Forum Post: OWS Should Now Become A Solutions Movement, Not Just A Protest Movement
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 20, 2012, 7:25 a.m. EST by DemandTheGoodLifeDotCom
(3360)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
There are two primary problems in society that are the root cause of nearly every problem in society:
- 18% are underemployed
- 50% are in or near poverty because we have a very unequal economic system that pays most of our economy's income and wealth to a few at the top
OWS was a success at protesting these two problems. In particular, it successfully made income inequality a mainstream issue with its now ubiquitous 1% meme. And it successfully organized people to protest these problems.
Where it failed was in using that organizing to implement solutions. This is the primary criticism against OWS and it is valid.
So OWS should now re-focus its mission to become a solutions movement instead of just a protest movement.
It should now take the people it managed to organize around protesting and use them towards implementing a solution to these two primary problems. Its mission should now be to use its members to get policies implemented that eliminate the 18% underemployment and eliminate the 50% in or near poverty.
To do that, it must take an official stand on the solutions it wants government to implement. And then it must Occupy Government until those solutions are implemented.
Otherwise, the movement it managed to build will go to waste.
These two problems are mainstream problems. And using the government to fix problems is a mainstream idea. So I believe OWS would become more mainstream and would grow significantly if it did this.
Following are two solutions that will put an end to the underemployment and financial struggle problems.
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SOLUTION 1: ELIMINATING THE 18% UNDEREMPLOYMENT
The way to eliminate the 18% underemployment is to use the Fed's power as lender of last resort to now also become the employer of last resort.
The Fed would make interest-free loans available to launch enough new companies, companies that were publicly owned, to fully employ everyone. This is a standard Keynesian economic policy used during the Great Depression.
The Fed is essentially already doing this through QE1, QE2 and QE3. But that QE money is currently being used to bail out wealthy investors and big banks, it is not being used to specifically employ the unemployed.
So all we would be doing is requiring the QE money be used specifically to employ the underemployed.
However, unlike what the government did during the Great Depression, I don't think the Fed should lend to the government to create government jobs. Instead, it should launch publicly owned companies that produce market goods and services.
And most importantly, since these are publicly owned companies, they should all be regulated by two very important rules.
The first regulation is that all public companies have to trade with each other. Companies must buy its supplies from other public companies if available and workers at these companies must shop at public companies if available. This guarantees the success of these new companies and is the same protectionist tactic every new, emerging market uses to develop.
For example, if you work at a public company and want to buy a cell phone, you would have to buy it from a public cell phone manufacturer if one was available. If one was available but you wanted to buy an iphone instead, you would pay a tariff, which is just a tax on top of the regular iphone price.
So if the Fed loans money to launch a cell phone company, that cell phone company is guaranteed to get nearly everyone working in public companies as customers. So the company is guaranteed to succeed. But this would be temporary. As the public market matures and expands, that cell phone company will eventually have to compete against other public cell phone companies.
The second regulation is that total income within the public market would be allocated based on how much work you contribute. So all income would be paid to workers (no investment income would be paid to anyone participating in the public market) and differences in income between workers would be limited to only what was necessary to get them to work hard.
For example, worker productivity in the US is $65 per hour. If workers in the public market were as productive and we limited income inequality to just 8:1, where the top earners can only get paid 8 times more than the bottom earners, we would be able to pay every public worker from $50 to $400 per hour.
View this post to learn how a public market would operate.
Allocating income this way makes every worker wealthy which brings us to our second solution.
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SOLUTION 2: ELIMINATING THE 50% IN OR NEAR POVERTY
The way to eliminate the poverty and financial struggle that 50% of the US population are subjected to is to guarantee them employment in these new public, Fed-financed companies just like the underemployed are guaranteed employment.
Since income inequality will be minimized, all the jobs in the public market will be high paying. They will pay at least $50 per hour if public market workers are as productive as private market workers.
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HOW TO SELL THESE 2 SOLUTIONS TO THE PUBLIC
Selling this to the public and getting these ideas implemented is feasible. The 18% who are underemployed and 50% who are struggling financially are a large enough voting block alone to get this implemented.
But there are a lot of benefits that appeal to everyone:
- Most people think you have a right to a job.
- The Fed is already giving out money, it just isn't going to the underemployed. Most people will think it is more fair to pay QE money to employ the unemployed than to pay wealthy investors and big banks.
- It will enable us to put an end to all welfare programs which will appeal to the Right who believe people should work and not get free handouts.
Some will say that allowing the Fed to lend to the public market will be unfair to the private market. Of course, the proper rebuttal to this would be that the opposite is also true. You can also say it is unfair to the public market for the Fed to lend to the private market.
Why should a private market, especially one that has failed in giving half the population a job with a living wage, get preferential treatment? It shouldn't.
The Fed will simply provide funds to whatever market needs it. If the public market manages to attract 30% of the population, it will get 30% of the Fed's lending.
Everyone is free to join the public market, so it doesn't give preferential treatment to or unfairly benefit anyone. And having a private cell phone company compete against a public cell phone company is no different than it having to compete against any of the other private cell phone companies.
But the private market will now have to compete against the public market for members. It no longer has an unaccountable monopoly over society. People now have freedom of choice. If the private market is not working for you, you can join the public market and vice versa.
Doing this is very American. Competition and freedom of choice are the central US economic ideologies.
Another potential bargaining chip would be to set up a system where the people who join the public market can only vote on public market economic policies. They would not be able to vote on policies that affect the private market and vice versa.
So if the Right objects to this idea we can say that the public market would likely appeal to people on the Left. If everyone on the Left joins the public market, the Right would have full control over the private market to implement their Right-wing policies of low taxes, low regulations and full privatization.
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OCCUPY GOVERNMENT
Occupy Wall Street was effective in organizing people around the inequality that exists. Now it should enter a new phase and organize people around solving those problems.
It should enter an Occupy Government phase.
The only way these problems are going to be fixed is if we get government to implement policies that fix them. Protesting is not going to change anything. Implementing government policies is what changes society.
So we could run Occupy candidates on the Occupy Platform of implementing the 2 policies above that eliminate underemployment and that eliminate poverty and financial struggle.
We could also use the Grover Norquist tax pledge strategy and get politicians to pledge support of the Occupy Platform.
We could go door-to-door handing out flyers that educate the public on the Occupy Solutions. We could hold public meetings and seminars that explain how a society where everyone is wealthy is possible. We could do a lot to get the public to vote for Occupy candidates.
We can then Occupy Government until bills are introduced and voted on by our elected representatives.
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Since I do not know how OWS is run, how do we go about changing OWS to a solutions movement, changing its website to reflect the change, issuing press releases to let the media know about the change and making all future occupations an occupation on an elected official's office to force them to implement the Occupy Solutions?
I actually enjoyed reading these constructive ideas very much. Especially the part where top earners are capped at earning 8:1. It allows for reward for being a creator, innovator, etc, but also allows the ground level employees to see more of the fruit of their labor, and rightfully so. Sure wouldn't have a problem with unemployment if minimum wage was 40USd per hour. Although small business would definitely suffer. But at this point it already has taken it on the chin. To the upside they would benefit from the increase provided by the increased wages allowing Americans to spend more disposable income.
To implement ideas like this is going to be a long uphill battle. but it can be done if we endeavor to do it. Great post.
If we were able to get tariffs enacted, the rest of the details could be worked out. It is in that realm that both parties have sold out the US. Support a candidate that will throw free trade agreements in the trash, where they belong, and the rest will get a lot more do-able.
It is impossible for US workers to compete against workers in developing countries who are willing to work for 90% less.
competition does not employ people or provide for the masses
Yes, competition does the exact opposite of employ people or provide for the masses.
Competition between workers drives wages all the way down to just what a worker needs to survive and show up for work the next day.
That is why wages have been stagnant forever while profitability and productivity has risen and why 50% are in or near poverty and why workers get a tiny fraction of the $65 per hour they produce on average.
Thats because we have to compete with slave wages in china. If we taxed imports to such a degree that small businesses in the states, who pay there employees a decent wage, could compete we might see some improvement in income levels. I think everyone is missing the elephant in the room. It is the international corporation that make it imposable for americans to make a decent living. Only steps to break them down or force them out of the states will solve our economic crises.
