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https://youtu.be/B6vV8_uQmxs Another lecture on the topic because the first by Mark Blyth, linked earlier in the thread was good.
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Jul 20, 2015 18:58
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Blowdryer posted:https://youtu.be/B6vV8_uQmxs Watching this right now and it reminds me that arguing about all of this poo poo is bullshit, because almost all of us are arguing the wrong thing, or things that don't matter. Just lol at people thinking this is about economies giving people free money.
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Jul 20, 2015 19:37
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Pohl posted:I'm willing to fully admit my take on Austerity is complicated. I think that simple definitions of austerity actually excuse it or defend it, much like fascism. It is a complicated issue and you can't just break it down into something like a 3 part definition; sorry if that doesn't satisfy you. Austerity is simple. You've gone off the rails trying to remake the definition to suit your own argument. Recognize what austerity is and then argue for why it won't work in this case. It's a much straighter path to the same place you're trying to go.
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Jul 20, 2015 20:06
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Blowdryer posted:https://youtu.be/B6vV8_uQmxs Its too bad I've already seen all his stuff. His presentation is superb. Skip to the good stuff
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Jul 20, 2015 20:07
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When arguing with Asdf, keep in mind that he's one of the more vocal opponents in the minwage increase thread, and shape your arguments accordingly. An argument using math or empirical results will not persuade.
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Jul 20, 2015 20:11
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Neurolimal posted:When arguing with Asdf, keep in mind that he's one of the more vocal opponents in the minwage increase thread, and shape your arguments accordingly. An argument using math or empirical results will not persuade. In theory, this could be a valuable public service. In practice, he tends to latch onto minor points (e.g. sticking with the Econ101 idea that "austerity measures can be used to balance the budget," in the context of a Eurozone discussion, even after admitting that it's inapplicable to a sovereign debt crisis and that fiscal multipliers would make the debt spiral out of control). And he tends to champion a very narrow portion of the "opposing" viewpoint - he'll argue the merits of austerity, but he's not actually an Austerian and he doesn't believe that it's an appropriate response to the current crisis. Because people are lazy, they tend to read his (narrow) arguments, assign him into a category (e.g. Chicago school neoliberal marketeer) and then start an argument full of misunderstandings which goes nowhere. This wouldn't be a problem if Asdf32 would actually take pains to correct the misunderstandings and explain his contrarian position. But instead he just reiterates his premises (e.g. "austerity means decreasing the deficit"), sits astride his I'm-technically-correct-which-is-the-best-kind-of-correct high horse, and watches the thread get derailed.
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Jul 20, 2015 21:22
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Pohl posted:Raising taxes in Iceland on the wealthy was their way to fight austerity. I don't think you get anywhere with understanding what's going on until you analyse austerity not as a thing, but as a style of argument, a rhetorical move. First thing to do is to scope it; work out where and when it is used. It's actually not about elites stealing money in general; the real open kleptocracies, e.g. in the middle east, have no need of austerity, unless you count not plating your mile-high tower with platinum as austere. It only really comes up in post-Thatcher democracies where the class interests of an electoral plurality have been deliberately socially engineered to mirror those of the rich. Given that environment, any time you can frame a discussion as 'we will either spend money, or these people will suffer', then you have basically already won. All you need to do is a little mop up work to show that some of the people getting the money will be undeserving (which no doubt some will be) and class interest will do the rest. The famous quote is 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it'. These days it is not about the salary, but house prices, individualized pension funds and income tax. Put together they may not actually be larger than wages, but they are more volatile, more directly driven by political decisions. The bonus point of this argument is that it is so powerful that you _don't need to restrict it to cases where it in any way logically applies_. It's a cluster-bomb of an argument; you just need to lob it in the general direction of the point and there's no come-back. Which is precisely why it can be used successfully to, among other things, privatize everything and have your friends pocket the money. In fact, the more economic damage you do that way, the stronger the argument becomes; bad economic times make people prioritize money over morality more. Worse than that, the argument comes up even if you don't even want it to. As a politician or technocrat, you may perfectly understand that some measure is the equivalent of fighting obesity in the USA by cutting grain shipments to Africa. But you can't oppose it or you would be defeated and replaced by someone with fewer scruples...
