What would Keynes do?

You're full of shit as usual. The western world gave his policies a try for decades. Trouble is, most governments took only his intervention policies to heart. His theories failed to envision the kind of huge debts and deficits we face today, and they didn't foresee the reality of stagflation and fell out of favor in the 70s when stagflation was running rampant.

Keynes main failure was his belief in big government intervention in the free market. Those policies would change today as soon as Keynes was told about the level of debt, regulation (intervention) and the kind of deficits we run today. Today, Keynes is irrelevant.

So they only took one part of the philosophy to heart (granted the important part) and then claimed it was a failed policy without trying the rest of it? :rolleyes: I'm beginning to understand why you hate people in government. I mean when you don't try something and declare it proven false.

Big Government intervention in the free market by which I assume you mean stimulis it's always difficult to tell with you since words mean what you want them to mean when you want them to mean it. Has been a proven winner. It's true Keynes might shy away from it with our level of debt but to be fair that's Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush faults. Common sense says you store up in the good times and when the economy was booming they should have raised taxes eliminated the debt (well. . .you'd have a hard time without banking works but oh well burn that bridge later) and built up a surplus for Bush/Obama to have dumped on the economy all at once but hindsight and all that.

The deficits are something we should have worried about later but oh well. Spilt milk.

Keynes however is far from irrellevant. The core of what he said still holds true. It's like saying Darwin is irrellevant which in the strictest sense of the word is truish by this logic.
 
none of his contemporaries took his insane ramblings seriously...

none of this has ever worked.

feel free to still believe this drivel AFTER you have actually read ludwig von mises. Hell, milton friedman even.

I've read keynes. have you read anything except these sort of extracts and krugman pieces. If not why be a dilettante in economics?

Whats the appeal of liberals with talking about economics at except as it serves the point of unlimited government spending. You already get that, it isnt going to stop, so why do you feel the need to justify what is already being done by both major parties to bribe their own constituencies?

hmmmm.

A weed by any other name....

What I don't get? Why some posters so carefully cultivate their abrasive, combative internet personas.(whatever account they use)

You KNOW they don't have the balls to talk like they do here in real life. (...or ovaries, but almost always balls) The whole keyboard-gangster slinging insults crap just makes them look like scared little boys.
http://forum.literotica.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=52106039

:confused:
 
Tell me Grand Cyclops, did Obama really deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

No, he did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. President Obama admitted as much.

But President Obama deserves full credit for winding down President Bush's disasterous "pre-emptive" war with Iraq. :)
 
No, he did not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. President Obama admitted as much.

But President Obama deserves full credit for winding down President Bush's disasterous "pre-emptive" war with Iraq. :)

AND TURNING IT UP TO 11 IN AFGHANISTAN!!!!

You left that part out. :)
 
There were evildoers in Afghanistan. No oil though.

:nods:

Plenty of precious metals and approximately 2/3 the world supply and over 90% of the US supply of Heroine showed up from Afghanistan damn near over night after we invaded.

Ain't that a ko-winkie-dink???:) You act like we aren't taking advantage of hundreds of billions worth of product from that shit hole. Worth more than ALL the oil in Iraq.

And your boy O fuckin' loves it.
 
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Plenty of precious metals and approximately 2/3 the world supply and over 90% of the US supply of Heroine showed up from Afghanistan damn near over night after we invaded.

Ain't that a ko-winkie-dink???:) You act like we aren't taking advantage of hundreds of billions worth of product from that shit hole. Worth more than ALL the oil in Iraq.

And your boy O fuckin' loves it.

Okay I gotta call this one. Not that I think Obama's the magical dove that he's oft accused of being but I'm not buying that we're getting much out of either war. The Iraq oil never actually materialized (and in Bush's credit I don't believe Iraq was about oil either. I think it was equal parts finishing daddy's work and Saddam didn't really know who he was in a pissing contest. Hell Bush may not have known either. I can easily imagine the two of them playing "I bet you won't" just instead of naked sweaty men wondering at what point did this situation get out of hand there were soldiers and deaths.
 
Cite?



Cite?

This isn't a fucking term paper. You wouldn't read anything on the subject that doesn't support your only-government-can-be-entrusted-to-invest(waste)-capital worldview

as I said...read von mises or stfu.

hell you like google and youtube...WATCH any of the takedowns of krugman-- whom all the "consensus" economists parrot (read ivory tower NO ONE pays them for their work so as to actually invest any money based upon such 'wisdom')

You are such a broken record.

