When does AOCs seat go back up for election?

And you're not explaining anything, For all your verbiage, when you're finally confronted with a point you can't answer you're just shouting SOCIALISM and settling back in smug satisfaction that NOW you've finally got 'im

MMT is NOT Socialism, I've not studied it enough to really know what it is definitively but I know it's not that. It seems to be a modified sort of Keynesianism at first glance but Keynesianism isn't socialism either. Socialism is old, outmoded, and very, VERY dead. I don't think any country but North Korea even tries to follow it anymore and I don't think even they really do. Socialism exists nowhere but in the fevered brains of conservatives who see it as the overarching uber-conspiracy that is being forced on us by the Lizard Men and their mind control rays even as they destroyed the entire vast majority of Trump votes and continue converting all our children to Islam.

 

Is insanity a barrier to running for public office?

 

Priceless...

 

Demonstrably not. If anything, it's practically a precondition.

 

And then President!

 

Yup.

2040 or 2044.

 

I don't see on what basis you would dispute the obvious. You may think you can yo-yo inflation up and down, but economists know the damage that can do to the economy.

We have assisted living services provided privately all over this country. My in-laws and parents all contracted for private assisted living. Are you planning on having government provide these service? Do you object to Medicaid topping up folks' incomes so they can choose their own care home or services?

Why not give people money to compensate for a society-wide demand deficit and let them decide how to spend it? Social Security is a popular and I would argue successful program because government isn't making the spending choices.

Yes, and the surplus workers can move on to other work. Why would we want them employed doing relatively unproductive work? I'm reminded of men digging roads by hand during the Depression.

Otherwise unemployed Russian women cleaned Moscow streets with brooms in the Soviet era and my grandfather left my then 11-year-old father with neighbors after my grandmother died so he could cut brush for the CCC during the Depression.

Pensions, Social Security and disability payments are, as you put it, "sit down money." My brother-in-law got early retirement from the USPS and then started a part-time handyman business.

Never mind indeed. Your Rx may be almost as bad as the disease.

Before the coronavirus recession, we had very low unemployment. The future is going to be a problem because of AI, quantum computing, and high-speed wireless communication. But for now, we can get to full employment.

A negative income tax would.

Uh huh.

Consider a negative income tax.

Breathtaking hubris.

We're back to the beginning where you explain how your system works.

You need to explain how to make MMT work without inflation.

 

She is not someone who should be a Senator.

Socialism does not work at the nation state level.

 

I know why socialism doesn't work (nor does capitalism the way we practice it), so your two-cents psychoanalysis is wide of the mark.

Explaining in detail why socialism fails at the nation state level can't work takes a long time and I rather doubt anyone around here who believes in socialism is prepared to go through the evidence.

BTW, I can easily prove socialism hasn't worked so far by looking at who has tried it.

I tried to explain that to @a better world but he wouldn't listen.

Exactly.

I wish socialism was that dead. We have people like @a better world touting what amounts to socialism even if he doesn't realize it.

I'm a fan of capitalism, but only if business is prevented from buying up pols and controlling the system.

 

Socialism doesn't really work at any level.

Fortunately, AOC is not a socialist. She says she is because a lot of her base likes that and conservatives will never recognize that she is anything else, but she is not one.

Socialists and Capitalists do not really exist anymore. Economics has moved beyond these labels. To my uneducated eye, it seems that everybody really practices the same thing nowadays, which seems pretty much a modern version of Mussolini's "corporate state" type corporatism but considerably softened by different practices in various places. It's not overtly Fascist but more like Reaganism in the social sphere, at least in America

AOC will make a fine Senator before she moves on to President. Even her enemies admit that she is something we have not seen in Washington for a while, a pol that tries to do her job in addition to bull sh*tting and she seems to do both fairly well.

 

Socialism still has a certain cachet to people who like to see themselves as revolutionaries like me. Cachet is not usefulness however

 

Why would that matter?

Bernie is in The Senate

 

I think it works for public schools (sort of), police, fire services, farm cooperatives.

I don't pay much attention to her, but I haven't heard her call for collectivizing production. Socialist? No.

