.) In short, you'll just have a lot of money sitting around and not doing anything useful. If inflation is a bit higher (not super high, but anywhere below 5% or so) you've got an incentive to buy assets like cars, land and houses, invest in new equipment for your factory, buy stocks and so on. In other words, too little inflation (and especially deflation) can lead to stagnation. Poor Americans (and the economy overall) are hurt by bosses paying workers too little, social programs being cut, tax breaks for the rich and crumbling infrastructure, not inflation. Jobs aren't keeping pace with wages because that's what business owners want, and they've got the financial resources to lobby congress and block minimum wages increases, attack unions and so on. The solution isn't focusing on inflation but for workers to organize again and fight for their interests, the same way that ALEC, Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups fight for theirs. Even extreme inflation isn't universally harmful, depending upon circumstance (though again, ours is probably too low if anything): Ha-Joon Chang posted:Inflation is bad for growth—this has become one of the most widely accepted economic nostrums of our age. But see how you feel about it after digesting the following piece of information. Your friend does have a point about us not producing anything anymore, "free trade" policies, NAFTA and such have really crushed domestic industry. "Financial instruments" and "content" are not just as good as real production in terms of creating a sustainable economy which benefits everyone. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 04:18
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twodot posted:I addressed this, "do more" is functionally no different from "best" in this conversation. The quote you posted said nothing about the best outcome, just a path to a better outcome. No, I don't think you really did, because "best" never came up except from your end. "Best" is a qualitative judgment, which I am not interested in discussing. All I am interested in are the mechanisms affecting cost, and there's a big gulf between 'do more to reduce costs' and 'best,' the latter of which is being artificially inserted here despite being completely irrelevant. Anyway....
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Oct 14, 2013 05:17
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Alright, I tried to show that inflation is, by far, the least of our worries in the near term, that it can actually be beneficial, and that the current working poor are hurt by myriad other things other than inflationary pressure, but was essentially rebuffed. The guy disputed my claim that inflation is currently not a concern; he quoted this site, which seems to be saying consumer inflation is ~4% higher than what is actually reported by CPI, and that it's closer to 10% if one uses 1980s numbers. My first thought is that, well, 4% still isn't bad, but the methodology is opaque and the site smacks of conspiracy theorism. He then goes on to say that, even if we wanted to spend more on infrastructure, etc., we have "50-200 trillion dollars in currently unfunded obligations over the next few decades" and $16 trillion in debt right now, so that obviously has to be a more pressing problem, because we can't "borrow into infinity." Now, first, that initial number he quotes is the "fiscal gap", from a guy on a right-wing think tank. It's silly to just extrapolate out our expenditures minus our intake over the next 30 years, which is what he's done. Second, debt/GDP has no meaningful impact on growth (I would cite the debunked Reinhart-Rogoff austerity paper), so just throwing out large numbers is scaremongering. He dismissed what I saying as "the gospel according to keynesian economics", which is a bad sign - it essentially tells me he won't listen to any empirical data on economics, which is pretty tedious. He says that "in real world practice all that really occurs is that the current "let's just inflate a little bit" doesn't really help out regular people who need to rely on a realtively stable value of the their currency to get by." Now, this strikes me as a handwave, because, A) most people don't live on fixed income (excepting retirees), and B) inflation is still low enough where their income is not being tremendously de-valued, and monetary approaches to minimizing inflation result in more harm than good. Finally, he contends that, while everything I posted about (low pay, cutting the safety net, crumbling infrastructure) is hurting the poor, inflation is also hurting them, and ends with a silly attempted reducto ad absurdum: quote:Why don't we just pass a law that gives EVERYONE a minimum million dollar salary every year. When you realize what is wrong with that, you should be able to see why simply forcing and increase in any minimum wage is misguided, and in this economy will cause more people to lose jobs, even if the ones lucky enough to keep theirs will be getting paid more. Paid more in dollars that buy less and less. He is still ignoring (or not believing, whichever) that inflation is low and that it's not at the top of the list in terms of what is actually harming consumers and the economy. How else can I present information to him such that he'd be receptive? I mean, he's not a bad guy, but libertarian types can be tremendously frustrating to argue with, because everything is pulled back to "we have too much debt!!! All you democrat types want to do is spend other people's money!!"
