smallmancontrov

5 ms·

31.
by smallmancontrov 1mo ago
You're missing that the T-bills are replacing exports (including services) that would otherwise have had to happen to support the imports, and that the latter employs people while the former doesn't. The benefit is to the US in ag
32.
by smallmancontrov 1mo ago
Taxing capital? Impossible! Obscene! Everyone knows that only labor can/should be taxed.
33.
by smallmancontrov 1mo ago
A current account deficit is a capital account surplus. We can pay for imports with things we make or things we own. To a first approximation, making things employs people and owning things does not. If we pay with things we make, our econo
34.
by smallmancontrov 1mo ago
> people have a baseline of goods they must consume for survival (housing, food etc.), and once that baseline is reached spending does not fall further Oh boy, do I have news for you. It is in fact possible to run out of money, and in
35.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
The fact that the dumbest president in American history is bad at industrial policy does not mean that industrial policy cannot or should not be done.
36.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
The limiting factor on deploying capital abroad was never the ability to move gold or even equipment, it was the ability to have faith that over many years the remote authorities would continue to enforce your remotely held claims on the op
37.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
No, Average Joe (Median Joe) is not a shareholder, asset appreciation is not a meaningful fraction of his income so policies which dump labor to pump capital hurt Average Joe on net by a wide margin. Shareholders are 30/30/30 top
38.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
The balance of trade accounts for "export of computer services," because of course it does, and the account is in deficit in spite of these, because of course it is. The insane thing is that you tried to offer this "insight&q
39.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Absolutely not! The word "investment" according to most definitions in most economics classes would encompass the activity of merging together all of the companies in a sector for mega rent extraction. They would even call that a
40.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Just because the dumbest president in American History can't do industrial policy doesn't mean that industrial policy can't or shouldn't be done.
41.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Ricardo's comparative advantage result is contingent on the assumption that capital is not mobile across borders. This was a good assumption in 1817. Is it a good assumption today? Furthermore, he's very up front about this in On
42.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
No, bringing the price of 50" 4k TVs down to $300 does not make up for lost jobs. That's an easy choice, which is why it was never presented to the American worker but rather foisted upon us by shareholders in pursuit of profit an
43.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
An actual plan would look like the IIJA, IRA, CHIPS Act -- what Biden was doing, but act larger scale. The problem with globalization is not that free trade failed to create a surplus, it's that 150% of the surplus went to capital and
44.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Yes, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't know that and thinks flapping between protectionism and TACO is a brilliant strategy for achieving the best of both worlds rather than an idiotic strategy guaranteed to result in the worst of bo
45.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
A current account deficit is a capital account surplus. Persistent deficits shift the balance between Asset vs Export sectors, dumping the export sector and pumping the asset sector. Put differently, we can pay for imports with shit that we
46.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
> First, give Donald Trump some credit. He promised to restore order to the border, and he did. ...after threatening to primary anyone who voted for Senator Lankford's (R-OK) asylum reform bill in Feb 2024 because he wanted to run o
47.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
It took over a century to go from Oliver Twist to the broad Post-WWII Middle Class. How long this time?
48.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
You are undertaking motivated reasoning to dodge culpability. The transfer of money from house-seekers -- many of whom do more to establish the community you are touting than yourself -- to your own pockets is not incidental, it's th
49.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
If you built more houses in Manhatten, would it increase or decrease Manhatten house values? If you built more houses in Dubuque, would it increase or decrease Dubuque house values?
50.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Mmmhmm, and the fact that it results in loads of money in NIMBY pockets at outsiders' expense is purely coincidental? I don't believe you.
51.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
That's what Elon said, but it's clearly not what he was thinking, which was more along the lines of "this would make a brilliant propaganda megaphone." This was around the time when he started to be openly post-truth (ta
52.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
He is a smart man -- with an enormous $100B vested interest in the capital side of this equation. It is (meager) progress to hear any acknowledgement from capital at all that we might conceivably need to do something other than pump aggrega
53.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
I'm not in industry, is DPML (which I assume is the time required to make a mask?) set by electron beam scan time or something?
54.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
A few years ago I would have comfortably agreed that the US was better at impartial justice and justice for all. That has changed. Now it's a game of making lists of sins and comparing them -- which has enough degrees of freedom that e
55.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
You're pivoting. Alexander Hamilton had the influence on America's foreign policy that I said he had.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Hamilton set the strategic agenda. Do you want to argue that US industrialization didn't follow the broad strokes of this plan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Manufactures https://en.wikipedia.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
China didn't get that way by magic. They ran the same playbook that allowed Alexander Hamilton to snatch manufacturing from Great Britain to the US, and the US gave up manufacturing for the same reason the UK gave up manufacturing (sup
58.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Servants. Yes, robots eventually, but servants are the classical answer. The terrible truth is that palace economies are stable -- we see them in "resource-cursed" countries around the world and through time. When a single easily-
59.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Let's count our blessings that the ongoing campaign to fill whitehouse.gov with Republican partisan hackery doesn't extend to the boring accounting parts. Yet.
60.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/...

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