The elephant in the room is capitalism which is an unfair system that exploits workers by paying them only a small fraction of the income they produce, as explained here.
In capitalism, half of all the income workers produce gets paid to a small handful of gamblers who got lucky investing in the market, as shown here, and most of what remains gets paid to a small handful of people who have bargaining power merely because they are unique like athletes and celebrities.
The vast majority of the workers who produce everything - the engineers, doctors, construction workers, factory workers, miners, farmers, teachers - have to fight over the little income that remains.
Even though worker productivity is $65 per hour, as shown here, which is enough to make every worker wealthy, most workers are broke because they only get paid a tiny fraction of the $65 per hour they produce. Most of that $65 unfairly gets paid to the lucky and unique.
The only fair system is one which pays workers 100% of the income, since they do 100% of the work, no income is paid to investors since they do no work and contribute nothing, and pays you based on how hard you work, not based on how lucky or unique you are. That system is called socialism as explained here.
Socialism is an economic system that pays workers the full value of what they produce, workers are no longer exploited. It's a system summed up in the socialist slogan, "To each according to their contribution."
If the economy was socialist and paid workers 100% of the income and paid them based on how hard they work, it would pay workers from $115,000 to $460,000 per year, as explained here, for working just 20 hours per week, as explained here.
Ether way corporations have to go.
You are absolutely correct on this issue. That is of course unless we all start living in slave shacks, while the billionaires become trillionaires.
The slave shacks are already here. I live in the New York area. You can probably find a million of them just here alone.
And then there are the ones who don't even get a shack. Over a million school kids are homeless each year. 60 minutes recently did a segment which showed in just 1 Florida county there were 1800 school kids living in cars.
According to the most recent census, half this country lives in or near poverty.
Very true. I live in Florida and have seen it up close.
Finally I wouldn't mind organizing something through the internet in order to get better legislation passed, but I am not always sure if Occupiers have the intellectual capacity to understand why its important to support particular things. If anyone wants to collaborate through email I am down.
Are you into starting a New Party! Peoples Party! We Are All Elected, No more Elections! We do the jobs,sharing the workload, filling positions, city,state,or federal..We get paid to work one day a month,which would solve unemployment..We would get rid of gorps,corporategovernment,shills for the corporations..Corporations are not People.. Peoples Court addresses Corruption, No Diplomatic Immunity! Current courts are compromised entities,threatened by their handlers.. Cancel public and private debt.. Counterfeit currency is counterfeit Debt.The.Treasury would issue currency,backed by hard assets.. The Federal Reserve,is our Debt Slave Master,who prints money from thin Air..That is Counterfeiting..Make like Iceland and Arrest those criminals...
sounds like more big government. Why not just cut taxes all the way around. The government is 16 trillion in debt i dont think they can take the blow here
What I advocate is using QE money to fund companies that sell market goods and services and employ the underemployed and broke. Those companies would be owned by the workers, not government. So it does not expand government at all and does not increase government debt.
These companies would form an alternative market that competes against our current market.
People should be free to participate in the economic system they want. I wrote a post here that explains how we can have multiple economic systems in the same geographic location that compete against each other for your voluntary membership.
Instead of having one monolithic system that everyone is forced to live in, what we should have are multiple systems for people to choose from.
Elements for a Solutions Movement.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/free-democracy-amendment/
1. OWS activists can combine their efforts with their local PIRG to support FreeDA/MEI.
2. OWS activists can combine their efforts with their local PIRG to create FreeDA/CES.
3. OWS activists can combine their efforts with their local PIRG in 24 states to support FreeDA initiatives at the state level.
4. And OWS activists can combine their efforts with their local PIRG to support FreeDA http://occupywallst.org/forum/freeda-template/ .
Of course, this all involves direct action and taking personal responsibility for the welfare of society, not simply petitioning an unuccountable government to do it for us.
Alphabet soup.
Maybe OWS should think about to become a official political party and present a agenda of change! I think there is a lot to offer!
I agree. Unfortunately, I don't control OWS. How do we get them to change?
Time may tell. Maybe will all going to change.
don't know
bet I'd bet efforts have been purposely sabotaged to unite under common causes
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best move would be to support Green party candidates at this time
Our posts on this forum are entirely useless. It is fun to debate, but nobody here is changing anything.
I know what I post is read by many and interpreted by more
There are maybe 10 or 20 people who post here regularly. And I don't think any of them have any influence over OWS.
They have a website where you can post ideas for the general assembly. But it looked dead. So I doubt that has any influence either.
Who controls this website, do you know? How can I get a hold of the person in charge of what gets posted on the front page?
I am with you on the green party. I will vote them before dem/rep.
I have seen the NO WAR effort rise in the street with my effort
I don't know who controls the front page
The idea sounds great up to the point about requiring the public owned new company workers to only buy their goods from public owned companies if available.
What if there is a public owned car company, but they would prefer Honda
Then last question. The guarantee of 50 dollars hour sounds good. Are there samples of public jobs, such as in energy, that can produce that for its workers?
Maybe provide a link there, or talk about. Well let me finish reading. I may need to read whole article. Looks good up to there.
"The idea sounds great up to the point about requiring the public owned new company workers to only buy their goods from public owned companies if available."
Most new companies fail. So if we don't protect these new companies, it won't work. We will just waste tons of money on a lot of unprofitable companies.
We are essentially building a new market, a public market. Every new market requires protectionism in order to succeed. Even the US market had protection when it was first developing.
The only other alternative is to use the QE money to employ people in government jobs. But that is inefficient and not necessarily the best use of our unemployed labor.
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"What if there is a public owned car company, but they would prefer Honda"
You would pay a tariff (a tax) on the Honda.
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"The guarantee of 50 dollars hour sounds good. Are there samples of public jobs, such as in energy, that can produce that for its workers?"
When total income is paid to workers and differences in income are limited to 8:1, that is what the incomes amount to. It is just a matter of math.
To see the calculations, view this comment.
"Even the US market had protection when it was first developing." True, it did when it was first starting, as well as most of its' history. The US maintained relatively high tariffs up until GATT, in 1948. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade
And what if the Hondas were built in this country? Would you still insist on a or a tax? Would that be fair to penalize all the Honda workers here?
The tariff would apply to any good or service produced outside of the public market. So it would apply to Honda even if Hondas were produced in the US.
Why does location make it fair or unfair?
If Honda workers don't like the deal they are getting, they can work at another private company or join the public market and work for a public company.
I think the current, private, tariff-free market is unfair to the 18% who are underemployed and the 50% who are in or near poverty.
What is fair is for the private market to run their market the way they want and for the public market to run their market the way they want.
So basically you are penalizing private companies with tarrifs vs nothing on public companies. So I guess if run a corner store, I would be private and then pay tarrifs? So any public company that sells or supplies to a private company would also suffer due to the penalty of tarrifs.?
So where does a public company get their capital? From the government (re tax payers)? Who pays the tax payers for the risk? Tarrifs within a country would be disastrous .
Tariffs within the US would also be unconstitutional.
They would not be unconstitutional.
From the link below; "The U.S. Constitution of 1789 gave the federal government authority to tax, stating that Congress has the power to "... lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." Tariffs between states is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, and all domestically made products can be imported or shipped to another state tax-free." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history
There is no place in the constitution that say "Tariffs between states is prohibited."
There is no place in the constitution that says this is not allowed. We already do this. We already impose uneven taxes on goods and services produced in this country. States already impose different tax rates and excise taxes already tax goods and services differently.
Plus medical insurance plans are not illegal and this would work the same way. When you join a medical plan you are agreeing to only buy from companies within that plan. If you buy outside the plan you will pay a penalty.
When you join the public market you are agreeing to only buy from companies within the public market. If you buy outside the market you will pay a penalty.
Article I SECTION 10.
No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection laws: and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any state on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.
No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei
Nowhere in what you just wrote does it say you cannot form a plan where members of the plan pay a penalty fee on purchases made outside of the plan. These plans already exist. Medical insurance is one example.
Outside of a plan is not the same as outside of a state.