No one can cite an example of something that HASN'T worked.

Cite where it ever has worked.

EVEN Keynes wouldn't agree with the WILD claims of government AS the engine. Stimulus in his (wrongheaded) view was the water to PRIME the pump, not the PUMP itself.

You'll scream for a cite but there is a late in life bemused quote by Keynes more or less admitting his wild claims were not to be taken seriously.

START with understanding the broken window fallacy and if you CANT grasp that consider another area of interest.

And to Sean: just because Keynesian drivel is used by the government/military/industrial complex to give them the blessing of almighty god to waste money, doesn't mean it will yield results contrary to ACTUAL economic reality.
 
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what is it you are so confused about...does this SOUND at all like anything I wouldnt be perfectly comfortable articulating in a bar if the OP poster directed my attention to that article? You think one needs to agree with everyone?

what was the point of this cyber stalk? do I KNOW you? would I want to know you?

i don't care whether you want to.

i think you're an arrogant hypocrite, suggesting you're above the fray. You bow up with the best of them.

Emile Moreau and Montagu Norman certainly disagreed with Keynes.

Hello Great Depression.

Hello Adolph Hitler.
 
And to Sean: just because Keynesian drivel is used by the government/military/industrial complex to give them the blessing of almighty god to waste money, doesn't mean it will yield results contrary to ACTUAL economic reality.

Just because it worked with WWII and nobody debates that it did. . .sorry a very small group of people do but they are few and far between say that. It worked again for Reagan with the military industrial complex and for Bush and the TARP program worked as well. By contrast we can point to Europe Austerity as proof that the opposite clearly does not work.

So it's not contrary to actual economic reality. It's tried and true and that's why they say it. Why it's so universal that only crazy people argue it and when it's put into practice the results are predictably dire.
 
This isn't a fucking term paper. You wouldn't read anything on the subject that doesn't support your only-government-can-be-entrusted-to-invest(waste)-capital worldview

as I said...read von mises or stfu.

hell you like google and youtube...WATCH any of the takedowns of krugman-- whom all the "consensus" economists parrot (read ivory tower NO ONE pays them for their work so as to actually invest any money based upon such 'wisdom')

Oh, no. That's not how debate works. You make the claim, you bring the cite or STFU. If von Mises is a cite, you can summarize, quote and defend him. If it is true that all Keynes' contemporary economists rejected his ideas, the cites should be easy to find; in fact, you would not have made that claim if you did not have specific cites in mind -- would you?

No one can cite an example of something that HASN'T worked.

Cite where it ever has worked.

The United States. Our economic policy was consistently Keynesian -- to varying degrees, but the basic approach never questioned -- from FDR through the early 70s, encompassing the period of greatest shared prosperity in American history.

You'll scream for a cite but there is a late in life bemused quote by Keynes more or less admitting his wild claims were not to be taken seriously.

If it exists, you'll find it here. You're welcome for the head start.

START with understanding the broken window fallacy and if you CANT grasp that consider another area of interest.

Familiar with it.

There are two brief notes that need to be observed for the following fallacies:

First: These fallacies are based on Neoclassical economics, which is a broad designation that refers to all economic schools that accept the consensus formed in the wake of the "Marginalist Revolution" caused by the work of Leon Walras, William Jevons and Carl Menger. Basically, this approach to economics emphasizes economic subjectivism; the belief that a good is valued by a subject and that market prices for a good only come about when subjects desire them. This is a great contrast to the Classical economists like Adam Smith and Karl Marx, who argued the value of commodities are related to the labor to produce them (the labor theory of value, a theory derived from the philosophy of John Locke).

Second: These fallacies are only always accepted as fallacies in a healthy economy. Schools of economic thought greatly differ on matters relating to an unhealthy economy. For instance, a Keynesian would only accept Fallacy 1 (the Broken Window Fallacy) is a fallacy in a healthy economy. In an unhealthy economy, committing this fallacy is (according to Keynesianism) a potentially beneficial thing. Thus, all the following fallacies are controversial in an unhealthy economy.

