jswinghammer

10 ms·

61.
by jswinghammer 13y ago
Real monetary expansion is much greater than 2-3% on average. The price inflation they calculate might be 2-3% but look at college or healthcare costs. That new money finds a home somewhere and I'll tell you now that that's where
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Zero unless they are rewriting history to claim they saw it 6 months to a year out when it was obvious to anyone who wasn't drunk on soaring home and equity prices.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
The basic problem is that you're playing the devil's game when it comes to debt. You might think you are getting the upper hand but the house always wins. The banks always win in this scenario because they get bailed out when they
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
So far the predictive value of these models has been zero and Austrians tend to have a much clearer understanding of what is happening on a macro level. That's been my experience over the last decade or so. After awhile it helps to not
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
The basic problem is that the models are not testable in the way you think they might be. Economics is inherently a deductive discipline and anything you can think of as coming from economics that is valuable in any way came from someone&#x
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Virtually everyone you encounter in the government subscribes to Keynesian economics to the degree that they understand anything at all about economics. When economics is explained in the media at all it is through the lens of Keynesian eco
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Most Austrians understand mainstream economic theory much better than mainstream economists understand Austrian theories. Evidence being Krugman's disastrous attempts to discredit Austrian Business Cycle Theory. It isn't a perfect
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Most of the elites spend their money on buying more influence. They hold debt instead of cash if they hold anything at all outside of whatever they consider to be balanced portfolio.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
No it isn't. It is theft if you are making wages at X price with the understanding that X bought you Y goods in return. If inflation drives up the costs for Y goods so you get Y-Z goods in return then suddenly you got less than you int
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Loans are not evil and I will challenge anyone who suggests that Mises or any other Austrian believes so. That loans under a fractional reserve constitute fraud is something that is debated a bit. I think at this point the consensus is that
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
So much to learn, you still have. A most basic study of the Federal Reserve would lead you to the exact opposite conclusion. They try to keep interest rates as loan as possible until price inflation gets out of control. I spend a lot of tim
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Except that the risk is asymmetric in that the bank gets bailed out if you can't pay and you don't. They loaned out the phony money and you paid it back with your labor.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
I am not. The real purpose is to inflate the monetary supply for the benefit of the large banks. On those supposed goals they have entirely failed anyway.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Friedman was a Keynesian heretic. Instead of looking at aggregate demand he was looking at the total money supply. The basic problem is that he lacked an understand of the boom itself and focused entirely the bust's mechanics. The argu
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
It is a tax. It actually occurs the moment anyone takes out a loan in a fractional reserve system. The money is created from nothing at that moment. Government just tends to borrow huge sums of money through this mechanism.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
What you are describing is exactly why Keynesian economics fell out of favor in the first place. For a time it was thought that the business cycle was a solved problem and only a historical memory. Oops.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Given that the entire point of the Federal Reserve is to promote inflation it's probably good that they think it's a good idea-otherwise why do they think that they exist? The whole problem is that inflation is theft. You are basi
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Hayek is an interesting character because "The Road to Serfdom" is not really his finest or clearest viewpoint on markets at all. I saw a video interview with him (you can find it on youtube if you want) where he just restates wha
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Amusingly that job still exists in my neighborhood of Boston for reasons that I cannot explain. I suspect there may be a law about it but I'm not certain.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Hayek and Mises were in total alignment on this point: economic calculation under socialism is impossible. Without a working price system economic coordination is impossible to sustain. Those communist countries were not growing at all. If
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Please tell me that people don't put Sithlord in job titles...
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Arguments like this assume you can change one thing and society won't change around it. With a basic guarantee many people who are marginally employed would stop working. You'd have two classes of citizens: the workers and those w
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
This article is an example of the worst political commentary. It presents the context for this "observation" as being a decrease in both public debt and the size of the government. No such thing has happened or is likely to happen
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Ultimately everyone pays. Since corporations aren't humans they aren't paying anything. Everyone else in the corporation has to take fewer profits and less compensation as a result of those taxes. They aren't free.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
I can't help but believe there is more going on here than just age. The reason being my own experience with hiring the last decade or so. I don't see too many older candidates come across my desk but I never really care much about
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Companies don't pay taxes it's the shareholders and the employees who pay taxes. So if Google "avoids" taxes on its' income it will end up being paid (at probably a much higher rate) by the shareholders and employee
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
When people tell the story of great content they tend to focus on the very high points. "Breaking Bad" is much better than "Dexter". Even "Mad Men" which isn't as good as "Breaking Bad" is much b
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
In the US most financial education happens in books, radio, or television. There are several personalities who all say the same basic things: stay out of debt, save cash for when shit happens, save for retirement-probably 15% or as much as
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
Meaning they give you your own money back to you for doing something they like. How generous.
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by jswinghammer 13y ago
The part that you are missing is that the media and people who have worked in government are calling him a traitor and suggesting many of things you have said the administration has not done. This means what you say is technically true but

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