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It's a bit sickening how dismissive the author is to brush aside the impact of inflation on this plan. Inflation is a direct tax on the poor who are trying to s

It's a bit sickening how dismissive the author is to brush aside the impact of inflation on this plan. Inflation is a direct tax on the poor who are trying to save money. Great, let's give them jobs that are dependent on inflation and then remove their ability to gain capital. Runaway inflation is a real contributor to poverty traps, but I must be crazy because according to the article "panic over government budget deficits is delusional, a misguided and atavistic remnant of the gold standard." Modern macroeconomics comes off as such a tribal, groupthink discipline to me. Far too many policy suggestions stem from tortured analogies like "we need to prime the pump and increase spending to increase aggregate demand!", or "Capitalism runs on sales, ... you have to increase spending to increase sales!" Where is the analysis of the real cost of programs like this? Why are we so focused on short-term results without considering the long-term effects? Economics is not physics. You can't run controlled experiments and discover mathematical relations that succinctly describe entire economies. I wish we would stop taking the poor excuse of what is currently macroeconomics research, which is basically terrible curve fitting on small sample sizes over a brief historical period sprinkled with whatever ideology the economist subscribes to, and jumping to terrible policy decisions that affect real people.

dsr_ 9y ago
They are certainly proposing to increase the money available to the poor by much more than the 1% increase in prices that they expect to incur.
astine 9y ago
"Economics is not physics." This point is super important. While you can influence demand through macroeconomic twiddling, an economy is unlike many systems in that not only does it react to stimuli, it learns to anticipate that stimuli as well. You have to adjust your strategy to account for this.
stcredzero 9y ago
It's a bit sickening how dismissive the author is to brush aside the impact of inflation on this plan. Inflation is a direct tax on the poor who are trying to save money. Not just the poor. My current salary would've put me into the Upper Middle class, verging on upper classes in my youth. Now, it's squarely middle class. I must be crazy because according to the article "panic over government budget deficits is delusional, a misguided and atavistic remnant of the gold standard There is a big contingent at Vice and Vox that also want us to think that Antifa are a bunch of good, heroic people.

dsr_ 9y ago

They are certainly proposing to increase the money available to the poor by much more than the 1% increase in prices that they expect to incur.

astine 9y ago

"Economics is not physics." This point is super important. While you can influence demand through macroeconomic twiddling, an economy is unlike many systems in that not only does it react to stimuli, it learns to anticipate that stimuli as well. You have to adjust your strategy to account for this.

stcredzero 9y ago

It's a bit sickening how dismissive the author is to brush aside the impact of inflation on this plan. Inflation is a direct tax on the poor who are trying to save money. Not just the poor. My current salary would've put me into the Upper Middle class, verging on upper classes in my youth. Now, it's squarely middle class. I must be crazy because according to the article "panic over government budget deficits is delusional, a misguided and atavistic remnant of the gold standard There is a big contingent at Vice and Vox that also want us to think that Antifa are a bunch of good, heroic people.