I agree. That is why any laws pertaining to an interstate tariff would have no impact on what I propose.
The "public market" is just an association of companies. It is not a particular state.
So what I propose is not unconstitutional.
You are mistaken. From the link below; Tariffs between states are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution and all domestically made products can be imported or shipped to another state tax free. In the U.S. constitutional law sense, an excise tax is essentially an event tax[1] (as opposed to a state of being tax). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excise_tax_in_the_United_States#Constitutional_law
Nowhere in the constitution does it say states cannot impose taxes. They already do.
Nowhere in the constitution does it say you cannot form a plan where members of the plan pay a penalty fee on purchases made outside of the plan. These plans already exist. Medical insurance is one example.
That is not an interstate tariff. Repeating that the constitution does not outlaw them, when I have shown article and section where it clearly states that it does, makes little sense.
What you referenced does not say tariffs are unconstitutional. It says if tariffs are imposed, it would be controlled by Congress.
Here is the relevant quote:
No state shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports
So states can enact a tariff if Congress allowed it. But that is not what I am proposing to do.
The "public market" is just an association of companies. It is not a state.
OK, let's say it's not a constitutional issue, even though I could argue it further with regard to precedent. What you propose would ultimately just end up nationalizing all industry,would it not?
No. I don't advocate nationalizing any company or industry.
What I advocate is for the Fed to use its QE money to launch new public companies that directly employ the unemployed instead of using that money to bail out private investors and private banks.
If you are a private company you would buy from other private companies and pay no tariffs.
If you are a public company, you would buy from other public companies and pay no tariffs.
A tariff is a tax. We already have taxes for all sorts of things. It would not be disastrous. What is disastrous is our private market economy that has left 18% underemployed and 50% in or near poverty.
Public companies would get their new capital from the same place private companies do: the federal reserve. It would not come from tax payers.
Please define or differentiate your public and private companies. To understand; you are prohibiting commerce between public and private companies? You did not answer the tarrif question about the corner store, or for example, a small supply shop that an individual might run. So they would have tarrifs on that business? If yes, why are you penalizing the the individual entrepreneur?
As for the right to a job. There is no such right, only the right to equal access to a job. We can not just create jobs if there is no demand. To have jobs, one must have demand, and the product in demand will require workers to produce it. Where would you place all the "right to a job" people?
Would you apply tarrifs to foreign public companies? What if the public company here made part of the product overseas before final assembly here: would there be tarrifs ?
As mentioned below, in country tarrifs would be unconstitutional. Show or cite how they would not be.
"define or differentiate your public and private companies"
Instead of the Fed using QE money to bail out investors and banks, it would use that money to launch new companies to employ the people who are unemployed. All these companies would make up the public market. All these companies would be owned equally by the people participating in the public market. Anyone is free to join the public market if the think that it is a better deal than the private market (it will be for nearly everyone).
Private companies would be companies that operate in our current market.
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"you are prohibiting commerce between public and private companies?"
It works similar to the way a medical insurance plan works. When you join a medical plan, it requires you to visit certain doctors and use certain medical facilities.
If you voluntarily join the public market, you will have to buy from companies within the public market. If you buy outside of the public market, you will pay a tariff. If you buy a good or service outside the public market because it is not produced within the public market, you would not pay a tariff.
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"As for the right to a job. There is no such right"
I think it is criminal that people do not have that right.
Every good and service produced is produced using the planet's resources. And these resources rightfully belong to everyone equally which gives everyone a natural right to be able to participate in converting the planet's resources into useful goods and services and a natural right to get paid fully for that work, without deductions for welfare for the lucky or exploitation as explained here.
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"only the right to equal access to a job"
That right does not exist either. I do not have the same access to a job in Trump's organization as his kids do. His kids are guaranteed a high paying job within his company. I am not.
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" We can not just create jobs if there is no demand."
I don't say we should employ people producing things nobody wants to buy. They obviously have to work at a company that produced something that people are buying.
However, we will never have enough workers to meet our demand. Demand will always exceed our ability to produce.
There is enough demand to fully employ any amount of people that live on this planet.
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" Where would you place all the "right to a job" people?"
You would be guaranteed a job in the public market.
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"Would you apply tarrifs to foreign public companies?"
The purpose of the tariff is to protect the companies within the public market as explained in the cell phone example in the post:
All public companies have to trade with each other. Companies must buy its supplies from other public companies if available and workers at these companies must shop at public companies if available. This guarantees the success of these new companies and is the same protectionist tactic every new, emerging market uses to develop.
For example, if you work at a public company and want to buy a cell phone, you would have to buy it from a public cell phone manufacturer if one was available. If one was available but you wanted to buy an iphone instead, you would pay a tariff, which is just a tax on top of the regular iphone price.
So if the Fed loans money to launch a cell phone company, that cell phone company is guaranteed to get nearly everyone working in public companies as customers. So the company is guaranteed to succeed. But this would be temporary. As the public market matures and expands, that cell phone company will eventually have to compete against other public cell phone companies.
So the tariff would apply to anyone outside of the public market, regardless of geographic location.
Any company can join the public market. If they did, that company would now be owned equally by everyone within the public market. And everyone working at that company would get paid according to the public market's compensation plan. But buying from that company would no longer carry a tariff.
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" What if the public company here made part of the product overseas before final assembly here: would there be tarrifs?"
If a public company bought an input product or service from a company outside of the public market, the company would pay a tariff on that input product or service. However, if that input product or service was not offered by any public companies, it would not pay a tariff.
The purpose of a tariff is to force the people within the public market to buy everything from within the public market. That is the only way for any market to be viable.
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"As mentioned below, in country tarrifs would be unconstitutional. Show or cite how they would not be."
I cannot prove or cite a negative. The burden is on him to show where in the constitution this is not allowed.
There is no place in the constitution that says this is not allowed. We already do this. We already impose uneven taxes on goods and services produced in this country. States already impose different tax rates and excise taxes already tax goods and services differently.
Plus medical insurance plans are not illegal and this would work the same way. When you join a medical plan you are agreeing to only buy from companies within that plan. If you buy outside the plan you will pay a penalty.
When you join the public market you are agreeing to only buy from companies within the public market. If you buy outside the market you will pay a penalty.
The government should pass a second stimulus in order to get the velocity of money moving, and therefore create a multiplier effect that would lead to full employment.
Good idea.
Let's help the real job creators (middle/working class) & we will see consumer spending rise, employers then hire more, tax revenue increase, & deficit/debt come down
It's the only way!
That is what this post advocates.
However, it advocates that stimulus money be invested in public companies that produce market goods and services, not just government services, and to invest whatever amount is needed to not just employ the unemployed and underemployed but also those who are currently living in or near poverty.
...because the first trillion dollars that we pissed away on stimulus created so many jobs?
The CBO says it worked.
"Our position is that the [2009] Recovery Act was not a failed program. Our position is that it created higher output and employment than would have occurred without it."
The vast majority of economic experts says it worked.
'In a survey conducted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 80 percent of economic experts agreed that, because of the stimulus, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been otherwise'.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/07/1098364/-CBO-Director-Demolishes-GOP-s-Stimulus-Myth
Do you remember right after Obama got elected, when he was talking about how we needed the stimulus because he was going to have to use it to create two million -- no, two and a half million -- no, three million -- no, three and a half million jobs. I can't even remember where the number ended up.
Ah wait actually I do. The number ended up being nearly zero jobs.
'zero jobs' - the CBO and the vast majority of economic experts disagrees with your belief.
It didn't exactly turn out to be three or four million. And Obama knew that he couldn't promise anything but he kept jacking up the numbers for political reasons. And I knew that he knew that he couldn't promise anything, which is why I started to lose respect for him immediately after I voted for him.
'By CBO's numbers, the $800 billion stimulus added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011'.
Private sector employment was growing when the stimulus was in effect. It started slowing since the stimulus is run out.
I don't find anything you say about 'political reasons' to make any sense. The number of jobs was always dependent on the size of the stimulus that Congress would pass.
The number of jobs as a result of the stimulus is far closer to Pres. Obama's estimates, based on the size of the stimulus package, than your belief of 'nearly zero'.
