"I attribute the absolutely brilliant tactic of furthering hidden agendas with known-false assumptions to one man: Milton Friedman."
—
Jay Hansen (via vibrational-defiance)
The Austrian economist on Youtube Tumblr and Facebook have slowly driven me out of my mind. Maybe it's that I'm not just at war with them but
the the neoclassical orthodoxy as well
I hold the following to be true. Stagflation as it's Offiically defined throws a shield of opaqueness over the unmerciful truth. Stagflation
is defined as high unemployment along with inflation is a distortion. Redefine it as Stagnant wages and inflation beyond what is normal in a healthy economy
and the language of class warfare emerges.
back in the 1970s wages started to stagnate and Americans to maintain their lifestyles slowly leveraged and switched onto credit cards. The level of
debt has ballooned and we've already seen some of that go sour. My thing is that I'm counting on further defaults and most of these people fear inflation.
I fear deflationary spirals. The fed has been trying to prevent deflation and it has these clowns terrified of inflation. While GOP economist and defenders
keep trying to educate me into the "Reality" that people are saving more money because they're afraid of how high the national debt is i'm sitting here w
wide awake aware that if aggregate demand is down it's because the piggybank is broken and people don't have savings. They have liabilities and things
they think are assets but are actually liabilities.
who benefits from that? wall Street. the oligarchy. their wealth is our payments to them.
neoclassical economics in it's entirety could be summarized in a phrase: The poor don't work hard enouh because they are paid too much, and the rich
don't because they are paid too little.
Economic theorist and students have learned all about supply and demand but failed to account for the fact that where there was demand for theory that
would serve the oligarchy it would be met by supply. Their economics is not ours. Economics 101 is filled with deliberate miseducation in a college
university, How do I know this? I read Steve keen's Debunking economics,. I've scoffed his critiques. I've looked at their responses and foud dthem unconvincing
I've been attacked to the point of exhaustion by Austarians who have nothing better to do but continually "inform me" that Europe was never in austerity
unless you consider the Baltic states and hail Lativa as their golden ticket. I go and look at lativa though and the people there can't flee
fast enough. They're fleeing in droves there is no immigratioon there's an exodus and while all of this is going on the economy is growing alright
but it got an IMF loan that was distributed betwene fewer people and those loans are going to dry up in 2015.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
Meanwhile in spite of and in stark contrast
to the neoclassical AND the Austarian critiques of neoclassicals conventional wisdom California said "Fuck you" and elected a democratic super majority
who raised taxes and started to pay off some defunded industries and california's economy in spite of all the screaming butthurt the rage the cries that it's
going the dogs that society will disintegrate everything is going to go straight to hell California's Economy grew and continues to do so in absolute validation
of tax and spend liberalism and let's not forget we had a taxing republican under Eisenhower one of the most unpercendent periods of growth in this country in the 1950s who the
effective tax rate was 92% under.
Not only that but as i've gotten into i've discovered consumers are anything but rational. the manrket as it acutally works on the micro and immediate level
outside of the charts in empirical non abstract reality mails out coupons constantly and those coupons drive customers to the store but the store
looks for things that aren't loss leaders aren't commonly compared (eggs and milk for instance) and jacks the prices on them up after coupons go out
the coupons go out and customers come and do all their shopping in one place. meaning the market as it now works depends largely on irrational consumption. otherwise it would
look very different.
if consumers got coupons and narrowed their list to ONLY buy at that store that which they had coupons for and then shop where generally the cheapest
goods were elsewhere in otwn
but to matters absolutely crazy and send it to the dogs the GOP tried to kill a study that showed the CRS with data going back to 1945 over 70 years showing tax cuts
had never empircally spurred economic growth but only concentrated wealth in fewer hands
and you KNOW when they're in a panic to kill it is true
http://www.forbes.com/...
unfortunately it hasn't gotten nearly enough attention.
http://www.dpcc.senate.gov/...
Concluding Remarks
The top income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout
the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%.
Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s;
today it is 15%. The average tax rate faced by the top 0.01% of taxpayers was above 40% until
the mid-1980s; today it is below 25%. Tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income
distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War.
The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate
and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in
the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The
top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.
However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of
income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income
accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before
falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the
top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to
how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income
disparities.
if you're still with me and arent tearing your hair out yet just wait somebody has been lying about lazy americans
http://www.motherjones.com/...
still not ready for pitchforks and torches? get ready
http://www.motherjones.com/...
not only is mitt romneys 47 percent figure a lie, americans have been overworked underpaid screwed over with medical bills that are too high the economy has been nearly sunk by out of control medical cost from hospitals that are if you this bitter pill in time magazine beyond greedy and don't price their goods on economic factors at all but the knowledge that people who are in desperate need of services won't ask the price
http://www.nybooks.com/...
on my reading list: finish the shock doctorine
finish debunking economics
finish predictably irrational
read end this depression
I have only one thing to suggest left though: americans have been miseducated about the economic facts of life. Even by their colleges
I'm mad. I'm mad because the great moderation was a lie. I'm mad because stagflation never ended. I'm mad because of the invisible recession. I'm mad because i've figured out what george carlin meant when he told us the last thing they needed was us sitting over the dinner table late at night figuring out how badly we're getting fucked
i'm mad because i figured it out and I have the charts and graphs to prove it now