Economics For Dummies. Keynes or Hayek?

[Baruch Menachem]

Who Fisher? Never heard of him before. Anyone got a link?

 

[Toro]

Irving Fisher.

 

[Oddball]

Trying to debate the finer points of macro-economics with people who imagine that the world is black and white is rather pointless.

They seem to think this issue is some kind of football game with opposing sides or something.


The amount of clueless partistan nonsense being posted here about one of the 20th century's finest macro-economists is staggering.

Our economy is screwed up exactly in the way our BANKSTERS want it to be screwed up.

This has NOTHING to do with Keysian theory, and everything to do with KAKATOCRACY.

Wake the fuck up!

Read a book!

Keynesian theory, along with playing games with the currency, is the cornerstone of the bubble economy and the in for the meddling of the Fed banksters.

You keep talking about reading books...How 'bout you try this one: Creature from Jekyll Island

The creation of the fed predates any major work of Keynes. But the US is run mostly on the theories of Fisher, not Keynes. Fisher is best known for his Permanent Plateau of Prosperity comment just before the 29 crash. After that famous episode Fisherites started calling their nonsense Keynesianism and packaged it to sound right. I was so hoping that Toro would deal with this one.

The timeline of his economic alchemist voodoo is irrelevant to the fact that it's vastly easier to spend money that you don't have to "stimulate growth" when you can just print up the loot.

That Fisher's notions were taken and expanded upon by Keynes and placed under the general banner of Keynesianism is pretty much analogous to the socialist wing of the Democrat Party stealing the term "liberal". I'm also fairly certain it's no coincidence that the both of them were into eugenics....People who like to play god with the lives of millions-cum-billions of people can be like that.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Despite the fact he was endorsed by Friedman, he still sounds like a loon. Eugenics, prohibition etc.

 

[Oddball]

Friedman isn't God....He's one of the principal reasons we have tax withholding.

 

[Toro]

Trying to debate the finer points of macro-economics with people who imagine that the world is black and white is rather pointless.

They seem to think this issue is some kind of football game with opposing sides or something.


The amount of clueless partistan nonsense being posted here about one of the 20th century's finest macro-economists is staggering.

Our economy is screwed up exactly in the way our BANKSTERS want it to be screwed up.

This has NOTHING to do with Keysian theory, and everything to do with KAKATOCRACY.

Wake the fuck up!

Read a book!

Keynesian theory, along with playing games with the currency, is the cornerstone of the bubble economy and the in for the meddling of the Fed banksters.

You keep talking about reading books...How 'bout you try this one: Creature from Jekyll Island

The creation of the fed predates any major work of Keynes. But the US is run mostly on the theories of Fisher, not Keynes. Fisher is best known for his Permanent Plateau of Prosperity comment just before the 29 crash. After that famous episode Fisherites started calling their nonsense Keynesianism and packaged it to sound right. I was so hoping that Toro would deal with this one.

You are correct that the country is run primarily on the ideas of Irving Fisher, this nation's most influential economist, and perhaps the most important economist ever.

Fisher isn't Keynes. Fisher is more market-oriented. Fisher popularized the neoclassical school of economics. Keynes's work was fused with neoclassical theory, and forms the basis of modern economic thought.

I don't pay much heed to Fisher's pre-crash comments other than to say that he is one of a long line of economists who believed strongly and deeply in the efficacy of markets. Many others thought the same thing at the time as well, no different than the common belief in 2006 that home prices would never fall much.

 

[Sheldon]

Do we actually have a Keynesian economy? My understanding of *his* general theory was that the government is supposed to save revenue during economic expansion, and then spend that revenue in select areas of the macro-economy during the following recession, to try and level the cycles.

It seems like our government hasn't been doing that, just spending revenue during recessions AND expansions, which wouldn't be Keynesian as I'm understanding it.

 

[Sheldon]

KAKATOCRACY.

Awesome word.

 

[JBeukema]

I don't agree with that. I don't even agree that Hayek and Keynes are in opposition.

Hayek didn't say that Kenynes' math was wrong, or the tools wouldn't work. His postion was that putting these tools in the hands of the average politician was like leaving a two year old in alone in the control room of a nuclear power plant.

From what i've read of Hayek and Woods, the Austrian school is rooted in behavioral economics, which is where it contrasts with the Keynesian and Marxian practice of thinking humans abide by the rules of mathematics and the economy is rules by equations.

 

[Norman]

Only if you believe that you make the shallow end of the pool deeper by scooping up some water out of the deep end, then pouring it back into the shallow end.

That's one of the dumbest posts I've ever seen.


America's most prosperous era involved some of the highest marginal tax rates ever seen.

