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>There's a few items that could be solved with the market. Like: Remove city's zoning laws with a federal mandate, to encourage the market to build urban housin

>There's a few items that could be solved with the market. Like: Remove city's zoning laws with a federal mandate, to encourage the market to build urban housing. You don't need the gov. to do it, just remove the limitations. Disallow internet providers from offering kickbacks to condo/apartment managers to open up the market. We should probably tax semi trucks & cars with snow tires more, because they're the ones that cause 90% of the damage to highways. I completely agree. Rigorous antitrust enforcement is another major program I would pursue, alongside every measure to reduce and eliminate economic rents. >It'll all come out eventually. Either we borrow, and tax our future generations, or we tax more businesses now, which would also repress business activity and American competitiveness. Or we invest in infrastructure and R&D now to make the profit later. You know, like every sane country in history prior to the Reagan Revolution. >Your Massachusetts background is showing. No, I wasn't proposing my ideal economic program. That would start with a lot more of Karl Marx and Henry George. I was pointing out the ways in which actually-existing systems which we once actually used actually dealt with unemployment -- real things, not ideals. My whole point, facepalm, is that we've been so thoroughly indoctrinated with neoliberalism that we've managed to forget how the golden age of Western capitalism (1940s-1970s) actually worked.

civilian 10y ago
Hmmm. I'll agree to antitrust, but with a caveat. Most monopolies are government-enforced in the first place. Through some means or another, the government grants a business or group of business privileges above the other, usually through making it difficult to entry a market. Natural monopolies just aren't that bad--- they get to be natural monopolies because they're efficient and they're granted consumers good products at good prices. > Or we invest in infrastructure and R&D now to make the profit later. You know, like every sane country in history prior to the Reagan Revolution. But, do politicians ever get away from deficit spending? In order to follow the Keynes playbook you suggest, we need to take in a surplus eventually to pay off loans. And if we're taking this money from a larger economy the deficit spending has created, then Keynes' strategy also relies on the money being well spent. It's not enough to have employed people, they have to be projects that do help the economy and help wealth creation. Digging a hole & filling it up will not generate the profit we can skim in the future. And I question the ability of the government to spend money well. In general though, it just becomes an engineering/finance problem. (And whenever we can turn an emotional political problem in a boring engineering/finance problem. that's a good thing.) I suspect that highway expansions are usually worth it. Subway and light rail are questionable. I agree that subways are really awesome to ride, but the true cost of subways are masked from the consumer. The $2.75/trip new yorkers pay is about 40% of the actual cost. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/in-defense-of-the-cheap-subway-ride/ https://tcf.org/content/commentary/in-defense-of-the-cheap-s... (I suspect that they're only looking at operating costs, not capital costs.) > No, I wasn't proposing my ideal economic program. That would start with a lot more of Karl Marx and Henry George. I know you weren't, I was just noticing a pattern in your thinking anyway. :) I'm pretty Austrian so..... yeah. TIL Henry George though, he seems like a cool guy: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val... Anything to motivate cities to develop more is good in my book!
infinite8s 10y ago
Well, that period also required a lot of the rebuilding due to the destruction wrought by WWII. Sadly it seems the idea of 'creative destruction' to unstick markets and lead to innovation also seems to apply to real world infrastructure (in this case requiring real world destruction).

civilian 10y ago

Hmmm. I'll agree to antitrust, but with a caveat. Most monopolies are government-enforced in the first place. Through some means or another, the government grants a business or group of business privileges above the other, usually through making it difficult to entry a market. Natural monopolies just aren't that bad--- they get to be natural monopolies because they're efficient and they're granted consumers good products at good prices. > Or we invest in infrastructure and R&D now to make the profit later. You know, like every sane country in history prior to the Reagan Revolution. But, do politicians ever get away from deficit spending? In order to follow the Keynes playbook you suggest, we need to take in a surplus eventually to pay off loans. And if we're taking this money from a larger economy the deficit spending has created, then Keynes' strategy also relies on the money being well spent. It's not enough to have employed people, they have to be projects that do help the economy and help wealth creation. Digging a hole & filling it up will not generate the profit we can skim in the future. And I question the ability of the government to spend money well. In general though, it just becomes an engineering/finance problem. (And whenever we can turn an emotional political problem in a boring engineering/finance problem. that's a good thing.) I suspect that highway expansions are usually worth it. Subway and light rail are questionable. I agree that subways are really awesome to ride, but the true cost of subways are masked from the consumer. The $2.75/trip new yorkers pay is about 40% of the actual cost. https://tcf.org/content/commentary/in-defense-of-the-cheap-subway-ride/ https://tcf.org/content/commentary/in-defense-of-the-cheap-s... (I suspect that they're only looking at operating costs, not capital costs.) > No, I wasn't proposing my ideal economic program. That would start with a lot more of Karl Marx and Henry George. I know you weren't, I was just noticing a pattern in your thinking anyway. :) I'm pretty Austrian so..... yeah. TIL Henry George though, he seems like a cool guy: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-value-tax http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val... Anything to motivate cities to develop more is good in my book!

infinite8s 10y ago

Well, that period also required a lot of the rebuilding due to the destruction wrought by WWII. Sadly it seems the idea of 'creative destruction' to unstick markets and lead to innovation also seems to apply to real world infrastructure (in this case requiring real world destruction).