smallmancontrov

6 ms·

61.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
If the simple facts don't tell the story you want to hear, you'll just pile on complexity until you can't hear it. But the facts remain.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Democrats Change in Deficit --------- ----------------- Joe Biden -6.1% GDP Barack Obama -6.4% GDP Bill Clinton -5.0% GDP Jimmy Carter -0.2% GDP Re
63.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
You still haven't engaged with a single one of my CPI critiques. 100% offense, 0% defense, you are not operating in good faith. If you can't defend CPI, maybe you should stop making grand proclamations based on it.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Trump also didn't go around trying to drum up support for Iran. His attitude going into the war was "I won't let anyone butt in to steal credit for my impending glorious victory." It only turned into "how dare our a
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Exactly the opposite: CPI is worse than the alternatives at long timescales, despite their flaws. I know you really really want to make this about the flaws in the alternatives, but I have spent many sentences dealing with the flaws in thos
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
I think we 80% agree: people should use a measure of inflation that includes more asset inflation than CPI. The American Dream was not to Owner's Imputed Rent a house. However, there's a balance to be struck with reasonable expect
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Housing and gold, to be used when the timescale is more than a few years. CPI is fine if the timescale is under a few years, because that is not enough time for its sins to compound. You posted an incorrect interpretation of the FRED real w
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Yes! Absolutely! If merging business were confident in their price reduction tall tales they would be willing to bet on them. Unfortunately, both the corporations who abuse the policy and the politicians who put it in place understand perfe
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
No, CPI does not gloss over improvements in quality. CPI gets diligent hedonic adjustments. Good news is always welcome, it seems. By contrast, BLS usually doesn't even try to track enshittification. This compounds, and that's ano
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
When prices rise and wages don't keep pace, individual solvency forces substitution of inferior goods. CPI's methodology then updates the basket to reflect the forced substitution and pretend it was voluntary. You think you are lo
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
> constrain supply, raise prices far beyond what the constraint justifies, and then refuse to lower them In a healthy competitive market, this doesn't work. In a Ronald Reagan / Robert Bork / Consumer Welfare Standard mark
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
The Chicago School likes to imagine and behave as if it has a monopoly on economic thought. It does not, and I certainly agree that it would be inappropriate to cast all economists in the same light, but it is not inappropriate to needle Ch
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
I am in awe at the amount of capital Google's market dominance affords them and the consistency with which they squander that capital. https://killedbygoogle.com/ This is not the way.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Except, of course, for economics, where the only way to spur growth is to increase the spoils for the victors and any suggestion that barrier reduction could be a good investment makes you dumb and wrong and anti-growth. Why are you anti gr
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
We let Trump print $4T in an election year and Biden print $2T in four years. Trump was going 40mph in the parking lot, Biden slowed down to 5mph, and while there is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether or not the latter was too
76.
by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
No, this absolutely does not explain the US's wildly off-base per-capita expenditure because uninsured people still go in the denominator of the per-capita figure! I'm sure the per-insured-capita figure is worse but that's no
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
> they simply don't count too premature (under 22 weeks or 500 grams, iirc) and therefore don't consider them in the metrics Nope, that's not the reason. > The U.S. infant mortality rate was still higher than for most E
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Nobody appreciates it. It's in the Nash Gap -- the difference between the true optimum and the reality that emerges from each involved party optimizing for their incentives. People: complain to politicians when egregious content starts
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
This is the way! Every time google did something to piss me off I moved an account or two in anger. It felt good. It felt so good that when I searched my gmail and only found google-related hits in my password manager, I was slightly disapp
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
I thought the regulated interchange rates for Visa and Mastercard in Europe were tiny (compared to the US).
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
> Sure but your demands from extraction don't come from "the economy" they come from real people. Elon was bitching about paying 0.25% tax on twitter the other day ($500M/yr on $200B/yr) and here I am paying well
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Right, because Joe Sixpack got a choice between "cheap baubles" and "a job" and chose "cheap baubles"? No, this decision was made by shareholders for shareholders. It's a government failure all right: a fa
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
> Given the history of communism and the results in every state that implemented it The #2 economy in the world is run by the Communist Party of China. #1, if you measure in material terms rather than financial terms. The 1991 talking po
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Teddy Roosevelt. The man who carved the Lincolnite Progressives out of the Republican Party, taking with him the last good Republican president and the last good Republicans. He fumbled 1912, but the man in the arena said all that needs to
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
The pendulum has been swinging pro-capital since Reagan and has not even stalled yet. This affects both parties. You will not find enlightenment by averaging "heads I win" with "tales you lose." FDR Democrats: fixed the
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
I will not stop until every last frog is gay.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
6th Party System Republicans were selectively focused on balancing a budget precisely when Democratic legislative priorities were in question. If you wanted to bust the budget on tax breaks for billionaires or pointless wars, they had exc
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Good call, normalizing to GDP instead of deficit fixes the flip into/out of surplus problem. Also, now that aggro "cite your sources" guy ran, it's probably worth duplicating the cite here: https://www.whiteho
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Yep, and the last Republican to run a surplus was Eisenhower during FY 1960.
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by smallmancontrov 2mo ago
Democrats Change In Deficit ----------- -------- Joe Biden -$999B Barack Obama -$747B Bill Clinton -$383B Jimmy Carter +$25.3B Republicans Change In Deficit

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