1. The Broken Window Fallacy aka. Destruction Equals Employment aka. Digging and Filling Ditches: Named by Frederic Bastiat, this fallacy consists of ignoring opportunity costs. Specifically, an important principle in economics is when one has an opportunity to choose between multiple outcomes, the cost of picking one outcome is having to forgo the other outcome/s. In practical situations, this means resources spent on one thing cannot be spent on another thing. Some examples include:
ā—¦ Destruction Equals Employment: or when someone says "breaking windows is good for the economy because people will then buy new windows, thus increasing business done by glaziers." The ignored opportunity cost is that the money used to repair windows could've been used to buy other things and the business would've gone to other merchants. On a larger scale, the belief that "war is economically productive" ignores the opportunity cost of spending resources on building bombs instead of building something else. Of course, this is profitable for the arms industry, but for the economy as a whole it isn't. There's also the minor matter that society's poorer by what was destroyed; the resources spent replacing it are used to restore lost wealth. A Raubwirtschaft economy based on plunder often works in the short term but is unsustainable in the long run as existing territory becomes depleted of resources and conquering new territories is not possible - or would cost you more than you could rob. Cases in point: The Roman Empire and Those Wacky Nazis.
ā—¦ Digging And Filling Ditches: The government (or a corporation) gives everyone a job and pays them, without regard for the actual usefulness of said jobs. There are significant opportunity costs associated with the resources required to pay the people working on the newly-created jobs (because these resources could have been used to do something else, which may have been more beneficial).

This one is also of interest, BTW:

6. America the bankrupt: National debts don't work like your personal debt. For example, people don't buy your debt to prop up your currency. Yet for some reason a lot of writers tend to think of the national debt in the same terms as a bank loan, with angry creditors and everything. When this trope is invoked expect to see a consortium of angry foreign dignitaries banging on a conference table that they want their money back. In reality, if countries actually acted like this, the global financial system would probably collapse pretty spectacularly and everyone would be screwed. This trope is not specific to America, but for some reason Americans are exceptionally paranoid about the National Debt, particularly when the Chinese are buying it up, and now not buying it anymore. Oddly enough, America's National Debt isn't even that bad by international standards. Also, the US national debt is in terms of dollars, and the government can create as many dollars as they need to pay off the debt. Everyone would be paid the amount owed, but the new dollars would lead to inflation. The key here is that governments usually owe substantial portions of their debt to 'themselves,' i.e. either the government owes money to different branches, or those branches hold their assets as bonds and treasury bills instead of money; by owing money to yourself, you usually don't charge yourself interest (beyond inflation) and you theoretically can't default on money you owe yourself. This is how Japan can have gross debt worth over 100% of their yearly economic output and have little economic effects: 70-80% of its debt is owned by the Japanese Central Bank. In the United States, around 35-40% of the government debt is owed to itself, mainly to the Social Security Administration. Also, debt owned to foreign entities makes up MUCH less of the debt than people seem to think: as an example, China owns only 6% of the total US debt.
 
Will he deserve as well the consequences threatening to overthrow the government in Iraq as well?

BTW, the "winding down" would be more accurately described as "bugging out.":rolleyes:

We've been over this before.

"Winding down" is the orderly withdrawal of troops from a combat zone after operations have been completed and objectives achieved.

"Bugging out" is what Marines in Vietnam did at the first sign of hostile fire, usually accompanied by collective pants-shitting.
 
i don't care whether you want to.

i think you're an arrogant hypocrite, suggesting you're above the fray. You bow up with the best of them.

Emile Moreau and Montagu Norman certainly disagreed with Keynes.

Hello Great Depression.

Hello Adolph Hitler.


hypocracy how? like if i randomly stalked someones posts and called them a hypocrite to prove, what?

I dont object to lively spirited or even heated debate...i object to crap like your little snipes, robdownsouths COMPLETE lack of substance, jenn's wierd mudslinging that seems unrelated to the discourse at hand...

do i need to prove something to you? and why?
 
The rising school of thought in economics now appears to be Post-Keynesianism:

KingOrfeo: Very nice summary of post-Keynesianism. Thank you for that.

The basic, underlying problem is that the public doesn't understand the nature of money. One example: those who think that people (collectively) should both pay down debt and save money, simultaneously.

