The Economy Does Much Better Under Democrats. Why? (NYT)

Discussion in 'Economics' started by piezoe, Feb 2, 2021.

  1. Nothing baseless about those claims. There is lots of good evidence (including many sworn affidavits by witnesses), and the SCOTUS would have been forced to hear that evidence (focusing mass public attention on it) if they had not refused to hear the case (in striking contrast to a far more minor dispute in 2000 between two establishment candidates). The MSM was in on this from the beginning, adamantly refusing to report the unlawful shenanigans that you could only read about on the net. First they ignored it, then they grudgingly acknowledged it existed, but insisted it was not enough voter fraud to swing the election, but it clearly was. This has been America's first coup d'etat. We get more third worldish all the time.
     
    #31     Feb 20, 2021
  2. Appeals to authority is a well known fallacy of logic. In fact, there are many historical examples of economy's growing without deficits. Further, just because the government borrows and spends the money instead of the private sector spending the money does not make the government spending magically more stimulative than private sector spending. Also, deficit spending is not how money is created. All the borrowing comes from pre-existing money supply. It is not monetized (and by law cannot be). Only borrowing from banks increases the money supply (or faster velocity or turnover of money can have the same effect).

    When Truman laid off federal employees after WW2, slashed federal spending, and ran budget SURPLUSES, disciples of Keynes were prophesying the return of the Great Depression, but the economy defied the economists and did just fine.
     
    #32     Feb 20, 2021
  3. By the way, Keynes disagrees with YOU, not with him. Keynes said when the recession is over, the government *should* run budget surpluses and pay down the debt until the next recession.
     
    #33     Feb 20, 2021
  4. Actually, Dems tend to draw their supporters from both extremes of the social continuum, while Republicans tend to be the party of the broad middle class.
     
    #34     Feb 20, 2021
  5. Don't wrack your brain trying to figure this out. The number of cases is too small to draw a reliable conclusion one way or the other.
     
    #35     Feb 20, 2021
  6. notagain

    notagain

    Free trade without compassion is way more profitable than populist fair trade. Never Trumpers and Dems are a grab bag of fascism, communism and hypocrisy. Rich get richer and re-education camps for ? hey? Cheap labor is flooding into the USA, with Joe and Xi hand in hand the wealth gap will grow to infinity.
     
    #36     Feb 20, 2021
  7. piezoe

    piezoe

    Well now you've steeped in it. On this matter, I'm as much am Authority as Keynes! Why? Because we can both add and subtract.

    They total sum of outside money in the economy is equal to the penny to all the money spent into the economy over the years minus all the money taxed back out. If the money in equals the money out, there will be no excess for savings and investment. That's grammar school arithmetic! the only way to provide an excess over what is taxed back out to accommodate the additional money needed for savings and investment, and for a robust economy, is for the government to tax less than it spends. The difference, to the penny, is the deficit. There must be a deficit if there is to be money for savings and investment. To prevent deflation, at the bare minimum, deficits are needed to accommodate GDP and population growth. All Central bankers understand this basic principle. I don't know who was the first to spell it out so simply for you as I have, but see for example the great Aba Lerner's papers from the 1940's. Or look up Abba Lerner's Laws of Functional Finance. (OOOPS there I go again, relying on authority!)

    Now that you've brought up Harry Truman, did you know that in the Truman-Eisenhower era the USA became the manufacturer for much of the world. It was a golden period in US economics. When one country runs a trade surplus it just means at least one other country must be running a trade deficit. It's the same simple arithmetic.

    In an open economy, the flow of aggregate savings is equal to investment plus the governments deficit, plus net exports. (net exports are exports minus imports) If Nation X (The U.S. after WWII) runs a trade Surplus against Nation Y , then X will accumulate financial claims against Nation Y. X has a trade surplus, Y has a trade deficit. In other words, if a nation runs a big enough trade surplus, they won't need deficits to accommodate savings and investment.

    Today, and even in Truman's time too, if the U.S. ran big surpluses repeatedly, the country would be soon enough thrown into recession and then depression unless of course we can again run big trade surpluses.

    This interesting statement of yours caught my eye... : "just because the government borrows and spends the money instead of the private sector spending the money does not make the government spending magically more stimulative than private sector spending."

    The government actually doesn't borrow, it only appears to be borrowing. And the concept of debt for the government is meaningless. But government does have practical constraints it must operate under. It is just that sovereign bonds only give the appearance of the government borrowing, when in fact they serve an entirely different purpose.

    N.B. -- credit is the major source affecting the money supply under normal circumstances, which surprisingly, you do seem to comprehend.. I call credit money "inside money". This inside money is created when a loan is made, and disappears when the loan is paid back. The ultimate source of money however is the "outside money the government creates" and spends into the economy.
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2021
    #37     Feb 20, 2021
  8. piezoe

    piezoe

    I guess you didn't take into account that Great Britain was using commodity money at the time. Today Keynes and I would have no difficulty agreeing. I haven't encountered a single deceased person who disagrees with me. We no longer use commodity money, and for a very good reason -- we can't, nor would it be desirable to do so if we could!
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2021
    #38     Feb 20, 2021
  9. manic

    manic

    The Fed controls the economy. Perhaps the Fed needs to make Democrats look good on the economy because the US is a pretty conservative country as a whole.
     
    #39     Feb 20, 2021
  10. piezoe

    piezoe

    Most people think the fed controls the economy, but that's not entirely true in the way most people believe it is. The fed sets monetary policy, mainly interest rates. That does affect the economy, but the fed's actions are in response to what's happening in the economy. So to say, "the fed controls the economy," is actually saying the tail wags the dog. It's congress that sets fiscal policy, and that plus events the nation has various degree of control over, from none to virtually complete, controls the economy. The fed just reacts, to the extent it can, to counter events that work against their achieving the mandate Congress gave them. It's a difficult mandate to fulfill considering the tool box they have.
     
    #40     Feb 20, 2021