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.” Mitch McConnell
I have lost all respect for the Republican Party. The above is just one of the many many reasons. This, among other things, is far more damaging to the country than nailing down with precision the exact number of jobs related to the size of the stimulus bill.
Holy hell even Jeb Bush has severely criticized the Party for their obstructionism. He even said as much that Reagan nor his father would be electable in the Republican party today. I would even argue that Bush Jr. couldn't either. If he were to utter the words 'compassionate conservativism' today, and the values it represented - he'd be beaten and stoned. Between the the Tea Party knuckle-draggers and the Ayn Randian zealots, poor guy wouldn't stand a chance. I'm actually starting to miss him now. I always liked Bush Sr. He rightly called voodoo economics - voodoo economics. Too bad his own party destroyed him for it.
You did NOT vote for Pres Obama!. Don't lie!
Why do you give your republicans a pass on the economic crash, and the resulting unemployment crises. Why do you ignore the obstruction of all jobs bills.?
yesterday they blocked a million veterans jobs with another abuse of the filibuster. Why do you continually cover for them.?
You should stop the partisanship.
http://forum.talknightlife.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4802&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=obama#p36469
This quote from that post from four years ago is kind of interesting actually in retrospect:
This is meaningless. I don't care about your voting record or your opinion on Pres Obama.
If you really want change, your criticism of our problems should be fair. If you insist on one sided partisan political attacks on one party you should be challenged.
If you really mean you don't like the partisan squabbling (I don't believe that is true) then you should recoginze both parties responsibility in these problems. Acknowledge the roots of the problems if you want to resolve them.
If not then it is right for you to be challenged, and the party you cover for should be identified as part of the problem.
You should be fair and stop covering for your republicans.
They have obstructed EVERY jobs bill!. Yesterday they killed a million veterans jobs with another abuse of the filibuster.
Interesting response. You've repeatedly accused me of lying for the last three days about voting for Obama. I pull out pretty solid proof and you immediately shift to telling me that you don't care who I voted for.
I do recognize both parties' responsibility for our problems. And in a larger sense, the fundamental structural problems that enabled those problems. The influence of money over our government. The fact that you can't get elected in Washington without accepting private financial contributions, which makes politicians answerable to their donors instead of to their constituents. Partisan squabbling ignores that larger issue, which is far more important.
I support the progressive policy of public campaign financing and eliminating political contributions. I disagree with the conservative 1886 finding that corps are people. I disagree with the conservative concept that money equals speech! I am against the conservative Breitbart Citizens United case that has created the obscenity of anonymous money in politics.
You cannot prove you voted for Pres Obama. It is therefore a meaningless ascertian. I don't care about anyones personal voting habits, even opinions.
My purpose in engaging you is to challenge your obvious partisan attacks against one party and your ignoring the responsibilities of the other.
You should be fair! You should stop using this site for unfair partisan attacks on one party!
You're trying really hard to position me as your ideological enemy. But I'm sitting directly in the center so that's kind of pointless and I'm not going to bite. I will however comment yet again on your lack of discipline and your apparent lack of regard for the idea of representing the 99%.
You only attack Pres Obama, defend conservatives and claim the tea party is so successful.
Then you pretend you don't like the partisan squabbling! What a joke.
I don't need to position you as my enemy. We disagree that's true, but we ain't enemies, & being enemies ain't required.
We should debate in a civil & respectful manner. I'm doing so. You are avoiding all questions regarding your repub obstruction of jobs bills.
You ain't in the center. Yuo ain't kiddin anyone with that but yourself.
Only war mongers and friends of the 1% voted and will vote again for Obama.
Anti Obama partisan attack. This is the kind of partisan political campaigning some have complained about.
Why have you ignored the other parties responsibilities in this unemployment crises.?
Who created this world wide economic great recession.? Wsn't it your republicans.?
I'm not really sure how a post about me voting for Obama and then becoming disillusioned is an "anti-Obama attack". I'm not the only one.
Because you are laying blame for the unemployment crises at his feet alone and ignoring the republican responsibility.
They created the problem, & have obstructed every effort to create jobs!
Just yesterday the repubs killed another million jobs with another abuse of the filibuster.
"must've been the interns, Obama did it!"
No sorry, to clarify, I definitely do not blame Obama solely for high unemployment.
I do blame Obama for spending a trillion dollars while promising to create millions of jobs, and failing to do so. I don't blame him for failing to create jobs so much as I blame him for knowingly feeding the American people a line of bullshit for political reasons that we'll all be paying for over the next century.
it was only $750 billion. So that is an exaggeration. There has been job creation for 30 months since the stimulus adding up to almost 5 million so he didn't break his promise.
There would have been more if your repubs had not abused the filibuster to obstruct EVERY jobs bill he proposed.
Your repubs killed 1 million veterans jobs YESTERDAY with another traitorous abuse of the filibuster!!
The repubs ARE the problem!
$831 billion actually: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/02-22-ARRA.pdf
But I can see where this is going and I'm just not interested.
Still ain't commented on your republican traitorous abuse of the filibuster to kill yet another million jobs! For veterans yet!
Speak up!
transparent partisan republican much?
Partisan Powers (VQkag2, shooz, zendog, DKAtoday, shadz66) must all perish from this website.
No actually it started while "slick willie" was in office. Do some research on it and I am not supporting Rep but get all the facts before you start bashing others
WRONG!. Your republicans created the great recession, and have obstructed all attempts to recover!
do some research on it lib boy
Just yesterday your repubs killed bill for a million veterans jobs with a traitorous, abuse of the filibuster.
YESTERDAY!!!, Not 13 years ago when Pres Clinton signed the conservative weakening of fin regulation by repealing Glass Steagal.
Research that partisan republican boy!
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So your complaining about future problems? Instead of responding to the traitorous activities of your republicans against our veterans.
Oil ain't gonna be $199. That is your moronic wishful thinking.
Defense spending?. Needs to be cut by 50%! And it should be done with minimal layoffs.
HA! BAM!
over a million will lose their jobs thanks to obummer
"will lose"? your repubs just killed a million vet jobs!
Dems create jobs, Repubs give tax breaks to millionaires who hoard the money!
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The private sector has created almost 5 million jobs since the stimulus.
The stimulus saved more than 2 million jobs from being lost.
If repubs hadn't watered the stimulus down and obstructed every jobs bill (incl veterans jobs bill YESTERDAY!) we would have had another 2 million jobs and the Unemployment rate would be 6 %.
Repub states have fired massive numbers of public employees in an effort to bust unions as well, If they hadn't we would have another million Americans working and the Unemployment rate would be closert to 5%.
Still too high but better.
Repubs ARE the problem. just the facts! If you wanna understand the problem, & find a solution, be fair.
The 99%'s problem is .. half of the 99%?
The repubs who have watered down stimulus, & obstructed jobs bills are congresspeople who are doing so at the behest of the 1% plutocrats, They are not serving their 1/2 of the 99%.
No the 99%'s problem is the 1%.
Of course we must convince the 1/2 of the 99% who vote against their own interests and support policies that benefit the 1%.
That is our challenge. If we can convince enough (not even all) of the 1/2 of the 99% who support the 1% policies/candidates we will force real change.
No? Agree? If so how do we do it?
The other half of the 99% thinks that you're wrong, not them. They think that the only way forward is for you to come around to their thinking.
Why does a solution have to involve the left or the right winning? That's my opinion.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/common-ground-one-way-forward-there-should-be-no-c/
A solution does have to come from progressive (left) because the problems came from conservative (right) policies.
So when enough of the 99% recognize that progressive solution ARE in their best interests we will get real change.
You claim to be rooting for the 99% but really you're rooting for the left. You can't even seem to see that because you're so deep into the mind-set of fighting against the right. OWS is not about fighting against conservatives, it's about standing up to the 1%. OWS will fail to do that if it can't find the discipline to really truly represent the entire 99% and not just Democrats.
Correct.
It is 99 Percent. Not 47 Percent!
Depends on who you ask, apparently. To some people, 99 = 47.
seems like everyone here thinks 99 percent is 47 percent.
the one thing that make ows new and different, getting past partisanship, to focus on real issues. and it cant get 5 people on the forum interested in 99 percent (3-4 at my count) which is quite similar to Romney, just reverse parties.