I won't reject the comparison entirely, so I'll think about the parallels.

I don't believe she'll be either. She's too far left.

Well, I suppose so. I don't like her solutions, but it's important she's willing to acknowledge and tackle problems.

 

I can point to instances of private and government collectives that work. Public schools, police, and the military are examples of public collectives that work. Farm cooperatives and our many of our hospitals, charitable and public service organizations are collectives.

He probably cost Democrats the 2016 election (helped, anyway) and would have ended up reelecting Trump if he or Warren would have taken the nomination.

 

No, they're cooperatives, which are sort of public corporations, and the distinction is not just semantic unless General Motors and Exxon are socialist too. Not all Capitalist things are private or profit-making.

 

I wonder what sort of world we’d have without public collectives such as these. Feudalism?

 

And so they decided to use unemployment as a tool to manage inflation. Wrong move...(see below).

In fact the Job Guarantee relates to a variable pool of workers employed by local councils (but funded by the national government) to do work that matches local council needs with the capacity of the unemployed worker. These are not permanent jobs, since presumably the JG workers will move to the private sector when the latter is in a position to offer a better paying job than the JG wage. So my example of assisting the elderly would related to non-essential work, cf, essential rolls that should be part of the permanent public sector pay-roll. In any case, many of these services should be provided by the government, perhaps on a means tested basis if resources are short (.....note: I said RESOURCES, not money....that's MMT...).

Where's the money coming from? (....the beloved question from conservatives; I feel awkward asking it...)
But I reject sit-down money (SS?) for reasons already examined. And I don't agree "letting people decide how to spend it" will produce the best social outcomes ...eg gambling impoverishes many, and the nation has better things to do, like building pumped- hydro storage for renewable energy, starting NOW, pronto, today, not determined by the dictates of 'free' markets and vested interests who want to preserve the fossil fuel industry.

I repeat (as noted above; I love playing the devil's advocate from the Conservtive side, to deal with your propositions): Where is the money coming from???

The term "relatively unproductive work" is important, but you fail to include the concept of social value eg the amenity and pleasure of a clean park or street environment, in our frequently rubbish strewn public environment.

How productive was the economy of USSR? (It did put the first man into space during the Cold War). Anyway the USSR is long past, nothing to do with modern AI and IT assisted economies.
Speaking of which China has just eliminated absolute poverty by directly funding the connection of the last isolated rural villages in remote areas to new transport and IT infrastructure, and ensuring productive employment for every family in these villages, eg in animal or plant/food and flower growing, ie, local industry with access to the larger national market via the new state funded infrastructure). On its its way to overtaking the GDP of the US within a decade....

Those are all people who have never - or don't need to (because of retirement) - participate/contribute to the nation's well being while earning an above poverty income to increase their own wealth.

Inflation? see below.

1. "Very low unemployment" is not good enough. In fact, even the best Trump achieved - 3.6%% - was in reality around 10% in terms of full time equivalent jobs (ie taking account of official unemployed (who failed to find at least ONE hour of work per week) + underemployed who wanted more work in order to e able to pay their bills + those who have given up looking for work in a vicious 'dog eat dog' insecure gig economy

2. Congress is looking at a measly 1 $trillion package to get the economy back on its feet. Homelessness and poverty will soar, as high underemployment persist for years, just as it did after the GFC.

Can you overcome the resistance of those who say taxation (on higher income groups) reduces productivity?

And how much money can be raised that way.

Not really. If you are going to counter economic orthodoxy, you will need to study MMT beyond a mere cursory look at it.

Yes...well my appeal to common sense didn't work with you, so you will have to go back to school to study MMT....

I'll try one last time:

1. Authorization of money creation in central banks, so government can directly fund desirable economic activity not performed in the private sector, AS WELL AS money creation in private banks, to fund <for monetary profit> private enterprise by individuals and companies.

2. The inflation constraint is the limit to the TOTAL combined public AND private sector spending; and that limit is the available resources and productive capacity of the nation's economy, not a monetary limit.

So you question boils down to this: How does government limit total spending (public and private) in the economy to available resources and productive capacity, while maintaining real full employment?