With the lowering of the marginal tax rates and the practical abolition of corporate taxes, the average American's real income has declined over the last 40-odd years and the income gap has increase.

When the trusts were broken and the monopolies forced apart, the American economy got better.

The more wealth in the hands of the average man, the better for all of society. Capitalism will eat itself without proper regulation- the blind greed of the bourgeoisie leads not only to the exploitation of the proletariat, but ultimately to the collapse of the system which enables the bourgeoisie to exist.

Unbridled capitalism and the Austrian mindset which advocates it is the nearsighted idiocy of the bourgeoisie's useful idiots. It is no more sustainable than the centrally-planned collectivism that we see when Keynesianism runs wild.

No one actually paid those taxes back when US had huge income tax rates. Capitalism does lead to more wealth on the hands of common man.

Corporate taxes are dumbest thing on earth, I live in scandinavia and here those are much smaller, which is a good thing. The ultimate leap of faith is that business owner= rich / in need to pay up. Corporate tax just keeps poor people from making their own business. It really is two faced thinking. Income tax already solves any issues (yes I do think it should be equal and progressive on ALL income, ANY income, and there should be no corporate tax at all).

I have read one book from hayek, don't know if he's the best thinker / writer (offnote; there was spelling mistake of "then -> than" in the book), but he certainly makes more sense than keynes. Further someone here said he is for oligopoly, well the book had nothing of that sort of thinking. In fact keynes was the guy for authority / central planning.

Hazlitt has a free book hosted at mises.org, that supposedly kills all keyne's argument's. It pretty copies keyne's whole book and goes through the arguments one by one. Haven't had the chance to read it yet though. BTW Bush seemed to like keynes too. But I don't think the politicians of white house are actually keynesian's, they just overspend ALL THE TIME, and that is labeled as keynesian even though some of them don't even probably know who keynes is.

Economy can't really be empirically tested, or at least no one has yet done so. So while you may be able to draw general conclusions, the rational arguments of the austrian school make more sense since empirically you can't prove one way a other until someone comes up with grand expreiment. Patri Friedman is actually trying to make a bit more viable experiment like that. Though obviously you would actually need clones in exact same enviornment, and TBH I am not even sure if it's possible, as someone from outside would have to set the system to be "whatever the economy of choice is".

 

[JBeukema]

Capitalism does lead to more wealth on the hands of common man.

If that were true, the industrial revolution wouldn't have consisted of/led to slums and sweatshops.

Capitalism is the United Fruit company and the CIA.

That's why Americans embraced socialist progress. That's why we have the Clean Air and Water acts, minimum wage laws, and the National Labour Relations Board.

Thank a Wobbly today.

 

[Oddball]

Only if you believe that you make the shallow end of the pool deeper by scooping up some water out of the deep end, then pouring it back into the shallow end.

That's one of the dumbest posts I've ever seen.

Only because you exclude your closet communistic crap.

 

[Norman]

Capitalism does lead to more wealth on the hands of common man.

If that were true, the industrial revolution wouldn't have consisted of/led to slums and sweatshops.

Capitalism is the United Fruit company and the CIA.

That's why Americans embraced socialist progress. That's why we have the Clean Air and Water acts, minimum wage laws, and the National Labour Relations Board.

Thank a Wobbly today.

Uhm, if sweatshops lead to more income than farms, then by definition capitalism has led to more income. And there really are no better alternatives anyway.... On the other hand if farms lead to better income, what is it that forces people to go to sweatshops? Certainly not capitalism.

Minimum wage law is a other thing that does not make whole bunch of sense to me. Bankrupted new samoa or something like that. Anyway we have so small minimum wage here that everyone gets paid more just because of the competition of the employer's or whatever you want to call it. But there could be very educational job opportunitie's that would pay less and still be worth it, so that's why I don't like the minimum wage.

 

[william the wie]

I don't agree with that. I don't even agree that Hayek and Keynes are in opposition.

Hayek didn't say that Kenynes' math was wrong, or the tools wouldn't work. His postion was that putting these tools in the hands of the average politician was like leaving a two year old in alone in the control room of a nuclear power plant.

From what i've read of Hayek and Woods, the Austrian school is rooted in behavioral economics, which is where it contrasts with the Keynesian and Marxian practice of thinking humans abide by the rules of mathematics and the economy is rules by equations.