I think that says more about this site than Occupy in general but nobody could ever know for sure. I suspect that it's because the people interested in transcending all of that partisanship gave up and left a long time ago. This forum used to be far more active and diverse. And chaotic, but chaotic in a really stimulating way. Now it's just an Obama campaign rally.
This web site has done more to hurt OWS than any opponent ever could have because of its steady #1 search ranking on the phrase "Occupy Wall Street" over the last year. People who might be interested come here and find this forum and get turned off and leave. I've seen it happen. I've seen how ridiculous this forum seems from the perspective of your average mainstream person who checks it out. What that means is that the protesters who are working so hard to draw attention to the movement are actually hurting the movement, because this web site is what people find when a protester makes them curious and they come to see what's up. Conspiracy theorists and foaming-at-the-mouth partisans and Zeitgeist cult people and guys with insane suggestions for re-engineering the economy. And very few people who seem rational. Because the rational people already quit.
originally a year ago they were against Obama.
that made ows unique. it made people curious and open.
ows should be a third way.
Although Progressives should be part of OWS, OWS should not be part of pro Oabama. That is not a way forward. Sure, be big tent. How is Obama progressive?
He didn't fight for Universal Health Care. Didn't fight for Unions. Didn't fight for jobs Didn't fight for deficit reduction.
didn't maximize use of bully pulpit, and rally people around his solutions. he relied on his base.
support minimum wage increase?
effective Housing relief
He is a partisan, even though he did want to work together with Repubs, and compromise, and they did not.
He folded before them most every time.
I don't know that it is his fault.
The current system pits one side against other, not for all, whole.
I believe OWS supports progressive change because THAT is what will resolve these conservative policy catastrophes.
I believe the positions OWS has taken ARE progressive. Fin regulations, Campaign contrivution, Immigration, middle class tax/debt relief, tax the 1%, foreclosure relief, Public option healthcare, Free education. LGBT rights. Green tech, anti war.
You don't know what you're talkin about. You think these are conservative positions? LMFAO! OWS stands for progressive improvements that will help all of the 99%. Regardless of their political persuasions.
When enough of the 99% (of all political persuasion) support these positions we will have real change.
your label of the solutions as "progressive" may bother some people. I hope they are progressive, but I would settle for plain solutions, without labels.
the ones you list would help 99 percent. i support. just don't label as anti-conservative. they are pro-99 percent (although historically they have been progressive, pre ows.)
Both parties have been the cause of the mess, and finger pointing is big part of problem. (Even thought personally, privately one is 200 percent worse than other.)
I agree both parties are to blame. And I would say we must identify the problems to resolve them, this inevitably leads to placing blame. We shouldn't be afraid of that excercise because it is valuable facilitating real change/solutions and preventing the repeating of the same mistakes in the future.
Some people point the finger of blame at both parties and leave it at that. I say we cannot learn about the mistakes that were made, and therefore more difficult to solve, and avoid repeating them.
So I have to say one party must be more to blame than the other. I think everyone will have their own opinion on this detail.
Personally I am more disappointed with the dems since they betrayed progressive principles when they support the conservative policies that created all our problems.
Others will think differently. We must weigh all opinions and figure out which is accurate.
Hopefully we can do that in a civil & respectful way.
That is what makes Ows different and bigger.
Obama had huge challenges, and they are bigger than 1man or 1 party.
Identify problems. But it sounds much prettier to half the countr when you say that both are part of problem, and problem is bigger than 1 party.
It's going to take everyone ....remember the tiniest who in who villa...to save planet.
Unite against untruth in name of 100 percent. We also want to save last 1 percent from their evil ways, I hope.
Wow. We want to help 100 percent. We wont bury 1 percent in the glaciers.
Sure we want to help 1%. By helping the middle/working class we WILL be helping the 1%. And lets not forget some 1% support us. 'millionaires for the 99%'
Blame is not progress, and for that reason, "progressives" should not be preoccupied with blame. The way to make progress is to look forward toward solutions, not to look backward toward blame.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/common-ground-one-way-forward-there-should-be-no-c/
can't solve the problem if we don't know how we created the problem.
If OWS set out to represent the 99% but then adopted entirely liberal positions then it failed. Adopting a bunch of polarized partisan positions and aligning against the other half of the 99% instead of the 1% is failure.
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Yes, you are the embodiment of failure to represent the 99% and it's mostly over because of people like you and because of the anarchists who were determined to ensure that it never amounted to anything. You represent the left side of the 99% and you're too preoccupied with hating the other side to be able to focus on the 1% or the structure that keeps them in power.
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Exactly what conservative policy do you think OWS should support?
Are you joking.? We should support conservative policies (that have created all our problems) because there are conservatives among the 99%?
How about we support the best solution (I submit that is progressive solutions) and convince people to get on board.
IF the best solution is conservative fine, I suppose OWS would support it.
But there are none! Do you know of one! Just one!
It's not my fault. I didn't make it this way. It ain't a VQ rule. It is what it is!
Just one? C'mon, I'm willing to listen. One!
eliminate debt. pay bills. less waste.
I consider that a secondary priority. More important to get people working and get the economy growing.
If our 1st goal is the deficit/debt then we will listen to the pols screamin about cutting every pgm that serves the 99% and contributes to economic growth.
That would just aggravate the deficit/debt. Best thing to do to pay down the debt is grow the economy. So we'll have to spend money (stimulus) to create growth which will increase govt revenue and the deficit will melt away.
Some cutting has been done, some more can be done. But certainly we can cut the defense budget 50% & we'de be fine. Also raise the taxes on the wealthiest will also help cut the deficit.
But not for the middle/working class! That would hurt economic growth and balloon the debt.
I've been extremely explicit about the non-partisan position that I think that both sides could get behind if they could find the strength to work together for the good of our country. I've posted background on exactly why thats a non-partisan position and not a liberal or a conservative position. I link to it constantly. Have you been so busy trying to position me as a tea bagger that you don't know what I'm talking about?
http://occupywallst.org/forum/common-ground-one-way-forward-there-should-be-no-c/
How very partisan of you to put it that way.
And just what is this magical, straight down the middle, can't fail plan of yours?
In a nut shell please.
We covered that. Stop beating a dead horse.
We agree with the effort. But it is not a conservative concept. It is a progressive concept.
So if conservatives support it (and I know many do 'cause the polls show almost 80% in support) then this makes my argument that when enough of the 99% (conservatives included) support progressive solutions we can have real change.
So my question still stands.
Just one conservative idea that OWS should support. I'm willing to listen.
Thank you
Peoples Party Unite! No More Elections.. We Are All Elected! We can do the jobs we currently let these public tyrants do for us..We can work one day a month,for the greater community, solve unempolyment.. We form a Peoples Court and make like Iceland, and arrest All bankers,politicians, and corporate thieves..No Diplomatic Immunity!
I am not elected. I don't have the power to employ the unemployed. And I have no interest in arresting bankers. So I'm not sure what the point of your comment is!
We are the people, we are the power, We are elected, empower yourself ,with the greater whole.Peoples Party is a paradym shift, where People do the jobs delegated to current elected officials..Elections are for people unwilling to put in the effort to run their affaitrs, as well as the states and fed.level..
Are you a slogan-spewing software bot, or a real, live human? Just curious.
are you a retard? Just curious.
Ah interesting. My money was on bot, but thanks for clearing that up.
What is so hard about reclaiming our power? Constantly giving our energy to a system that is corrupt,is disempowering..We have been doing that for generations..We Are The Change, we need a direction.. Peoples Party is a proposal to become an all inclusive body politic..We commit to working at least one day a month,for the community,state, or federal level..Cooperatively doing the jobs we are delegating current elected compromised officials..There will be no need for Elections, because We are are All Elected..We get paid well for that one day,check current salaries for public officials..This would create jobs and oversight..We convene Peoples Court to address corruption, with No Diplomatic Immunity..We cannot move forward until we deal with rampant thievery in goverment , corporations,and banks..Iceland has shown it is possible, we don't have to accept the Parasite Nightmare..