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Jul 21, 2015 00:25
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GulMadred posted:This wouldn't be a problem if Asdf32 would actually take pains to correct the misunderstandings and explain his contrarian position. But instead he just reiterates his premises (e.g. "austerity means decreasing the deficit"), sits astride his I'm-technically-correct-which-is-the-best-kind-of-correct high horse, and watches the thread get derailed. I think the problem is more that posters in this forum get upset whenever they encounter someone who doesn't toe the DnD party line. I don't think they understand that someone can disagree with parts of their their political ideology without being an evil mustached villian who holds all beliefs that are contrary to the stereotypical progressive DnD poster.
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Jul 21, 2015 02:35
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silence_kit posted:I think the problem is more that posters in this forum get upset whenever they encounter someone who doesn't toe the DnD party line. I don't think they understand that someone can disagree with parts of their their political ideology without being an evil mustached villian who holds all beliefs that are contrary to the stereotypical progressive DnD poster. shitsapostersbelieve.txt People have patiently debated with the dude for like, a hundred pages, he's either rock-solid dense or a deep cover troll created to prevent megathread circlejerks.
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Jul 21, 2015 02:43
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GulMadred posted:That's slightly incorrect. He's basically a contrarian who is always willing to espouse whichever position goes against the consensus - especially if it's a Very Serious Person position (e.g. smash the unions, eat the poor) which offends the delicate sensibilities of his interlocutors. I assume that he does this to disrupt groupthink and thereby encourage forum posters to do their homework, think for themselves, examine countervailing evidence, etc... This would be an accurate summary of him if it wasn't for the fact that he always says some dumb poo poo you can easily debunk, gets smacked down, then moves on to a second, even stupider point, and then a third. After about three pages he then posts the first one again as if he was saying something original that hadn't been responded to already.
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Jul 21, 2015 02:50
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asdf32 posted:Friendly reminder: austerity means decreasing the deficit. For those who still don't get it but post in this thread. This definition is so overly simplistic and context-blind as to be worse than useless. It's like you showed up in a thread about racism in the American south and posted "by definition, friend of the family just means ignorant person.  "
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Jul 21, 2015 20:03
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It especially doesn't make sense because you can decrease the deficit by raising taxes or waiting for the economy to grow, which are independent of spending.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:08
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Trent posted:This definition is so overly simplistic and context-blind as to be worse than useless. It's like you showed up in a thread about racism in the American south and posted "by definition, friend of the family just means ignorant person. Actually that's part of my point. The definition of austerity is broad enough that it doesn't necesarily include context. The definition of a knife doesn't tell you how it's used. Whether a knife or hammer is used for good or bad is a seperate question. Here people are trying to pretend the definition of austerity is the equivalent of "murderous weapon" to make their arguments easier when it's actually a fairly routine policy that sometimes works fine. OwlFancier posted:It especially doesn't make sense because you can decrease the deficit by raising taxes or waiting for the economy to grow, which are independent of spending. Well correct but the context of that graph (spanning the recent recession) was primarily a combination of budget cuts and revenue increases, not growth. Which is consistent with the Krugman definition posted earlier.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:49
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If your definition of austerity includes both proverbial knives and potatoes then it's a bit of a bad definition.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:51
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Austerity is stupid and the people advocating it are outright evil.