Answer: via the JG wage, paid to the variable pool of JG workers, as the minimum above poverty wage in the economy, siad wage to function as the inflation anchor.

Technically we have the NAIBER* of MMT to replace the NAIRU of neoliberal othodoxy.

*Non Accelerating Inflation Buffer Employment Ratio. (BER being the ratio of employed JG workers compared to the available workforce, a ratio which varies according to the private sector business cycle.

In contrast to orthodoxy's pool of unemployed workers to control inflation, expressed as NAIRU.

Link here:

On NAIRU and NAIBER | WEA Pedagogy Blog (wordpress.com)

 

Private collectives can be successful as long as they operate where free markets exist. Some public collectives--police, the military--are necessary to preserve our democratic rights.

 

They control the money supply to manage inflation.

Socialism of the worst sort rears its ugly head. Guarantee income, not make work.

You socialist types don't get it. We need people with training to care for the elderly, not unemployed movie theater ushers.

A negative income tax to the rescue!

Social Security is a wonderful program that allows tens of millions of Americans to spend their final days with dignity. You would waste money on government clerks micromanaging old folks' lives.

Are you going to have unemployed workers building hydro storage?

Taxing, borrowing.

You don't know what I believe. I was the leader of a successful fight against 20 cities' plan to put a $2+ billion garbage dump in a rural-suburban area.

How productive? Not very.

Who says it's productive?

They have four times as many people, so we can expect their economy will eventually be larger than ours.

How will your system work when AI, quantum computing, and high-speed wireless put tens of millions of employees out of a job?

Republicans want to keep the aid package well under $1t.

Probably not.

Uh huh.

Your "common sense" made no sense.

It's no surprise you're asking the wrong question.

 

Yes...and not only do they "manage inflation", they ensure public squalor amidst private opulence, eg, broken public infrastructure that the government can't "afford" to repair, as well as entrenched poverty and high incarceration rates among disadvantaged groups.

Guess what, a Job Guarantee DOES guarantee income, by enabling those people not employed because of the private sector business cycle, or whatever reason, to contribute outside of the free market.

You have already been pulled up for your ideological appeal to "socialism". In fact Sanders and Warren ("socialists") proposed YOUR plan for higher taxes on higher income groups (even a negative in come tax) within the US free enterprise system. A plan you admit won't be accepted in the US.

Another ideological appeal to "socialism". And you call yourself a "teacher". Where is the money coming from to train the people to care for the elderly? There IS a chronic under-funding in this aspect of community healthcare...BECAUSE of the government balanced budget dogma of orthodox economists. And a JG worker might just have the skills to cheer people up while working as an usher, if a private sector job is not available.

I'm all for it, if everyone is on board with it (or at least congress can legislate it) and you can show me the numbers capable of funding the infrastructure upgrade and the guaranteed (above poverty*) income you speak of. *obviously requires funding for public housing and transport, since your UBI will be 'too expensive' for the government to fund, or too low to allow people to pay private sector rents.

Of course age pensions are both necessary and good. But how can the government fund decent pensions? And now you are talking about 'wasting money'. How is enabling a possibly temporarily unemployed worker to assist the elderly, "wasting money", when the resources required are mainly (presently idle) manpower?

No. The point is, if we are really serious about a climate emergency, we must ditch the free market; and fund necessary training of the extra required workforce for the green transition... which would by the way eliminate unemployment for the entire duration of the transition from fossil to green.

But you are among the orthodox twits who claim the government can't 'afford' a GND, because of "opportunity costs", or other ideological delusions.

How do you get congress on board?

Well not only could we employ an JG army to collect the rubbish of a throw-away junk consumer society, we also have to ditch that part of the profit-driven free market that fails to recognize the cost of pollution, and fails to deal the need for a 100% recycling industry.

The USSR defeated the Nazi war machine. They launched the first man into space.

In two decades, China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world; poured more cement in the 3 years 2010-13*, than the US poured in the entire 20th century (google it), and lifted 1 billion people out of poverty while creating a middle class of 400 million people. That's more than 'productive'; it's almost miraculous. *as the antidote the disastrous GFC caused by the unregulated private finance funding the US free market.