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Oct 14, 2013 16:41
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gaan kak posted:My first thought is that, well, 4% still isn't bad, but the methodology is opaque and the site smacks of conspiracy theorism. ... It's silly to just extrapolate out our expenditures minus our intake over the next 30 years, which is what he's done. Second, debt/GDP has no meaningful impact on growth (I would cite the debunked Reinhart-Rogoff austerity paper), so just throwing out large numbers is scaremongering. You're doing alright, I think. Aggregating debt through time always yields sensational figures, but the amount that actually matures and comes due at a given point in time is less sexy as a headline. Of course, a glance at how much debt we roll over on any given year can take the teeth out of those numbers. Your friend seems to prefer sources that confirm his priors, which is a common problem. Unfortunately, Shadowstats may be little more than stats generated from priors. And on the lighter side, here's a bonus: Krugman posted:A correspondent alerted me to an interesting alternative measure of inflation beyond the Billion Price Index. Those who claim that inflation is vastly understated often appeal to the authority of Shadowstats, a site that purports to provide true measures of many economic variables. Anyway, if he acknowledges that inflation is only a nominal change that doesn't actually affect the underlying real relationships in and of itself, then from an accounting perspective it's clear that inflation cannot hurt everyone; if some are hurt as buyers, someone else is helped as a seller, and vice versa. It robs Peter to pay Paul, in effect. And, as Owlbot said, low-level inflation (here taken to be up to 40% annually) is fully consistent with stable growth. (On the other hand, it should be kept in mind that unemployment hurts us all, and a debt deflationary spiral is unambiguously associated with a rise in unemployment.) The onus is on him to explain what's happening with those real values beneath the nominal shifts that will hurt the lower classes in particular. Corner him with the fact that, at the day's end, changes in the distribution of real income will owe to the relative bargaining positions of different economic classes; he's already virtually admitted as much. If he's serious in his concern for the lower classes, get his rear end to start agitating for pro-labor reforms. [EDIT: It should also be noted that in one important sense, the beneficiaries of inflation are lower-class households — debts are still denominated in the same dollars as those in which they were issued. Thus, inflation decreases the real burden of debt, helping debtors at the expense of creditors.] I'd also consider asking him, in his own words, how he thinks inflation works. A lot of people hold very strong opinions on the subject, but the beliefs behind the feelings may not even be coherent. ( 1) print money! 2) ... 3) INFLATION! ) Aeolius fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 20:41
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gaan kak posted:Alright, I tried to show that inflation is, by far, the least of our worries in the near term, that it can actually be beneficial, and that the current working poor are hurt by myriad other things other than inflationary pressure, but was essentially rebuffed. So now he's trying to make you afraid of the debt, since his inflation point didn't work out? As a percentage of GDP the debt isn't that bad (and has been much higher in the past) and the United States is uniquely situated to yes, make free money because of its reserve currency status and the fact that bond rates are lower than inflation and people are still buying bonds, so we're essentially making money by lending money. Here's a fun article that doesn't go into that, but is still useful: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...y-weird-family/ But back in reality, the deficit is actually shrinking. If your friend was serious about shrinking it further, he'd support higher taxes on the rich and less military spending. And a lot of programs like food stamps actually decrease the deficit and increase revenue, because every dollar spent on food stamps increases economic activity by about $1.73, since the money is taken from people not actually spending it (high-earning rich people) and given to people who have no choice but to spend it right away (hungry poor people.) With regard to the minimum wage hike, 1,000,000 is silly since the GDP is 15.68 trillion, so the best you could do is about 98,000 per person. In reality, though, nobody's asking for that, just 15$ to keep up with housing and food costs. Would it lead to unemployment? Probably not; McDonalds could easily double wages and keep prices the same, and so could Walmart. In fact, it would increase employment: people are paid too little and don't have enough disposable income to buy things, so demand is low. If they had more money they could buy more clothes, cars, consumer products, etc. and businesses would hire more people to keep up with demand, and so on. Of course, that increased economic activity would also increase government revenue and reduce the deficit. OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 21:41
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So I've been dealing with various shared links to conservatives touting the reported $350k that Utah saved thanks to drug testing on FB all day: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765637435/Utah-officials-say-welfare-drug-tests-save-money.html I normally stay out of this poo poo knowing that I'm not going to change any minds but goddamit this article infuriates with me with it's blantant misrepresentation of numbers. It was really driving me crazy after seeing it on four separate occasions with comments like "Hell yes!" "mhhmm I told ya see" so I commented on one after they had already been arguing lovely points. a crazy person said posted:Well technically in this instance they better be poor to get on welfare. Secondly, what job have you ever had that didn't require a drug test? Why on earth should welfare be different? Those not offending would be using the money in the way it was intended, instead of on drugs. It's also not suspicionless. Unfortunately drug abuse is common in the poor class. These are things that can be looked up. If you want free money, you gotta stand up to the scrutiny. I personally think if you wanna be on welfare you should have to do some sort of labor as well, so I think drug testing is a good start. The system is obviously abused, so to make it more secure means people who actually need the help, will be getting it Shachi stupidly getting involved posted:This [article] is a statistical fallacy. That's like saying that I own a business and that X number of my customers that came in the door didn't steal from me therefore it saved me $1billion dollars. This isn't necessarily a quantifiable (properly) number here. This is the first of any states that have actually reported a savings vs the cost of paying for drug testing. The article cites theses were people applying for welfare. It's assuming 100% of these people would even be eligible then projecting their savings on money they didn't spend on them. You can look up the Florida numbers but they actually lost money and, as your friend pointed out, discovered a very logical fact: The percentage of poor doing drugs is actually disproportionately lower than the general population. Why? Because drugs are expensive. Also you reversed the fact regarding drug use being common among the poor class. It's more like; addicts = more likely to be poor, not poor = more likely to be addicts. Also is it fair to say drug use = welfare abuse? Welfare, itself only being provided to only 4% of Americans, abuse (false claims, double dipping, etc) has only been confirmed among only about 1.5% of recipients. Couldn't we agree this potentially hurts more people and helps no one suffice to save the government money? Consider all the children of recipients that would be the ones suffering? Is this really a moral victory in any regard. So this is what I get in response: crazy christian posted:Let's break it down like this Shachi. Say you decided you wanted to be charitable with your money, but you only have a limited supply--what would you do? I'm assuming you would try to give the money to the people you deemed needed it the most. Am I correct in assuming this? If I am correct, what would you do when people found out you were handing out money? Would you continue to give to them even if they didn't seem to need it as much, and you were now running out of money to run your own household? People seem to think that the Gov't has an unlimited supply of money. We don't, and a vast majority of the states are hurting for cash right now. The fact is, there will ALWAYS be people in need. The Gov't can't save them all without detriment to the rest of it's people. No one will be helped if the Gov't goes bankrupt. The entire USA will be screwed if our economy collapses, which it will, if we don't control our spending. I'm all for states being more discerning with how they spend their money. The fact is, if drug testing doesn't save them money, they will abandon the practice, don't you think? If drug testing doesn't work in controlling costs, then they should implement other means, but Gov't spending HAS to be controlled. It doesn't matter where your heart is. It doesn't matter how many people you want to save--the fact is, they can't all be saved, and the Gov't shouldn't try to save them all. On top of the simple fact, does welfare even work? The amount of "bootstrapping" alone is enough to tear apart, but I really want to shut this down for good. Welfare numbers are hard to quantify but from what I've looked at it's around 12% of the yearly budget (most of which is actually social security/unemployment). Her comments about private charities stepping in for the government are also particularly delicious. Charities like Susan G. Comen's CEO getting paid 700k while putting out only 20% of donation money towards actual research come to mind. I know there's a lot of Welfare Queen being touted in this as well. I'm not sure how to address this whole "the government wants you to be dependent on it" that these people have been brainwashed into thinking. Looking for some good sources to quote and maybe a bit of goon wisdom. I understand the economics of this but I'm not so good at talking on the social dynamics. I know what they are, but struggle to put them into words without sounding completely sarcastic. Shachi fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Oct 15, 2013 |
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Oct 15, 2013 23:53
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I like how she thinks that the USA, one of the most economically prosperous countries on the planet, a country that effectively dictates a good chunk of how the global economy works, couldn't possibly have enough money at its disposal to ensure everyone a basic standard of living for the fraction of its own citizens that need it. It's really weird how some people can simultaneously think that USA is the best country in the world yet be perfectly fine with the idea that we can't (and/or shouldn't) even keep our own population healthy, housed and fed.