I'm not sure Post-Keynesianism is a "rising school" though. From what I can tell, UMKC is the only place it's taken seriously, and most mainstream economists are somewhere between ignorant and scornful of it.

I'd be happy to be shown wrong, though.

In exchange for your link, here's one you might not have seen: [url]http://www.slideshare.net/UmkcEconomists/umkc-in-playboy-seriously[/URL]
 
Second: These fallacies are only always accepted as fallacies in a healthy economy. Schools of economic thought greatly differ on matters relating to an unhealthy economy. For instance, a Keynesian would only accept Fallacy 1 (the Broken Window Fallacy) is a fallacy in a healthy economy. In an unhealthy economy, committing this fallacy is (according to Keynesianism) a potentially beneficial thing. Thus, all the following fallacies are controversial in an unhealthy economy.

This is contortionist (at best) so we have econonmic axioms that are agreed to be sound and if we have an "unhealthy" economy we just make up a new set of rules because we believe our illogical act will "hellp things" (I wont bother to even address how that is likely a result of interference)

citing government deficeit spending as proof that the economy chugged along BECAUSE of that rather than DESPITE that defys logic.

I need no cites for anything I JUST said because it is elementary deductive reasoning.

You and I do not, and will not share a compatible point of view. You see a govt leaving half the milk in a glass as having half filled the glass.

So rather than doing as i suggested READING not an excerpt, not a review thereof, but the man himself. http://mises.org you want me to summarize, contrast and defend ludwig von mises whole body of work for you here in a post or two, and then you will be convinced?

you believe in keynes and his genius...great, not surprised...ALL fans of govt spending feel as do.

CONSIDER reading something contrarian is my point. Especially because it WASN'T contrarian at the time. Keynes was. He has been championed (and yes, followed to our peril) by GOVERNMENT as justifying their rasoin d'eter (sp?)
 
just a slight shift in the broken window fallacy that MIGHT meet with your concurrence:

We spend money and natural resources designing, building and deploying tomahawk cruise missile.

assuming we NEVER use them, well they are (arguably) an asset on the national books and (arguably) add to our national net worth. But what then is the valuation of an expensive asset you never use?

even better according to keynesnians would be to fire them at some mud huts on the other side of the world creating demand for petrolium to get over there, people to maintain fire and monitor the resulting damage, people to engage in diplomatic niceties with the then defeated, and money for haliburton to rebuild it all, and new money to replace the tomohawks.

just stepping back, and ignore the suffering we caused over wherever "there" is...

what have we as a collective people gained from the excersize that we did not have before?

Serious question..

Im deliberately framing it in a way that offends so called conservatives.

First time I heard this argument it was Mike Church's argument. I was at the time on the hawkish side of the fence. I had all kinds of protestations.."but we gotta"...preparedness, self defense, better over there than here all that crap...

but again, are we richer or poorer than before? do we have MORE thinkgs of value or less.

they lost mud huts rebuilt with our cinderblocks, we lost million dollar tomohawks and ALL OF THE LABOR that went into them. All of those great minds and talent NOT devoted to any number of more productive uses...

It is unknowable what the downside is when you squander capital because since it is NOT available for other uses even if just held in reserve, it didnt do anything productive. digging and filling ditches can never make the nation richer after it is done.

THIS is why Keynes was and is wrong.
 
Okay I gotta call this one. Not that I think Obama's the magical dove that he's oft accused of being but I'm not buying that we're getting much out of either war.

"We" aren't getting shit.... a hand full of assholes are making a fucking fortune though.

The Iraq oil never actually materialized (and in Bush's credit I don't believe Iraq was about oil either. I think it was equal parts finishing daddy's work and Saddam didn't really know who he was in a pissing contest. Hell Bush may not have known either. I can easily imagine the two of them playing "I bet you won't" just instead of naked sweaty men wondering at what point did this situation get out of hand there were soldiers and deaths.

Iraq is kind of a "What the actual fuck was that shit??" situation imo.

There doesn't nor has there really ever been much of an explanation beyond "Let's FREEDUMB the fucking shit out of them YEA!!!"

It would have at least made sense if we would have taken the oil, taken the resources and paid some bills. I mean WTF, isn't rule #1 of war that the loser pays the tab??:confused:


It was a welfare program.....at least we got some cool toys out of it.
 