Exactly...especially since they have government management of the banking system, on behalf of national development that works for ALL citizens, as noted above. Trump/Bannon/Pompeo are horrified, and increasingly hysterical at the prospect....

The future is very rosy if people are freed from the tedious tasks that currently pass for "work". Government funding will be even less of a problem than it is now, allowing public education to explore each person's capabilities and potential development paths.

That's right. Homelessness and poverty will soar.

Spoken like a true conservative, an indifferent survival of the fittest' type. Your "Probably not" response blows you sky high and renders your ideology useless.

YOUR question was: how can MMT work without causing inflation

Notice how ideology renders people blind, and incapable of learning?

You asked how MMT manages inflation. You completely ignored the necessarily brief answer:

Answer: via the JG wage, paid to the variable pool of JG workers, as the minimum above poverty wage in the economy; this JG wage functions as the inflation anchor.
If inflation rises, workers will lose their (higher paid) private sector jobs as taxes are increased to cool the economy, and these workers will find work in the temporary JG pool, which offers the minimum ABOVE poverty wage.

Technically we have the NAIBER* of MMT to replace the NAIRU of neoliberal othodoxy.

*Non Accelerating Inflation Buffer Employment Ratio. (BER being the ratio of employed JG workers compared to the available workforce, a ratio which varies according to the private sector business cycle.

In contrast to orthodoxy's pool of unemployed workers to control inflation, expressed as NAIRU.

Link here:

On NAIRU and NAIBER | WEA Pedagogy Blog (wordpress.com)

 

Do you really understand they're controlling inflation by managing the money supply?

You took the Kool-Aid? Look at countries in northern Europe. Denmark and the Netherlands have good infrastructures. We can afford it.

Building roads by hand, sweeping streets with a broom... or like my grandfather during the Depression, cutting brush for the CCC. My 11-year-old father had lost his mother, and then my grandfather left my father with neighbors so he could cut brush more than 100 miles away. My grandfather had a job, but my 11-year-old dad went from a home with a mother and father to being cared for by strangers.

I didn't say it won't be accepted.

Seems pretty dumb when you think about theater ushers taking care of old people.

Now, you're making up BS about what economists believe.

You're trying to make your bad idea okay.

Reality 101: If old people get more, someone else is going to get less.

Oh, darn--so much for your plans for the unemployed.

Uh oh. More socialism.

The Green New Deal is propaganda. Retrofitting existing buildings, for example, may not be the most cost-effective way of dealing with climate change.

Recycling everything may not be a cost-effective of dealing with what is arguably a climate change emergency.

A rosy future of street sweeping for unemployed folks. Egads.

What you would in your ignorance of the banking system...

More street sweeping.

 

How many poor folks have become a President under US capitalism?

Neither Socialism or Capitalism can function properly on their own. Capitalism is sociopathic and has no care for people. Socialism is empathy without logic and has little understanding of human nature and the need for a free market.

The best system takes the best of both worlds. A free market economy who's direct and indirect profits fund the social safety net, education and to cover the inelastic product that is Health Care (such as Medicare). Sorta like insurance where the health care premiums of the many to pay for the claims of the few(ish).

Up her I pay about 30-40 bucks a cheque with a high 5-figure salary and when my wife had our 2 kids and major arm surgery, all I had to pay for at that point was parking and dinner.

 

They might be managing inflation, but they are not managing unemployment*. That's why poverty and hunger are increasing in this pandemic, when there is ABSOLUTELY no need for poverty and hunger. * in a pandemic, managing unemployment means government paying for people's living expenses while they are in enforced lock-down at home.

Trump promised urgently needed infrastructure spending, but never got around to it.....I'll let you work out why...
and your appeal to N. Europe is flawed. For a first world country, Germany (like the US) is a disgrace; that's why the AfD movement has such a strong following, given the German government's inflation/balanced budget hysteria, and its terrible effects on living conditions for disadvantaged groups in Germany.