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Oct 16, 2013 00:21
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It's a mostly-irrelevant, hysterical screed that staggers all over the place. If someone's going to keep shifting the discussion around, anything you say is just going to be responded to by other irrelevancies.
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Oct 16, 2013 00:27
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crazy christian posted:Let's break it down like this Shachi. Say you decided you wanted to be charitable with your money, but you only have a limited supply--what would you do? I'm assuming you would try to give the money to the people you deemed needed it the most. Am I correct in assuming this? If I am correct, what would you do when people found out you were handing out money? Would you continue to give to them even if they didn't seem to need it as much, and you were now running out of money to run your own household? Pretending for a moment the premise isn't crazy, a Christian probably would keep handing out money even if the person were being manipulative and dishonest, and giving them more chances: Matthew 18:21-22 posted:Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" Luke 6:30 posted:But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Of course, in reality, most people aren't going for free money and being lazy; there's literally more people than there are jobs (what do you think the unemployment rate means?) and people are struggling to find work and survive. People need to feed their families, pay their rent, and even ones who do work get paid far too little. quote:People seem to think that the Gov't has an unlimited supply of money. We don't, and a vast majority of the states are hurting for cash right now. The fact is, there will ALWAYS be people in need. The Gov't can't save them all without detriment to the rest of it's people. No one will be helped if the Gov't goes bankrupt. Spending on food stamps does not hurt the economy or bankrupt the government. In fact, it makes the government money! Look up "Marginal Propensity to Consume". If someone who's got a million dollars receives 100$, he probably won't go out and spend that money right away -- after all, most needs are already taken care of and there's no urgency. If someone who's in debt, behind on bills and in hunger gets $100, chances are they'll spend it immediately. That money generates profit for Wal*Mart or whomever, and the taxes they pay . In short, every dollar spent on Food Stamps earns the government $1.73. Here's some data on the budget effects of various policies, by Moody's Analytics -- a finance source that's not known for liberal biases. What about money spend on the military, the drug war, or on tax breaks (yes, that's money lost)? That kills the budget. quote:The fact is, if drug testing doesn't save them money, they will abandon the practice, don't you think? quote:It doesn't matter where your heart is. It doesn't matter how many people you want to save--the fact is, they can't all be saved, and the Gov't shouldn't try to save them all. Wow, that's a pretty harsh statement. "It doesn't matter where your heart is"? Let's say for a minute that they can't all be saved, and there will always be some people who fall through the cracks through bad luck or their own fault. Does that mean you just give up and don't try to make that number as small as possible, and save as many as you can? quote:On top of the simple fact, does welfare even work? Many programs work very well and have worked well. Medicaid has saved many lives (look up some stats, Shachi), food stamps help but aren't enough (17 million American children don't always get meals) , social security keeps people from losing their houses, and heating assistance stops people from freezing to death in the winter in NYC and Chicago. Of course, many of these programs have been cut under Reagan, Clinton and Bush, making them less effective; even without that, it was never enough to compensate for the [b]decline in wages. That's not an argument for cutting funding, but for increasing it and for raising wages. quote:Not to mention some of those states were handing out welfare checks that were hourly making more than I did when I worked. Why on earth would they even want to get a job? Again, look at the unemployment rate. About 12 million Americans want work and are looking for work, and can't get it -- and looking at U6 unemployment (people who have tried so long and found so little openings that they've given up) there's another 10 million people who want to work but can't. So a lot of those 22 million people would rather work than sit around on welfare; it's not a fun or pleasant experience. So the fact that there's that unemployment rate (which by definition only counts people of working age who want to work) shows that most people would rather work a job, even a bad minimum wage job, than feel like a burden and rely on welfare. If it really was paying more than his/her job, that's a great argument for increasing the minimum wage -- if it had kept pace with inflation since the Nixon years, it'd be up to around 22$. But it just needs to be raised to about $15 to keep pace with the increased costs of food, clothing and housing. quote:Private business is a lot more efficient than Gov't ever will be. quote:It relies solely on members paying a monthly fee that goes directly to other members claims. Costs are cut, and Dr's offices even give discounts to them, because they don't have to deal with the hassle of insurance. I know a girl on this, and she LOVES it for her family of 4 And that relies on people having money to pay fees. quote:People are creative, and can come up with awesome solutions, but the Gov't giving handouts STOPS that creativity, and in return breeds passivity and causes destruction of free thought. This is pretty meaningless, but I'll respond anyway. It's not like insurers were taking care of old people, poor people and sick people, and bad old government came along and pushed them out of the market. Private insurance wasn't there in the first place because it wasn't profitable, so the govt. had to step in.