I don't understand what any of that means.
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The first 18 or so words in this post were great, then it went all downhill.
My friend, PLEASE learn basic economics if you want to propose an economic solution! lessons for free on youtube! Look up Mises!
I went to biz school which requires a graduate level education in economics, I worked for the Fed and I worked as an investment banker.
I am as informed on economics as anyone.
It is funny that you bring up Mises. Austrian economics is considered a crackpot science by the mainstream economics academic community.
I advocate democratic market socialism, which is explained here. A socialist market was demonstrated by Oskar Lange in the famous Economic Calculation Debate started by Mises to be more efficient than a capitalist market.
Mises had no rebuttal to Lange. Even Hayek accepted Lange's argument. Hayek tried to salvage Mises original argument by saying socialism would have an information problem, not a calculation problem. But he was unable to persuade the rest of the economics community because it defies common sense.
I didn't get to the end where you advocated for competing systems and free choice. That's the way to go.
But, any thought is completely ruined by putting up abstract numbers. Anyone with a brain will red-flag this kind of stuff. "Pay people 100,000"? What if a loaf of bread is worth 100,000? What if the total economy is only worth 100,000? Maybe you're just marketing it... and I guess that's fine, most people on here don't know anything anyway, but that's certainly no argument of principle.
"I didn't get to the end where you advocated for competing systems and free choice. That's the way to go."
I agree with you that people should be free to live in the system they want. The Left shouldn't force the Right to live in their society and vice versa.
The libertarians, socialists, greens, progressives, democrats and republicans who are currently not getting what they want in the current system should all get together and advocate for a system where people have the free choice to participate in the system they want.
The status quo has a monopoly over society and monopolies never work because they leave people with no recourse. There are no alternatives. So they are completely unaccountable.
What does work is freedom of choice.
Instead of having one monolithic system that everyone is forced to live in, what we should have are multiple systems for people to choose from.
The Right, Left and Center should each get their own economic system at the very least and these systems should compete against each other for your membership.
I wrote a post on how competing economic systems in the same geographic location would work which you can view by clicking here.
.
"But, any thought is completely ruined by putting up abstract numbers. Anyone with a brain will red-flag this kind of stuff. "Pay people 100,000"?"
They are not abstract numbers. It is based on math you can verify for yourself.
If we paid 100% of our income to workers and limited top pay to 8 times more than bottom pay, that would amount to paying everyone from $50 to $400 per hour.
That is just what the math comes out to.
You can verify the math by reading this comment. However, in that comment I argue that the top pay should be no more than 4 times more than bottom pay. So when you limit top pay to 4 times more instead of 8 times more, the incomes work out to be $55 to $221 per hour. But the math is still the same.
Also, since all we are doing is redistributing existing income, this does not cause inflation. Prices will certainly be different, but overall prices will not go up. Some prices will go up but they will be fully offset by other prices going down. Your cost of living will remain the same on average.
Sorry, I laughed as soon as you verified what you said according to the "mainstream economics academic community". Where were they before the housing bubble burst? Mainstream economics is leading the world off the fiscal cliff. Few people might be laughing at the "mainstream economists" right now, but after the dollar collapses, we'll be briskly walking over the trite ramblings of the current court jesters on the way to a more prosperous society.
Calculate away. You know what differs the Austrians from all other economists? Austrians don't attempt to make abstract models and crackpot theories. Austrians try to look at human action, and math, and figure out how it works.
And I shouldn't even have to say this, but I will. Why should people be forced, at the point of a gun, to participate in democratic market socialism? Is it that different than being forced into crony corporatism at the point of a gun? Here's a novel idea. Let's not force anyone into any system. Let's have a voluntary society. You guys can run your market socialism. Other people can try out what they want. Whatever. But before that can happen, we have to agree that all forms of aggressive violence and coercion are wrong. You on board? Or is democratic market socialism so great that people will need to be forced with imprisonment or death if they do not want to participate?
What you, as well as DtGL may have missed is, the "mainstream" has been taken over by "freemarket" ideology. I don't know how long ago DtGL took that economics course, but the days of sanity in economics are long gone. It is the very assholes who you seem to think were wise men whos' ideas are now in vogue. Austrian economics is just a permutation of the old laissez faire mentality of the gilded age of the robber barons It was dusted off and repackaged by Milton Friedman and sold as the "trickle down" economics of Ronald Reagan.
The economics that is mostly taught in schools and practiced by professional economists is positive economics which is just a study of what is. We have a liberal market, so you are taught how they work.
What you hear debated by politicians and pundits is normative economics. That is a study of what kind of economics we should have.
Although most economists probably promote capitalism with limited regulation, not all of them do. Some are even socialists, Richard Wolff being a well known example.
Are you familiar with Gregory Mankiw? He not only teaches at Harvard, but authored the most widely distributed econ textbook. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/occupy-harvard-students-protest-class-by-famed-econ-professor-by-staging-walkout/ If you care to, read this blog post (by Mankiw) and see what you think http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2012/09/the-trading-game/
I am familiar with Mankiw and the walkout. It is going to take that kind of activism to change society. But so long as we live in a society dominated by liberal free markets, that is what is going to be taught.
Change is going to come from politics and activism, not economics classes.
I read the trading game post.
Although I agree that trading increases your welfare, otherwise you wouldn't do it, that does not mean the trade was fair. What you get out of a trade depends on your bargaining power and we have a world with enormous inequality in bargaining power. So there is no reason to say that trade leads to fairness or humane outcomes.
If someone breaks into your house, holds your wife at gunpoint and says he will kill your wife unless you cut off your finger, you will probably trade your finger for your wife's life.
You increased your welfare in that trade. Although you lost your finger, you gained a wife that was still alive.
But there is nothing fair or humane about that. You can't just look at the trade and avoid the circumstances surrounding that trade. When a Chinese worker who earns $1 per month is offered a job that pays $1 per day, trading his day for that $1 increases his welfare.
But the only reason why he made that terrible deal is because he was forced to live in an economic system that paid him $1 per month when he has every right as a human living on this planet to get paid as well as every other human on this planet. There is nothing fair or humane about a system that pays workers $1 per day or per month.
Yes, it was more what Mankiw didn't mention that struck me. Did you know he is now on the Romney team or of his association with The Brookings Institute?
I was not familiar with the trading game. But do you know that Mankiw uses this to illustrate the benefit of trading?
It leaves out the most important fact: In the game the starting trinkets are allocated equally, in real markets everyone does not start off with an equal amount of trinkets.
Romney went to Harvard Business School, so it doesn't surprise me. All the top business schools are very, very, very pro capitalism and pro liberalism.
Yes, I got that Mankiw was using that to try to justify the advantages or trade. He conveniently omits the fact that international trade with third world countries, trades decent paying jobs for subsistence jobs. Mankiw seems to pay lip service to Keynes, but the proceeds to completely distort what Keynes says
you would do yourself a favor by studying exactly what a free market is. A free market isn't where you do your banker friends bailout favors. A free market isn't one where the government passes 50000 new financial regulations. A free market isn't one where you have to fill out 10 forms before starting a new business.
I could go on and on. The bottom line is that you're calling one thing something completely different. A free market hasn't been tried as long as any of us are on the planet (systematically), yet, when you trade something with your neighbor, that's the free market at work.
It's just not true. That's like calling what we have capitalism. Except in capitalism, there's no government favortism. There's no bailouts. There's no special taxation. There's no regulations. There is no corporations, since they're a government entity. There's no monopolies, since competition is unlimited...
You're told propaganda to keep your mind out... but this argument is blown away like a house of cards. It is simply, and utterly, false. There is NO free markets.
Oh, and does a partial free market do anything? No. That's like telling a slave "Oh, you're free, we'll only beat you in the afternoon". Does the slave feel free? Is the slave free?
The whole argument is laughable.
if you are unaware that particularly starting with the Reagan admin., that there was a vast move toward deregulating markets {defined as free market by Milton Friedman and those of his ilk}, then your argument is far more laughable.
Right, whip the slave a little less. I already covered that. You are arguing that it's not slavery. I guess it doesn't do any good to try and discuss with an illiterate, or one who cannot comprehend basic logic.