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Jul 21, 2015 22:48
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Can we invade the banks and make them pay off their own loans?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:32
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Raising taxes on the rich during a recession is also a form of austerity. Are you guys gonna oppose that?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:35
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Typo posted:Raising taxes on the rich during a recession is also a form of austerity. Not sure how that has anything to do with austerity, given that it's sort of the complete opposite of what the people championing austerity are doing. If "cut public spending, sell off public assets, and cut taxes for the wealthy in the name of reducing the deficit (which hasn't been a problem up to now)" and "raise taxes on the wealthy to increase public spending, borrow as necessary to invest in things which grow the economy and inflate GDP as a portion of debt to reduce the relative size of the deficit and also spend a bunch of money in good places" are both "forms of austerity" then austerity is completely meaningless. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 23:36
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OwlFancier posted:Not sure how that has anything to do with austerity, given that it's sort of the complete opposite of what the people championing austerity are doing. Austerity is by definition raising taxes without increasing spending, or cutting spending without also cutting taxes. Raising taxes on the wealthy without a corresponding raise in government spending is austerity. I'm simply wondering if you guys are against austerity in all its forms.
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Jul 21, 2015 23:39
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Typo posted:Austerity is by definition raising taxes without increasing spending, or cutting spending without also cutting taxes. Raising taxes without increasing spending seems kind of pointless but it's better than cutting spending I guess?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:40
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OwlFancier posted:Raising taxes without increasing spending seems kind of pointless but it's better than cutting spending I guess? It's not if you plan on reducing the deficit or if you plan on servicing or reducing the debt
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Jul 21, 2015 23:45
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Typo posted:It's not if you plan on reducing the deficit or if you plan on servicing or reducing the debt Is that very necessary?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:46
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OwlFancier posted:Is that very necessary? If you are greece then yes it probably is
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Jul 21, 2015 23:50
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Typo posted:If you are greece then yes it probably is It doesn't seem to be doing them very much good so far.
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Jul 21, 2015 23:51
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OwlFancier posted:It doesn't seem to be doing them very much good so far. So let me get your position straight. If a country is running a serious, unsustainable deficit like Greece was during the 2000s, you would be opposed to increasing taxes on the wealthy to reduce said deficit and instead keep borrowing from international creditors like Germany to finance the gap between consumption and taxation.
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Jul 21, 2015 23:54
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Greeks aren't lazy, they most definitely aren't lazy but they have a way of being really busy without much getting done.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:02
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Typo posted:So let me get your position straight. I would suggest that "raise the tax rate on the wealthy" would make bugger all difference to Greece's debt problem. If we grant that Greece has a tax evasion problem, as well as potentially that its economy has been hit particularly hard by the recession (as I assume that the wealthy Greek citizens didn't suddenly develop magical tax evasion powers overnight) then what is presumably needed is rather large reforms in how tax is collected, as well as finding a new economic basis for the country if its current one hasn't been able to recover. Both of those seem like relatively expensive things which you would probably need to borrow money to fund, especially as they would both take time to implement. So reducing borrowing and just saying "we want more taxes" doesn't seem practical, as people would continue to not pay tax in the interim while public services collapse and take more of the economy with them. The necessary thing would seem to be a sizeable capital investment in social, legislative, and economic reforms, combined with a lenient repayment plan and a maintenance of funding to services and welfare in the meantime to cover the inevitable fallout of an economic restructuring, as people will probably need retraining and to find new work. Or you could just poo poo all over the country by offering repeated bailouts with increasingly draconian repayment plans with the end goal of loving everything up so the country falls to bits and you repossess it on the cheap, that works too I guess.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:02
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OwlFancier posted:I would suggest that "raise the tax rate on the wealthy" would make bugger all difference to Greece's debt problem. I got a feeling if I simply called it a "wealth redistribution program" instead of "austerity" a few posts ago you'd be all for it right now.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:11
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Typo posted:I got a feeling if I simply called it a "wealth redistribution program" instead of "austerity" a few posts ago you'd be all for it right now. You're not really redistributing wealth if you just raise taxes and then give the revenue to bankers. If you suggested raising taxes and spending extra on infrastructure and reforms to secure the long term prosperity of the working classes then yes, but I don't think that really merits the title of austerity.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:16