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Oct 16, 2013 01:18
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First, I appreciate all the help from this thread. It's really given me a better understanding of the issues I'm trying to debate here. Now, most of what I've said w/r/t inflation, poverty, debt, etc. has gone over well, but I've run into a stumbling block. I said that the poor can be the beneficiaries of inflation, because it reduces the real quantity of their debt. Now, I was called on that, because -- and I think this is true -- the classes with more debt are actually wealthier (e.g., mortgage, professional school debt, commercial debt, etc), so the poor (with their meager debt) don't see any of inflation's benefits, just its harms. The argument they put forward goes like this: quote:Once we've established that those in the middle and lower socioeconomic rungs are not the primary beneficiaries of inflation's "benefits"... and established that wages are stickier than are prices for consumer goods... and that pro inflationary monetary policy does not directly translate into always and everywhere congruent increases in the "general price level"... and acknowledge the inadequacies of monetary policy on labor markets... and establish that credit expansion disproportionately benefits the few... how can we then arrive at any conclusion other than intentional inflationary monetary policy benefits the few at the expense of the rest? How can you make the claim that "well, it's only 2%" when we have established that these policies represent a structural disadvantage for those very groups that you claim to champion? Now, I'm thinking of approaching this a few ways. First, a 2% inflation has such minor effects re: prices vs. wages that it's not that important; a far larger contributor would be the general declining wages over the past 40 years. As an aside, does anyone have a good graph/source that illustrates this trend? Second, aggressively targeting inflation lower than 2% with monetary policy can actually be harmful. The deflationary-debt spiral is an obvious consequence, but does anyone have a more concrete one for trying to peg inflation as close to 0% as possible? I've shown that, prior to the gold standard, our currency was extremely volatile, but I want to take issue with his specific claims that credit expansion disproportionately benefits the few at the expense of the many. Hasn't our relatively large money supple helped with, e.g., unemployment, which is a significantly larger burden on the lower class than mild inflation?
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Oct 16, 2013 01:44
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Thanks a ton for this. She posted this little gem before I had a chance to respond...: quote:Let's just agree to disagree. I believe solely handing out free money doesn't help the poor. I believe we should be stricter with Govt spending habits on all accounts, not just welfare. I believe that I don't want my hard earned money going to people abusing drugs. If you can spend money on drugs, you are obviously not in that much need. Yes children will suffer, but the fact is we are making a system that encourages and perpetuates the same mistakes. When the family unit was the strongest these problems weren't as common. When people were taught responsibility, stuff like this wasn't as common. I believe in treating the sickness, not the symptoms. Y'all can just keep throwing money at the problem. And [other guy arguing with her], I give to actual charity, so I do keep a Christian attitude. The Gov't doesn't do it effectively, and money goes to more than just welfare recipients. Again, our Gov't is broke, but they should still be handing out money? We are in essence saying, we've maxed out all our credit cards, but let me get another one so I can take care of people that don't make enough money. Idiotic. How can a broke Gov't fix poverty? Here is my general response: shachi posted:The government isn't broke. This isn't a correct understanding of how the budget/debt ceiling work. Our GDP is actually very close to our current debt ceiling so in essence we break relatively even every year. In fact this year we're on target to only post about a 670 billion dollar deficit this year which is the lowest it's been since 2008. We aren't 17 trillion in debt necessarily. It's a revolving debt that is constantly paying for things. If the government were actually broke, we'd already be in default and would have crashed the world market. The current debt dilemma is more akin to a past due bill. The government isn't supposed to have a surplus, if it does, then it's not actually funding out all the revenue it's taking in. Did I get this right? This is at least how I've come to understand it since reading up on it given recent events. quote:Also it's an incorrect assumption that YOUR tax money belongs to YOU. You pay a standard rate of taxation, and the government appropriates how it's spent. That's why you can't pick and choose what things get paid for. That being said I'm sure you could broker for the actual $3.50 worth of your personal obligation to the govt. that actually went towards providing welfare programs. I never tire of people telling me they pay my salary. I usually hand them a dime...that is probably 200% of what actually they paid that went to pay my salary. Are we being this pedantic? I tossed this in because apparently this is where she's going. quote:That being said, at what time in the history of the US are you referring to that the family unit was so strong that poverty wasn't common? If anything poverty levels are lower than they ever have been. Tell me if I'm off base here. Thanks again for all this. I'm learning so much at the same time. Shachi fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 02:41
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Is RationalWiki a good site to read, or are they inherently biased in some way?
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Oct 16, 2013 05:05
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You are literally arguing with someone who said, in no uncertain terms, that they'd rather knowingly make children suffer than fund welfare. You're not going to get anywhere with this, they're batshit insane.
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Oct 16, 2013 05:05
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:You are literally arguing with someone who said, in no uncertain terms, that they'd rather knowingly make children suffer than fund welfare. Excuse me, I give to charity so I'll have you know I keep a Christian attitue. karl fungus posted:Is RationalWiki a good site to read, or are they inherently biased in some way? It has tinges of reddit atheist libertarianism, but I think it's mostly decent if you stick to the hard sciences and don't set foot anywhere else. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 05:12
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icantfindaname posted:It has tinges of reddit atheist libertarianism That's what I was afraid of. Are there any good alternatives?