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just a slight shift in the broken window fallacy that MIGHT meet with your concurrence:
-snip-​

just stepping back, and ignore the suffering we caused over wherever "there" is...

what have we as a collective people gained from the excersize that we did not have before?

Serious question..

-snip-​

It is unknowable what the downside is when you squander capital because since it is NOT available for other uses even if just held in reserve, it didnt do anything productive. digging and filling ditches can never make the nation richer after it is done.

THIS is why Keynes was and is wrong.

To bad our economy doesn't work on stuff alone but on labor. You make a really good point over all, except for the fact that in America if you don't work (labor of some sort) you don't eat. So yeah blowing up that mud hut and rebuilding it and building a new tomahawk to replace the one we used does in fact create a need for labor that can then be filled. If you've got a plan to rebuild the US economy in a more sensical manner by all means describe it mate.

However within the current rules of the game Keynes is spot on. It's a shame that it's easier to convince people to blow up some third world nation than is it so spend those same untold billions of dollars rebuilding the South (Not that they deserve it but still) because given my choice we'd fix our shit.

"We" aren't getting shit.... a hand full of assholes are making a fucking fortune though.

Iraq is kind of a "What the actual fuck was that shit??" situation imo.

There doesn't nor has there really ever been much of an explanation beyond "Let's FREEDUMB the fucking shit out of them YEA!!!"

It would have at least made sense if we would have taken the oil, taken the resources and paid some bills. I mean WTF, isn't rule #1 of war that the loser pays the tab??:confused:


It was a welfare program.....at least we got some cool toys out of it.

I don't begrudge the handful of assholes making a fortune. There is nothing you can really do about them anyway I just wish they were making money doing something more constructive. And ideally being American. Like the guy who gets paid for all those Obamaphones? Mexican. But I don't care that he made enough money to Scrooge McDuck.

I'm sticking with two dudes who didn't know each other got stuck in an epic game of "I bet you won't" and each guy expected the other to be the one to finally back down the other guy would say "Got you good fucker!" while silently thanking God things ended like that and game over. But instead the fecal matter collided with the rotating air motivation device.
 
You make a really good point over all, except for the fact that in America if you don't work (labor of some sort) you don't eat. So yeah blowing up that mud hut and rebuilding it and building a new tomahawk to replace the one we used does in fact create a need for labor that can then be filled.

Except that there are plenty of plans that don't depend on blowing stuff up and replacing it. High-speed rail, for example, to compete with the airline industry. (Don't like TSA? There's no TSA on the trains.) want to get on the internet, wherever you are? How about nation-wide high-speed internet access. Does your kid go to as hotta school How about better schools, for everyone. Don't like sitting traffic? How about high-speed autobahn style highways that go around cities, instead of through them?

Don't like infrastructure? Don't like government? How about tax-breaks for everyone? Then they can spend the money on whatever they want.

The point is that people doing nothing are creating nothing. Unemployment makes everyone poorer.
 
Except that there are plenty of plans that don't depend on blowing stuff up and replacing it. High-speed rail, for example, to compete with the airline industry. (Don't like TSA? There's no TSA on the trains.) want to get on the internet, wherever you are? How about nation-wide high-speed internet access. Does your kid go to as hotta school How about better schools, for everyone. Don't like sitting traffic? How about high-speed autobahn style highways that go around cities, instead of through them?

Don't like infrastructure? Don't like government? How about tax-breaks for everyone? Then they can spend the money on whatever they want.

The point is that people doing nothing are creating nothing. Unemployment makes everyone poorer.

We were debating Keynes' correctness, not the best way to spend money. Though I suspect we'll have TSA on trains the exact second a terrorist is confirmed taking a few of them out but your point is sound. I'll for building high speed rail around the the country. Pay some nerds to figure out what the ideal routes are with minimal fucking with extant structures and green light that shit.

Tax breaks probably wouldn't do for this, it's just not aggressive enough.

People doing nothing are creating nothing. True. But the fact the matter again is that we don't need people creating something in the modern world. They don't get fed if they don't work but as the military proves taking a bunch of kids and making them blow shit up is sufficient. Or in short employment=/=creating stuff.

Keynes of course had an answer for THAT as well, shorten the work day, week whatever and increase vacation time. Which would artificially decrease available labor and increase it's value by a corresponding amount.
 
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