What can I tell you? So what? "a vast move" toward the free market isn't free markets. anymore than driving from NYC to Syracuse is driving to Seattle. Would you put a pizza in a blender, and pour the remnants into soup and then say you're eating pizza?
Open your eyes, man. You've been brainwashed! This is simple logic.
When ideologues are confronted with the irrefutable, they often become frustrated and angry. Then they resort to insults. "Illiterate",yeah, what a rapier wit.
I suppose it is irrefutable to repeat myself over and over. Putting your fingers in your ears while screaming is certainly one tactic to win a debate. But you're no closer to reality, my friend.
Also, it's hardly an insult to call you illiterate if you are not reading what i am writing. I'm just calling it like it is.
I am reading what you are writing. Your'e calling it as you see it, not necessarily "like it is". Your position is immutable. Thus, ideologue is my description. You assume that if someone doesn't agree with you completely, or at all, they must have their fingers in their ears. There is a generally understood definition of what free market capitalism is. Very few things in real life come in absolutes.
You win!
You get to redefine words and theories to make them "generally understood". And then slander your opponent for not adhering to your new definition. I certainly can't compete! Congrats!
Remember that part in the Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo that these are all other people, but they'll fight to the death to maintain the system that controls them? That's you!
"But you're not realistic", is what "ideologues" hear. What is realistic? Is it realistic to flip a switch and have light in a room? Is it realistic that people from all over the world can post messages on a forum like this? Is it realistic to sit in a chair and fly through the sky? Is it realistic to talk into a piece of metal and plastic to somebody on the other side of the planet? Is it realistic to take an organ out of one person and stick it into another?
The world is what we make it. And if you're willing to settle for "generally understood" shit, then that's what you'll continue getting.
Free your mind, my friend. Possibilities are endless.
All language depends on the concept of what is generally understood. If I'm taking the definition that is generally understood, then it is not I who is redefining. Are you seriously using "The Matrix" as a touchstone for your philosophy? In describing what is generally understood,I made no mention of what I was "willing to settle for".
Why settle for anything? Live free, baby. If you believe a free, peaceful world is possible, you've got to start living it, and the first step is to unplug from the myth of necessary government violence.
reply to; No, a bunch of ...; There will always be individuals "who would be king" There will always be would be conquerors. There have always been hierarchies. First, within families, then tribes. Tribes got bigger and became nations. A republic is a compromise. Wishing for no king will not prevent them from arising. The society with no structure will be conquered by the one that does. Sorry, no Easter Bunny.
or conquer them to take the resources. But if you're going to spend a million dollars to get half a millions worth of resources... it's just not worth it. Countries do it when they can be exploited. A society that doesn't rely on the monopoly of violence to protect it does not mean that it couldn't have means of self-defense. That's just not logical.
I suppose there is no argument against the conflation of hierarchy and structure. Surely, people will organize into groups, and there's not a problem with that. The point is whether they are being voluntarily organized or forced. My point is that people should not be forced to be slaves.
You're wrong about conquering, given todays technology. Countries conquer other countries to take over the tax system. In a voluntary society, there wouldn't be a tax system, and everyone would be invested in their own protection in some form, so without the centralized means of exploiting the populace, trading with a voluntary society would produce vastly more returns than trying to take it over. Why do you think Germany went around Switzerland in WW2? They kept neutral and every household hand a gun. Low return on the investment of war.
Your inability to take facts and logic to their inevitable conclusion doesn't mean that conclusions do not exist, no matter how many times you attempt to make an Easter Bunny analogy.
And thanks for replying in new threads (due to forum limitation). It's annoying and I appreciate your taking the time.
reply to; In the game of...;Well, we have established that a monopoly can be voluntary. Now, "in a free market Bernie Madoff wouldn't exist". So if we abandon government. all the people in the world will jump on the bandwagon. Never again will there arise a Hitler, Stalin or Dillinger or ma Barker. All will join in a chorus of Happy Happy Joy Joy,then Kumbaya. Has any one told you there is no Easter Bunny?
Just read about Madoff.
from the wiki "Concerns about Madoff's business surfaced as early as 1999, when financial analyst Harry Markopolos informed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that he believed it was legally and mathematically impossible to achieve the gains Madoff claimed to deliver. According to Markopolos, he knew within five minutes that Madoff's numbers didn't add up, and it took four hours of failed attempts to replicate them to conclude Madoff was a fraud.[58] He was ignored by the Boston SEC in 2000 and 2001, as well as by Meaghan Cheung at the New York SEC in 2005 and 2007 when he presented further evidence. He has since published a book, No One Would Listen, about the frustrating efforts he and his team made over a ten-year period to alert the government, the industry, and the press about the Madoff fraud.
Although Madoff's wealth management business ultimately grew into a multi-billion-dollar operation, none of the major derivatives firms traded with him because they didn't think his numbers were real. None of the major Wall Street firms invested with him either, and several high-ranking executives at those firms suspected he wasn't legitimate."
So the government ignored him, and the market shunned him. Tell me who was more effective? Those who exposed him kept themselves and their customers away, and suffered no loss. Those who trusted the government got taken for a ride.
Nothing prevents Madoff's from existing. But it should be obvious under which system they flourish.
No, a bunch of people voluntarily coming together to play the game of monopoly doesn't mean a monopoly exists, just as I said, they can walk away, they can go start their own game if they are unhappy. There is no Monopoly. I suppose a monopoly could be voluntary, but it would require EVERYONE to consent, which is certainly as far a cry from anything that has ever existed.
More logical fallacies. You assume that without government, evil people will not exist. This is simply not true. They still will. But without a monopoly of violence, you are right, no Hitler, Stalin, or the like would exist, since they existed due to monopolistic forces.
In the 21st century governments murdered 170 MILLION of their own citizens. http://www.fff.org/freedom/1094f.asp
Please explain to me how, without a king, a society would pull something like that off?
Bernie Madoff stole about 18 BILLION.
The US government alone has stolen DOZENS OF TRILLIONS.
You can conflate arguments, raise strawmen, go off on implied fantasies, but none of this changes the facts. If you look at STATISTIC and FACTS, ORGANIZED VIOLENCE (THE MONOPOLY OF VIOLENCE) IS RESPONSIBLE. If we eliminate that, we eliminate a big CAUSATION of the problem.
There is no utopia. But then there is no mass murders and plunderings of whole populations either.
reply to; my belief...;If that's your belief, that's your belief. There is that old saying; There are three kinds of lies, lies damn lies, and statistics". That does seem to be true at times, but on those in the link, Personally, I think there's some degree of validity. Maybe the best logical argument I could make against dissolution of the state is one I more or less already have made. The only defense against an even worse state taking over, is a strong state. It's just a real world reality.
Back to my point (can't remember if I made it here) about Switzerland in WW2. A neutral state with small power, Germany didn't bother invading them in WW2. Why? Terrain is rough and every house has a gun and somebody trained to use them. Big states don't take over states to just kill people, they want to make money. You don't build a million dollars worth of bombs to bomb somebody and get a 500,000 dollar return. Governments want to take over the tax system and resources. If there's no tax system in place, that's half of the motivation. If you have to spend millions on every square inch of territory, that's no motivation either.
A voluntary society would obviously have deterrents and multiple security forces. It would simply be many times more profitable to trade with them, than to go in and take them over.
reply to; As far as what I would do;..I can certainly see your point that if no large scale standing army is in existence, the possibility of the huge dramatic disaster would seem to be eliminated, but it also seem a bit to idealistic. Case in point; Prior to WW2, the US, though an economic powerhouse, was rated 17th in terms of military capability. Similarly, though not to the same extent, the Soviet Union had a 19th Century army. Then along came the Blitzkrieg. In spite of its' rather small size, Germany came very close to crushing the world. My point being, unless the philosophy you espouse is universally accepted, one individual nation can through the whole into chaos. What is the likelihood that this can ever by a universally accepted philosophy and practice? Also, on a related subject, I'd like to hear your take on the link here. http://anadder.com/is-the-world-getting-more-violent
my belief is that the world is what we make it. The church of the State is the largest religion on the planet today, with everyone believing in the worship of their sacred rulers. Probably not within our lifetime, but more and more people are finally realizing the truth about state-sanctioned violence, which has produced ALL of the most horrific catastrophes in human history.