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Oct 16, 2013 05:13
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karl fungus posted:That's what I was afraid of. Are there any good alternatives? The only alternatives I'm aware of have it but worse, so not really.
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Oct 16, 2013 05:22
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:You are literally arguing with someone who said, in no uncertain terms, that they'd rather knowingly make children suffer than fund welfare. Arguments based on the need for family structures and personal responsibility aren't going to be beaten by mere facts. The ideology is far too secure in people's minds to let reality threaten their convictions.
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Oct 16, 2013 05:26
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icantfindaname posted:It has tinges of reddit atheist libertarianism, but I think it's mostly decent if you stick to the hard sciences and don't set foot anywhere else. I went in expecting a libertarian/right bias but my suspicions weren't justified. They save a lot of scorn for Objectivism and Milton Friedman, and their treatment of Far Left ideas and figures ranges somewhere from even-handed to complementary. The Dawkinsian thing does shine through a bit (a tendency to interpret religious doctrines in a way that would make even backwoods fundamentalists shake their heads) but it's not terribly oppressive. Shachi, not bad! Here's some more stuff. The deficit has actually been decreasing, and would decrease a lot faster if taxes were raised on the very highest earners, the estate tax cap was lowered, and social security was made progressive. What I mean by progressive? That people with lots of money should pay more than people without much money. Social Security, on the other hand, is progressive up to $100,000. Someone who makes 60k a year will pay less than someone who makes 90k a year, but someone making 100k a year pays the same amount as someone making 20 million a year. By raising that cap, social security funding could be taken care of. The government could be very far from broke, very easily, with a few changes. quote:Let's just agree to disagree. I believe solely handing out free money doesn't help the poor. quote:I believe we should be stricter with Govt spending habits on all accounts, not just welfare. I believe that I don't want my hard earned money going to people abusing drugs. If you can spend money on drugs, you are obviously not in that much need. It's not a real issue. In Florida, about about 96% of welfare recipients tested negative for drug use. Even if you cut funding to all 2% of those people, you'll still have spent more money doing the testing than you have getting rid of 'fraud'. quote:More than once, [Florida Governor] Scott has said publicly that people on welfare use drugs at a higher rate than the general population. The 2 percent test fail rate seen by DCF, however, does not bear that out. According to the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, performed by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, 8.7 percent of the population nationally over age 12 uses illicit drugs. The rate was 6.3 percent for those ages 26 and up. Get that? People on welfare use drugs 6.7% less than people not on welfare And what does she think is a better solution? Cut welfare to them, their kids end up in foster homes or wards of the state, and the parents end up committing more crimes, dying in the street or going to jail. Does any of that save money? Prison is expensive, and so is prosecution and tracking/giving tax credits for the kids. In this case, spending money on treatment programs (they're addicts and absolutely will choose drugs over food even when starving, you can't say they "are obviously not in much need") is a better way out. But either she want to get rid of these programs millions depend on because of crimes 98% of them are innocent of? quote:Yes children will suffer, but the fact is we are making a system that encourages and perpetuates the same mistakes. When the family unit was the strongest these problems weren't as common. When people were taught responsibility, stuff like this wasn't as common. Where in the world is the evidence that the system "encourages and perpetuates the same mistakes"? Funding for public education, libraries, housing assistance, scholarships, school breakfasts and all of that help people escape poverty and become productive citizens. Making them drop out of high school to help around the house or work, because their mother can't afford food, is just going to lead to more poverty, drug use and prostitution. People had "personal responsibility" and "family values" in the 1880s-1930s (before the ACLU and Gay Marriage), and they were horribly poor, overworked, violent, uneducated, drunk and subject to all sorts of diseases like tuberculosis. "Personal responsibility" didn't help then, poor people organizing and demanding public sanitation programs, safety laws, education, higher pay and the abolition of child labor helped them. Yes, government programs helped them. Not that private charity didn't try admirably, but in terribly poor socities or financial crashes, hurricanes and floods, they just don't have enough funding or the organizational capacity to coordinate and deal with it. It's almost like you need a group of citizens empowered to raise money (even when it's not voluntary), set up policies and programs to handle the situation, and have people to enforce these policies. Almost like.. a government? quote:I believe in treating the sickness, not the symptoms. Y'all can just keep throwing money at the problem. Fantastic! I'm glad she agrees that we need to treat the sickness: poverty created by more and more of the nation's wealth flowing to a minority of people and corporations while everyone else gets paid less and less, to the point where they afford both rent and buy food without going into debt. A doctor who treats only the symptoms and not the disease is incompetent, but a doctor who only treats the disease but not the symptoms is needlessly cruel.  "Doctor, I'm in so much pain, I'm coughing up blood and my skin is burning and peeling off! Can I have an inhaler, some pain meds and some skin cream?" "No, you've got cancer and I'm giving you chemo. I treat the sickness, not the symptoms!"quote:And Shachi, I give to actual charity, so I do keep a Christian attitude. The Gov't doesn't do it effectively, and money goes to more than just welfare recipients. That's wonderful, and exactly what she should do. Everyone should follow her truly, genuinely good example and try to donate money to people in need. But what if she's wrong about government being ineffective at helping poor people? She already said "Yes, children will suffer" if the funding were cut, and that shows she doesn't really believe that the programs don't help people who need it. What if she's wrong, and her side wins the argument and shuts down these programs which (whether she fully knows it or not) do actually help poor people? I would hope the harm caused done by that (potentially billions of dollars worth) doesn't make whatever amount she donated look miniscule by comparison. Helping a few poor people a little bit while hurting millions a lot probably wouldn't be too well received... So let's hope her confidence in her judgment to cut welfare and other programs is not misplaced! OwlBot 2000 fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 07:12
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I'm in a discussion on why some US cities are poo poo, and I was stupid enough to bring up white flight. Now somebody's hammering me on "So, white people leaving sends a city down the tubes? You racist.", and I'd appreciate some help shutting him up. White flight is just the exodus of middle-class families, taking tax revenue and jobs with them, correct? Only called that because a) most of the people who left were the color of Wonderbread and b) it rhymes? Any other details to bring up or to clarify my own misunderstandings?