Basically true, what I guess should be called post-Austrian economics tends to be based on better knowledge of behavior. Whether you are talking libertarian paternalism or some of the more brass knuckles versions neo-Austrian thought there are several things that are moderating traditional Austrian thought:

The feedback from innovation to consumption to investment is better understood. For example a friend of mine and I had a little debate the other night on how much real wealth and income went into the building of a modern house. Our SWAGs didn't differ all that much but the contractor (as opposed to the developer who buys the land) only uses 40-50% of revenues to pay real economic income flows with the rest of the money going to various types of financial derivatives used to hedge the real investments. Lumber futures for everyone who touches the wood from the time the saw touches the tree until it is part of the house, currency swaps plus shipping guarantees for the planing in the Far East and shipment back to the US and a long list of other things such as FICA which is increasing handled by Sovereign Wealth Funds in most of the rest of the world there are a ton of derivatives used in building a house. Every indirect input into building the house is a derivative income whose sole function is to smooth out, amplify and filter out the noise of the signal getting to the input producer.

Rule of law to maintain non-coercive competition through better information is much better understood.

The evolutionarily desirability of downturns to act as non-violent selection is better understood as well. For example the time value of future money is subject to a lot of selection and it shows up mostly in declining fertility worldwide as part of the selection process.

As these changes percolate through economics the importance of different kinds of data is changing.

 

[Toro]

Capitalism does lead to more wealth on the hands of common man.

If that were true, the industrial revolution wouldn't have consisted of/led to slums and sweatshops.

Capitalism is the United Fruit company and the CIA.

That's why Americans embraced socialist progress. That's why we have the Clean Air and Water acts, minimum wage laws, and the National Labour Relations Board.

Thank a Wobbly today.

As noble as those programs may be, none really address the distribution of wealth.

The industrial revolution saw a marked increase in living standards for the common man. It is true that externalities are often borne by society at large. However, those tend to be dealt with through the democratic process and the evolution of law.

But those externalities are symptomatic of an increase in wealth. We didn't have pollution before the industrial revolution, but most people lived a meager life as subsistence farmers, often bonded to the land. We didn't have children working in demon mills, but we had young children working on farms, not by choice but by necessity.

Today in Asia, desperately poor people flock to sweatshops because they provide a better standard of living than subsistence farming. Capitalism is the greatest creator of wealth the world has ever seen, and offers poor people a chance to escape grinding poverty.

 

[JBeukema]

Only if you believe that you make the shallow end of the pool deeper by scooping up some water out of the deep end, then pouring it back into the shallow end.

That's one of the dumbest posts I've ever seen.

Only because you exclude your closet communistic crap.

So now you're saying that your posts are the dumbest here save mine? You're priding yourself on being, according to you, the 2nd dumbest poster here- worse than RDean?


Wow...

 

[Cuyo]

That's one of the dumbest posts I've ever seen.

Only because you exclude your closet communistic crap.

So now you're saying that your posts are the dumbest here save mine? You're priding yourself on being, according to you, the 2nd dumbest poster here- worse than RDean?


Wow...

Ba-zing.

 

[JBeukema]

And there really are no better alternatives anyway....

There's our current system. It's not perfect-gotten worse in the last 60 years, if you ask me- but it's pretty good. It's pretty close to Social Democracy.

Minimum wage law is a other thing that does not make whole bunch of sense to me.

Because you never read a history book

The Wobblies

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/There-Power-Union-Story-America/dp/0385526296]Amazon.com: There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America (9780385526296): Philip Dray: Books[/ame]

there could be very educational job opportunitie's

I doubt you've ever been one to seek out opportunities for an education.

 

[JBeukema]

If capitalism were so great, the people who lived under it wouldn't have risked FBI assassinations to change things.

 

[Norman]

And there really are no better alternatives anyway....

There's our current system. It's not perfect-gotten worse in the last 60 years, if you ask me- but it's pretty good. It's pretty close to Social Democracy.

Minimum wage law is a other thing that does not make whole bunch of sense to me.

Because you never read a history book

The Wobblies

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/There-Power-Union-Story-America/dp/0385526296]Amazon.com: There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America (9780385526296): Philip Dray: Books[/ame]

there could be very educational job opportunitie's

I doubt you've ever been one to seek out opportunities for an education.

From what I know, the minimum wage law was lobbied by unions to restrict competition. That means more poverty for the unskilled. Looking how minimum wage has bankrupted places I pretty much have to conclude it is a bad policy. It only works if for some reason employer's are ripping people totally off, but due to competition that isn't the case here. Like I said I don't really know any, even entry level jobs (I mean jobs with absolutely no skills or even heavy working required) pay more, not because minimum wage, but because of competition.

If minimum wage was raised it would just destroy those jobs and opportunities.

As for the last line... are you just trolling here? Also the last post of yours is just intellectual idiocy, of course people can assassinate people, lots of people have a lot to gain from different systems.