No, visiting people in aged care homes, sharing valuable skills with school children, cleaning gutters of elderly peoples' homes. You have no imagination re the useful work that can be done to eliminate ALL unemployment. But in any case, the important thing is the government, which has unlimited currency issuing capacity, can fund any such activity, as employer of last resort (ELR).

Now, you might prefer a UBI - which can also be funded by government*, given it has unlimited currency-issuance capacity, but obviously it's better if the recipients of this publicly funded wage contribute something to society, for the benefits to both themselves (via participation) and society (eg clean gutters save resources, and make for better home water storage).

*without using the famous 'taxpayers money' of orthodox economists.

I asked: "Can you overcome the resistance of those who say taxation (on higher income groups) reduces productivity?"
You answered, "Probably not".
So what ARE you saying about Sanders'/Warren's proposal for higher taxes on high income groups?

Pass, addressed above. You can't conceive of useful work outside of the free market.

I wrote: "There IS a chronic under-funding in this aspect of community healthcare...BECAUSE of the government balanced budget dogma of orthodox economists".
...and their confusion re "taxpayer money" along with the rest of the population.

You say orthodox economists aren't responsible for the type of government austerity as exemplified in the above example.

OK, let me rephrase it for you: ""There IS chronic under-funding...BECAUSE of orthodox economists dismissal of the government's currency-issuing capacity to fund specific social activity; and the associated false belief held by the public that any such spending requires expenditure of "taxpayer money".

And the reason for orthodoxy's dismissal of the sovereign government's currency-issuing and spending capacity (without taxing or borrowing from the private sector) is misplaced concerns re inflation, which I explained can be managed by via NAIBER rather than NAIRU...which you have ignored twice now.

Addressed above. Your orthodoxy is destroying your capacity to conceive of useful work outside the free market.

Wrong. That's just a statement of monetary orthodoxy aka as the quantity theory of money.
If I clean an elderly couple's gutters, and the government pays me with treasury created money, no-one is going to get less...and nor will inflation result, because I won't spend my savings beyond my immediate needs, ie I will be looking to save for an overseas holiday in my retirement when the productive capacity of the nation will have increased sufficiently to support my spending from savings.

My plans for the unemployed relate to employment excess to private sector and regular full-time public service employment requirements. Hence government as ELR. Too nuanced for you?

Yes....well, a GLOBAL climate emergency caused by man-made CO2 emissions WILL powerfully illustrate the limitations of 'invisible hand' free markets....pity about that.
That's why the BIS said ( at last year's Davos conference): "central banks might have to buy the coal industry".

But if man-made CO2 emissions ARE responsible for damaging climate change, your above statement is both nonsense and irrelevant. In any case the globe WILL be running on free sunshine and wind one day, so why not make it happen ASAP, funded by the unlimited currency-issuing capacity of central banks? (An ANU study has identified more than sufficient pumped-hydro storage sites to run the entire globe on intermittent renewables).

There you go, banging on about MONEY, again...and "taxpayer" money to boot.....

The important thing is the effective (sustainable) use or resources, not money which can be created ex nihilo. Your orthodoxy is exposed as flat- earth dogma.

Addressed above. As robots take up basic tasks, understanding and gaining knowledge of human civilization, where it has been and where it might be going, is a bit beyond "street cleaning"....

Spoken by a flat-earther, who thinks that money creation in the public sector's (central bank) and spending on specific government programs will necessarily cause inflation.

It won't.

Actually, so long as they are paid above poverty level, I don't mind if they sit at home, or contribute to the community in some manner that is appreciated by some-one (eg the elderly couple noted above). But the 2nd option is obviously the better one.

 

The public option would work with the ACA as another insurance option. With the lower administrative costs and no profit motive, it would force other insurance companies to lower their prices to compete which would be a benefit (finally) for the people desperately trying to insure themselves. Right now, the poor who get medicaid and the rich who can afford whatever healthcare costs are ok. It is the middle class that needs help. The public option could be the most significant help available. And, if people have coverage through their jobs and they want to keep it, nothing would change for them. It is a no-brainer way to lower health care costs so of course the insurance industry will bribe everyone to make sure it doesn't happen.

 

Bernie was cheated by his own party. They are not even ready for someone that far to the left to be potus.