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Oct 16, 2013 08:01
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gaan kak posted:First, I appreciate all the help from this thread. It's really given me a better understanding of the issues I'm trying to debate here. Now, most of what I've said w/r/t inflation, poverty, debt, etc. has gone over well, but I've run into a stumbling block. I said that the poor can be the beneficiaries of inflation, because it reduces the real quantity of their debt. Now, I was called on that, because -- and I think this is true -- the classes with more debt are actually wealthier (e.g., mortgage, professional school debt, commercial debt, etc), so the poor (with their meager debt) don't see any of inflation's benefits, just its harms. First note: we can dispense with the "harms" in the specific case of debt burdens, because these results hold even if we assume literally all prices and incomes keep pace with inflation. It's an effect to do with the prior denomination. If some prices or incomes do not keep pace, that is a separate consideration. Thus, when the conversation slinks back to the fact that inflation does not yield "always and everywhere congruent increases" in the price level, disengage from the debt question, as it is no longer germane. Second: Your friend is trying to steamroll you with vague, unbacked assertions delivered in a plausible tone of voice. Don't stand for it. He or she will probably want to emphasize the fact that the top 1% of the population holds 6% of the debt, while the bottom 90% of households hold only 73%. That does sound a bit unfair, until you realize that same 1% also rocks, for instance, over 50% of all investment assets. This is something you've probably encountered before in discussions of the national debt — the notion that an absolute number, however high, is meaningless without context. $100,000 in college debt means something very different to a petroleum engineer who's stepping right out into a six-figure salary than to a liberal arts student who gets a minimum-wage job. Similarly, you can have that same debt and NO income and still be fine, if you have asset value — stocks, bonds, a house, anything you can liquidate to cover it. So what would give us some useful context? For one thing, this, from the previous link:  So on average, the bottom 40% of the country has more debt than assets. Those who deal in ungodly sums may scoff at such piddly little debts, but consider again the actual ability to repay — and, for that matter, to which classes these debts are owed. But this isn't enough. Can't we do better? What about, I don't know, something more scatter plot-y? Let's consider our units — a stock of debt is denominated in $, while income is $/yr. Debt/Income = $/($/yr) = ($ * yr)/$ = yr. Total debt divided by income yields years — roughly, the number of years you'd need to put every cent you earn into your debts to break even. That seems like a decent enough way to gauge just how onerous debt burdens are (leaving aside net worth for now). Without further ado:  Well this just looks silly. Each data point is a row from the 2010 SCF summary data spreadsheet, with dot size as the representative weight of each. Here's a clearer view of the unweighted points themselves:  Doesn't look like it ends at 10x, does it? That's because:  ...You call those outliers? Now THESE are outliers:  Your friend made no effort to dispute that debtors benefit from inflation and creditors lose out; there was just an attempt to try to paint the wealthy, with their emphatically high and positive net worths (without even getting into incomes), as somehow worse in debt than those who owe more than the entire value of their every salable asset. Except that if inflation erodes the real value of assets and debts, then those with assets far in excess of debts stand to lose more than they gain! In short, don't give your friend an inch on any of that bullshit. Last note: right now, on its own, "inflationary monetary policy" isn't. You don't need to believe in the new Keynesian "liquidity trap" explanation to say that this is a case of pushing on string, either. Unlike central bank operations, fiscal policy actually has the ability to alter the economy's net financial assets, so to the extent that monetary aggregates are in any sense causal (another discussion!), that'd be the lever to use. gaan kak posted:Now, I'm thinking of approaching this a few ways. First, a 2% inflation has such minor effects re: prices vs. wages that it's not that important; a far larger contributor would be the general declining wages over the past 40 years. As an aside, does anyone have a good graph/source that illustrates this trend? Second, aggressively targeting inflation lower than 2% with monetary policy can actually be harmful. The deflationary-debt spiral is an obvious consequence, but does anyone have a more concrete one for trying to peg inflation as close to 0% as possible? I've shown that, prior to the gold standard, our currency was extremely volatile, but I want to take issue with his specific claims that credit expansion disproportionately benefits the few at the expense of the many. Hasn't our relatively large money supple helped with, e.g., unemployment, which is a significantly larger burden on the lower class than mild inflation?
I am about to collapse, so I'll leave it there. Maybe tomorrow I'll zoom in on those x-axes a bit, make them less silly. Aeolius fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 08:06
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karl fungus posted:That's what I was afraid of. Are there any good alternatives? What are you particularly interested in? From my (admittedly very limited) experience it doesn't seem that bad, but frankly I can't imagine any site that concerned with the specifics of what Kent Hovind -- or whoever -- did not having at least some 'reddit atheist libertarianism' running in its veins. It's only really the 'skeptical community' that cares enough to engage with the minutia of this sort of stuff, which pretty much makes that poo poo inevitable. There are individual commentators who deal with various issues related to psuedoscience or creationism or whatever, some obviously better than others, but as far as I'm aware this is the only big centralised wiki project about it.