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Raising taxes on the wealthy is not austerity, they will just find ways to invest their money elsewhere through loopholes and political corruption
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Jul 22, 2015 00:32
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Typo posted:I got a feeling if I simply called it a "wealth redistribution program" instead of "austerity" a few posts ago you'd be all for it right now. Austerity, in the context we're discussing, involves attempting to close the deficit primarily by reducing government spending. The whole implication of the world 'austere' is doing without something, which isn't applicable if you aren't giving anything up.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:34
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Melted_Igloo posted:Raising taxes on the wealthy is not austerity, they will just find ways to invest their money elsewhere through loopholes and political corruption The thread is now supporting laffer.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:34
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Voyager I posted:Austerity, in the context we're discussing, involves attempting to close the deficit primarily by reducing government spending. The whole implication of the world 'austere' is doing without something, which isn't applicable if you aren't giving anything up. Somebody is giving something up, in this case the rich now have to pay more taxes
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Jul 22, 2015 00:43
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asdf32 posted:The thread is now supporting laffer. 100% taxation is counterproductive, therefore a napkin parabola is correct. Typo posted:Somebody is giving something up, in this case the rich now have to pay more taxes Diddums.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:44
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Typo posted:Somebody is giving something up, in this case the rich now have to pay more taxes By this definition, shifting towards a Scandinavian welfare state could be considered Austerity so long as the additional taxes on the wealthy outweighed the increased benefits to the poor. If we're going to define the term so broadly that it includes literally any measures that result in a net decrease in the budget deficit then the term is essentially meaningless since it now includes a huge scope of policies and values that are often explicitly contradictory towards each other.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:51
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Voyager I posted:By this definition, shifting towards a Scandinavian welfare state could be considered Austerity so long as the additional taxes on the wealthy outweighed the increased benefits to the poor. I continue to propose that the thread use the actual definition of the word austerity while discussing austerity. wikipedia posted:In economics, austerity is a set of policies with the aim of reducing government budget deficits. Austerity policies may include spending cuts, tax increases, or a mixture of both.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:55
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Voyager I posted:By this definition, shifting towards a Scandinavian welfare state could be considered Austerity so long as the additional taxes on the wealthy outweighed the increased benefits to the poor. But that's literally what it means. Running a fiscal deficit also involve a huge scope of policies and values that are often explicitly contradictory towards each other. I get it that austerity is a trigger word on D&D, but the OP asked what austerity is and this is an answer. You could oppose the current implementation of austerity too and that's valid.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:56
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It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition is because you know that's not what people are talking about so shut the gently caress up about the dictionary.
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Jul 22, 2015 01:48
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Nevvy Z posted:It doesn't matter what the dictionary definition is because you know that's not what people are talking about so shut the gently caress up about the dictionary. In the exact same sense the right "knows" that fiscal deficit means giving welfare money to poor undeserving people. Sorry that words don't mean what you hope they mean.
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Jul 22, 2015 02:03
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Typo posted:But that's literally what it means. Oh boy, are we at the stage where we all post definitions to suit our fancy? quote:A state of reduced spending and increased frugality in the financial sector. Austerity measures generally refer to the measures taken by governments to reduce expenditures in an attempt to shrink their growing budget deficits. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/austerity.asp quote:Difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce a budget deficit, especially by reducing public expenditure: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/austerity quote:an economic policy by which a government reduces the amount of money it spends by a large amount http://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/austerity All those definitions are as good as the "financial times lexicon" definition sourced by Wikipedia. But I'm sure when the OP was asking about austerity he was wondering why massive tax increases on the wealthy in Greece haven't worked, right? After all, the line of questions he asked as follow up directly includes: quote:could austeriry work if they cut some spending but left other spending unchanged or larger It's pretty ironic for you to say "Sorry that words don't mean what you hope they mean." though. Maybe "ironic" isn't the right word, let me grab a dictionary and find a better one: quote:"(typically of a man or his behavior) obnoxious or contemptible." Ahh there we go. It's pretty douchey for you to say that. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jul 22, 2015 |
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Jul 22, 2015 02:25
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