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I'd say it was as much practical as it is ideological. Keynesian spending is inherently inflationary and creates jobs. As a member of the 1%: * Inflation is y

I'd say it was as much practical as it is ideological. Keynesian spending is inherently inflationary and creates jobs. As a member of the 1%: * Inflation is your enemy. It not only causes the value of your cash holdings to decline, it causes the value of the money you lent out to decline. * Creating jobs is your enemy. If you employ people you want as little competition for labor as possible to reduce your wage bill and the wage bill of the companies you invest in.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> I'd say it was as much practical as it is ideological. The disagreement isn't practical (over what broad effect given policy will have), it's ideological (over what broad outcome is desirable). That the ideology is often sslf-serving (if arguably only in fairly myopic perspective) for lawmakers who are also part of the economic elite doesn't make it any less ideological, it just explains the attraction of the ideology to those actors.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
The definition of "ideological" in this circumstance is, "targeted at maintaining the wealth and interest of a particular class at the expense of other classes and the economy as a whole". In this case, yes, opposition to Keynesian measures has been targeted at maintaining the value-capture by "the 1%" (by now even more just rentier asset-owners than those whose capital does real work in fields like technology, really) at the expense of the skilled-professional class (the most common Hacker News user), the semi-skilled middle class, the smallholder class (probably including start-up founders), and the broad working class as a whole.
iopq 10y ago
Inflation causes the value of your investments to increase, so it hurts the people who rely on cash more than people with stock portfolios
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  I'm not sure that is going to be true of the stock market. Many firms now have record cash holdings[0] so by buying stock you are essentially buying a slice of a pile of money. I argue the reason many firms stock price keeps going up hasn't been a rise in demand but instead a limit on supply as stock buybacks are also at record levels[1]. [0]http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporations-hoarding-trillions.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corpor... [1]https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Inflation doesn't cause the real value of investments to increase, because the real value is the nominal value relative to general prices (and inflation is increase in general prices.)
  - iopq 10y ago
    That's true in the general sense, but low interest rates lead to higher inflation AND better stock market performance. So having lower interest rates benefits people with stock market portfolios and hurts people who have mostly cash.
- tormeh 10y ago
  Bond returns are fixed, I think. So even though inflation is fine for stock investors it's bad for bond investors.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I'd say it was as much practical as it is ideological. The disagreement isn't practical (over what broad effect given policy will have), it's ideological (over what broad outcome is desirable). That the ideology is often sslf-serving (if arguably only in fairly myopic perspective) for lawmakers who are also part of the economic elite doesn't make it any less ideological, it just explains the attraction of the ideology to those actors.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

The definition of "ideological" in this circumstance is, "targeted at maintaining the wealth and interest of a particular class at the expense of other classes and the economy as a whole". In this case, yes, opposition to Keynesian measures has been targeted at maintaining the value-capture by "the 1%" (by now even more just rentier asset-owners than those whose capital does real work in fields like technology, really) at the expense of the skilled-professional class (the most common Hacker News user), the semi-skilled middle class, the smallholder class (probably including start-up founders), and the broad working class as a whole.

iopq 10y ago

Inflation causes the value of your investments to increase, so it hurts the people who rely on cash more than people with stock portfolios

cmdrfred 10y ago
I'm not sure that is going to be true of the stock market. Many firms now have record cash holdings[0] so by buying stock you are essentially buying a slice of a pile of money. I argue the reason many firms stock price keeps going up hasn't been a rise in demand but instead a limit on supply as stock buybacks are also at record levels[1]. [0]http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corporations-hoarding-trillions.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/magazine/why-are-corpor... [1]https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity
dragonwriter 10y ago
Inflation doesn't cause the real value of investments to increase, because the real value is the nominal value relative to general prices (and inflation is increase in general prices.)
- iopq 10y ago
  That's true in the general sense, but low interest rates lead to higher inflation AND better stock market performance. So having lower interest rates benefits people with stock market portfolios and hurts people who have mostly cash.
tormeh 10y ago
Bond returns are fixed, I think. So even though inflation is fine for stock investors it's bad for bond investors.