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Oct 16, 2013 08:32
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darthbob88 posted:I'm in a discussion on why some US cities are poo poo, and I was stupid enough to bring up white flight. Now somebody's hammering me on "So, white people leaving sends a city down the tubes? You racist.", and I'd appreciate some help shutting him up. White flight is just the exodus of middle-class families, taking tax revenue and jobs with them, correct? Only called that because a) most of the people who left were the color of Wonderbread and b) it rhymes? Any other details to bring up or to clarify my own misunderstandings? Most people these days agree that it's better to call it "wealth flight" when discussing the whole phenomena. We do know that it was a very high percentage of the people leaving that were white, of course, but the real important part was having cities' lose very large proportions of their middle and upper class people, especially from certain neighborhoods. The fact that most of the people with wealth who fled were white has a lot to do with other aspects of racism acting on it - they were the ones allowed better job opportunities in the first place; and what we usually see looking back is that the black and other minority people people of similar wealth left at the same times the whites were going.
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Oct 16, 2013 14:02
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Thanks for this. Also I appreciate you editing out the name I left quoted. I'm not actually "Phillip." Phillip is this "smokey mcpot" hippie athiest who has been lambasting her for her lack of christian beliefs despite how outspoken she is about them, in between me responding to her lunacy. It's made it that much more hilarious. EDIT: The conversation spiraled out of control when another looney stepped in and basically suggested people go work at mcdonalds instead of livin off the government and then described welfare recipients as a "Majority that is mooching off society." I took a moment to shut that down but then was met with this in response: quote:People are looking at this through emotion and not hard facts. You even look at the welfare statistics page, and you see the number of people that stay on welfare is higher than those that don't. Which means it's not working! If it's not working, something needs to change. Anyway, I'm not arguing there isn't a place for assistance, but That's what it should be, assistance, not an indefinite crutch. As for the people at McDonald's, they chose that path. There are so any ways for poor people to get an education, but they choose otherwise. Why should they? They can work at McDonald's and collect welfare. If the Gov't made aid harder to get they'd be forced to better themselves, because they physically couldn't survive otherwise. Govt assistance allows people to survive in poor conditions, instead of encouraging them to strive for more and thrive. We used to have a can do attitude. Not anymore. I know about a lot of the social dynamics that play into poor people being born poor and staying that way and had typed up a pretty long piece but I'm so mentally drained from banging my head on the wall so I deleted it and replied, "You're being really obtuse here." If someone wants to step in and wholly shut it down, that'd be great. I just know I cannot hold a debate with someone who thinks people LOVE living in poverty and have no desire to do any better. Shachi fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 14:22
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Shachi posted:EDIT: The conversation spiraled out of control when another looney stepped in and basically suggested people go work at mcdonalds instead of livin off the government and then described welfare recipients as a "Majority that is mooching off society." "Make their lives a living hell full of nothing but sorrow and uncertainty via starvation and financial insecurity and some people will rise to that challenge and better themselves somehow regardless of societal context or ability or situation" is simultaneously technically true and indescribably awful. Why don't we just round up all the poors and old people and disabled and throw them in a prison camp and tell them that they have to use their ingenuity and can-do attitude to escape before we release rabid dogs and poison gas, and the ones that make it out win a free education? It would be a hell of a lot faster and more efficient. But then they'd probably start banding together and forming death camp unions to fend off the dogs and co-operate and he'd have something else to complain about.
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Oct 17, 2013 00:03
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Aeolius posted:I am about to collapse, so I'll leave it there. Maybe tomorrow I'll zoom in on those x-axes a bit, make them less silly. Alright, I want to make sure I understood this, because I'm having trouble articulating it in my own words. Essentially, even though the upper classes have more debt overall, lower classes have a higher debt/asset ratio, so they still stand to benefit, yea? Now, when it comes to inflationary monetary policy: is the point that, regardless of whether you believe we're in a liquidity trap or not, "inflationary" monetary policy/so-called credit expansion doesn't actually increase inflation, because with fiscal policy you're directly changing the available assets in the economy? To the final point, w/r/t 0% inflation: so, aggressively targeting that 0% is harmful because inflation gives wiggle room to the businesses and the economy. Without this dither, we'd see more frequent defaults. I'm also a little bit unclear on that last part.
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Oct 17, 2013 04:27
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gaan kak posted:Alright, I want to make sure I understood this, because I'm having trouble articulating it in my own words. Essentially, even though the upper classes have more debt overall, lower classes have a higher debt/asset ratio, so they still stand to benefit, yea? Sorry if I was only partly coherent last night. I have better charts today, too! Here are the two main thrusts from yesterday, only on a logarithmic scale to make more sense of the trend:   Triangular! And spells out basically the same deal: wealthier people have less onerous debt. And speaking of debt ratios, here's something special I started to piece together last night:  So by this chart, those least likely to be insolvent are the 1) largest bubbles (highest SR) 2) furthest down (most manageable debt in terms of income) and 3) furthest to the right (highest income). And it tells a nifty little story about lower- and middle-class households walking a razor's edge, no? It's even more grim when you consider that the weighting of the middle chart applies here, too, since these are the same data points. So those high-debt households exploding out of the slime monster there? They're extremely representative. And they all benefit from the debt-shrinking effects of inflation. For reference, here's the weighting of the second chart with the color coding of the third, animated to help differentiate:  gaan kak posted:Now, when it comes to inflationary monetary policy: is the point that, regardless of whether you believe we're in a liquidity trap or not, "inflationary" monetary policy/so-called credit expansion doesn't actually increase inflation, because with fiscal policy you're directly changing the available assets in the economy?  ). And the reason is pretty plain: it describes the actual fashion in which banks lend money. None of this "loanable funds" or "money multiplier" nonsense. If Cahal (of Unlearning Economics) happens to pass through this thread, we may even be treated to a backlog of instances where economists confronted with it fall back on professing to have known it all along.Anyway: Yes, fiscal policy directly affects the net financial assets in circulation, whereas changes in the money supply via the tools of monetary policy are offset by an equal change in aggregate debt. A "cute" way to look at it is to say that fiscal policy deals in state/chartal money, monetary policy in credit money. Even in the case of QE, all those asset swaps and reserve expansions just alter the portfolio composition of the banking sector, shifting it towards liquidity. But the Fed is also bound, as lender of last resort, to supply any systemic shortfall in reserves throughout the economy. And banks extend loans (creating deposits in so doing) without reference to their reserve position, and then scoop up any needed reserves later in the accounting period. So banks aren't reserve constrained in the first place; they're capital constrained, and QE doesn't create capital. (If this becomes a focus of the discussion, I can point you towards some stuff.) gaan kak posted:To the final point, w/r/t 0% inflation: so, aggressively targeting that 0% is harmful because inflation gives wiggle room to the businesses and the economy. Without this dither, we'd see more frequent defaults. I'm also a little bit unclear on that last part. EDIT: Added a new chart! Aeolius fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Oct 18, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 07:13
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Can I point out that the costs of inflation that are being discussed are really the costs of inflation volatility? Or at least unexpected increases in inflation. Only unanticipated changes in inflation affects real values of debt, the rest is priced in. The costs of stable, long run inflation are more subtle, ie prices adjust at different times and that creates market distortions. It's relevant because in a liquidity trap effective monetary policy probably has to increase future inflation (or nominal income) so we will see the real value of debts and such decline, but that's the only situation where monetary policy has to deviate from its long run target.
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Oct 17, 2013 15:45
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Pierat posted:Only unanticipated changes in inflation affects real values of debt, the rest is priced in. Sure, but is that really a meaningful distinction in this context? I think when people are raising concerns about inflation, it's generally of the "runaway" sort, anyway. It's true that lenders will try to price it in, but in practice, accurately predicting inflation in a systematic way is all but impossible, as with any aggregate economic phenomenon susceptible to the effects of changing expectations. If you happen to take the view, as I do, that monetary policy isn't capable of increasing inflation at the zero bound by its lonesome, then this point is even more significant. Also, doesn't all talk of "market distortions" beg the question? Distortion from what, exactly? We can say all we like about central bank policy, but even without a "loose" supplier of money, inflation is endogenously generated by the growth of capital. So who's to say anything is necessarily even being "distorted" from some underlying state of harmony, when those may just be changes to said harmonies, themselves? EDIT: Not trying to be priggish about it or anything; I just find that these phrases often carry more currency, as it were, than they probably ought to. Harder to pull people away from libertarian silliness when libertarianism holds sway over much of the lexicon. Aeolius fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 16:41
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Aeolius posted:Sure, but is that really a meaningful distinction in this context? I think when people are raising concerns about inflation, it's generally of the "runaway" sort, anyway. It's true that lenders will try to price it in, but in practice, accurately predicting inflation in a systematic way is all but impossible, as with any aggregate economic phenomenon susceptible to the effects of changing expectations. If you happen to take the view, as I do, that monetary policy isn't capable of increasing inflation at the zero bound by its lonesome, then this point is even more significant. Yeah, I think it's worth talking about real debt values in this context, but that clarity over long term inflation rates and short term fluctuations is useful too. The market distortions from inflation are because of price dispersion, prices adjusting at different times. That creates inefficient allocations of resources which reduces welfare. It's like, even though all prices adjust eventually, the short term differences in relative prices change our consumption decisions from what would be optimal. It's a measurable cost of positive inflation.
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Oct 17, 2013 17:06
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Aeolius posted:EDIT: Not trying to be priggish about it or anything; I just find that these phrases often carry more currency, as it were, than they probably ought to. Harder to pull people away from libertarian silliness when libertarianism holds sway over much of the lexicon. Oh yeah, I understand. But I'm not making a market fundamentalist point, that there's one true allocation of resources, just that inflation has costs. It also has a big benefit, that higher inflation makes liquidity traps less likely, and liquidity traps increase inflation and output volatility because it makes central banking harder so there's a cost/benefit calculation you can do. If you wanna do some technical reading this paper covers it pretty well with a whole bunch of specifications and monetary policy rules.
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Oct 17, 2013 17:15
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Pierat posted:The market distortions from inflation are because of price dispersion, prices adjusting at different times. That creates inefficient allocations of resources which reduces welfare. It's like, even though all prices adjust eventually, the short term differences in relative prices change our consumption decisions from what would be optimal. It's a measurable cost of positive inflation. I agree with the thrust of what you're saying — that these "nominal" changes have very real repercussions as they propagate over time — but my contention is just that these Cantillon-esque effects are endemic to capitalism, with or without a monetary authority. As such, when we speak of "costs" of things, it is usually carrying the implication that alternatives exist against which to compare those costs. If it's the inevitable outcome, then any counterfactuals we posit and pursue will ironically have a stronger claim to the word "distortion." Pierat posted:If you wanna do some technical reading this paper covers it pretty well with a whole bunch of specifications and monetary policy rules. Thanks, I'll have a peep at that later! Aeolius fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 19:03
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My friend is apparently itching for a fight. He posted this op-ed on my wall calling BART workers a bunch of spoiled brats for turning down what appears to be a reasonable offer on the part of management. Is there some information that the article leaves out? I already have responses to the other asinine statements made by the author (roads take subsidies too, banning organized labor is a terrible idea for obvious reasons, poo poo costs money get over it, etc).
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Oct 18, 2013 08:25
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