As for the article, it's a slanted perception. Anyone can find statistics that will back up any particular point of view. Since I view government as violence (everyone has to do what they say, or they face violence) then we live in the most violent age in history, I would imagine. For example, how many people would VOLUNTARILY go through the radiation bath, or get molested, before getting onto an airplane? Yet these people are FORCED into this, by the millions? hundred thousands? every day, under the threat of violence. Of course, they could choose not to travel by air, but then they are forced to purchase insurance and get licensed, under the threat of violence. Of course, they can choose not to drive...
The point is, violence isn't just somebody getting poked in the eye. If I hold a gun to your face and demand your money, you give me the money, and I leave...is that violence? I would say yes. Is it a matter of opinion? The people who get robbed wouldn't say so, so I can't imagine that it is...
the jet set are so oppressed
reply to; Lets go back...; There is no doubt that the the incidents that were in the link are outrageous occurrences. I will not argue that this type of thing has not become way too common. I will not argue that the militarization of police forces is not an ominous and alarming development. That said, what would you do?. Do you not believe there are times when real criminals are armed and a menace to innocent citizens? Would you disband police? Would you prefer every individual just try to protect themselves? Maybe you have already answered that. It does seem to me though, that in some instances, that would be inadequate. The Mafia comes to mind. The elderly may find it hard to protect themselves.
As far as what I would do, I am completely in favor of decentralization. You're right, in some instances, it is inadequate. And I have never said that those instances wouldn't ever occur. The point is, without standing armies and rampant militarized police, the huge disasters cannot occur either.
You're right on about the Mafia, in a sense. Except, what the mafia ends up making money off of is what the government says is illegal. So there couldn't exist any monopolies, since anyone could start any business venture at any time, and there isn't any motivation to kill since trade is more profitable.
Bastiat wrote "Man can only derive life and enjoyment from a per- petual search and appropriation; that is, from a perpetual application of his faculties to objects, or from labor. This is the origin of property. But also he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appro- priating the productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder. Now, labor being in itself a pain, and man being nat- urally inclined to avoid pain, it follows, and history proves it, that wherever plunder is less burdensome than labor, it prevails; and neither religion nor morality can, in this case, prevent it from prevailing. When does plunder cease, then? When it becomes more burdensome and more dangerous than labor. It is
very evident that the proper aim of law is to oppose the fatal tendency to plunder with the powerful obstacle of collective force; that all its measures should be in favor of property, and against plunder. But the law is made, generally, by one man, or by one class of men. And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of a preponderant force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate."
read the whole thing for free https://mises.org/document/2731/The-Law
reply to your last 2 replies; Yes, I wish the forum would not try to cut discussion short. I'm not sure where to start. How am I wrong about conquering? I didn't say modern conquest was or wasn't about taking over the tax structure. What would prevent a conqueror from instituting said tax system, even if the previous society had none? When you say, "a monopoly of violence", what precisely do you mean by that term. Do you mean in regard to taxation or something broader? I know I haven't addressed all the points you raised, but would like to clear this question.
Let's go back to your illustration of the Monopoly board game. If the banker has a gun, and all the other players are unarmed, eventually the banker can do whatever he wants, by virtue of being the only one with a gun; a monopoly of violence. If all players had guns, and if they could all come and go as they pleased, then there is no monopoly of violence.
This applies the same way to the world. The government has guns, and they have given themselves the "legal" right to use them on certain people who they deem as "criminals", regardless of whether they have done anything wrong. If you have the wrong kind of plant in your pocket, you go to jail, end of story. If you park your car in the wrong part of the road, they can take it from you. We live at the permission of the people with guns; they have a monopoly of violence.
What I am saying is that the facts show that people living in these situations are much more prone to being destroyed by the very forces that claim to protect them.
America is a unique case, because so many citizens are armed, but citizens are armed with the caveat that they cannot use them against government forces. Government forces can use their arms on citizens, but not the other way around. To that point, I submit exhibit A http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w282.html
The basic point is that when you're in a position where you are obeying orders at the point of a gun; that's not freedom, or negotiation, or whatever else you want to call it. It is violence. And I do not believe that free people should have to live in a world of forced slavery.
We could argue all day long about theoretical systems, possible other ways of doing things, or whatever. But the bottom line is simple: if slavery is wrong, it is wrong. If violence should not be initiated on people, it shouldn't be initiated. Exhibit B http://www.freedomainradio.com/images/slaves_should_be_free.jpg
reply to; "Just read."...You have made a case that the system in place had flaws. You have not made a case that no system would be better. As you observed, the little people, still got screwed. The free market did nothing to protect them. To me,it indicates a need for tighter regulation. Not "none". Has the system ever caught anyone, and thereby prevented victimization? I think it has. It's not black and white.
Right, because my point is "WHAT FREE MARKET??"
I'm making the case, but you're missing it. If the SYSTEM IS CAUSING THE FLAWS, THE SYSTEM CANNOT SOLVE THE FLAWS. That's like saying "Okay, so you're telling me that my cancerous tumor is bad, and we cut like...5% of my tumor off and it's still growing bigger than before.... but you haven't made the case that we should just cut the tumor out altogether." The tumor is CAUSING the problems. The MONOPOLY OF VIOLENCE is what is causing the SYSTEMATIC problems.
If 91,000 additional regulators doesn't do the job for you, I'm not sure what will. More of the same? Isn't that the definition of insanity?
reply to;.The initiation...There is no accountability in monopolies. Again,an absolute. I see no evidence that that is an absolute. If you play a game of monopoly, one player is appointed/ elected "banker". No threat of violence is at play. The idea that "if bankers could go bankrupt, it would protect society is nonsense. That IS a right wing, free market, Milton Friedman fallacy. How did that work out with Bernie Madoff, even though he WAS caught and prosecuted. His victims were not made whole. The ability for some to take the money and run, negates your theory.
In the game of monopoly, there is no threat of violence because all the players consent to play. There is less cheating in the game because people can walk away at any time.
Let's say that people were forced to play the board game? The banker has a gun. What stops the banker from cheating?
Bernie Madoff wouldn't exist in a free market, at least to that extent, because corporations wouldn't exist in a free market, as they are a government controlled entity. There wouldn't be incentive to cheat people in a free market, because they can walk away. Banks, as an example, would have to worry about going bankrupt because nobody would bail them out. When banks get bailed out, how does that discourage the behavior? Did you know about George W Bush and financial regulations... Regulatory philosophy
The number of economic regulation governmental workers was increased by 91,196, whereas Bill Clinton had cut down the number by 969. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration#Regulatory_philosophy
Regulation and oversight is the answer? How can anyone arrive at that conclusion, given the evidence?
reply to "Nope..." It seems that you can only envision these things as absolutes. Could there be a government that functions to protect the weak from the more powerful or advantaged? Must a government be inherently violent to be considered a government in your view?
The initiation of violence either is or is not? Is there a partial-initiation of violence that is neither one or the other? This isn't absolutes, this is just reality. Getting sent to jail isn't some sort of partial half-measure. It's reality.
I think the argument for protecting the weak from the more powerful doesn't understand accountability. There is no accountability in monopolies. And monopolies can only be created as a side-effect of the monopoly of violence. Accountability is created by risk and consequences. What is the advantage of a business to take advantage of the poor or weak when they need them to buy products? But in a government structure of public corporations where they have to make money for shareholders, screw the little guy, who cares. If banks were capable of going bankrupt, and they would in a free society, THAT is what would protect the little guy. They wouldn't be out to do too much bad behavior, or else they would end up destroying themselves. Why don't you see people run out into the middle of the freeway? Because the consequences and risks are REAL. If the economy worked like that, you wouldn't have banksters running into the freeway, trampling on the poor, and then getting saved by the govt. Government cannot protect the weak... sorry, that is only an emotional platitude. Governments CREATE the weak, by upholding organized rings of crime at the top.
So you are advocating social darwinism?
Nope. I'm a huge advocate for private charity. But even if I was (which I am not), advocating the use of violence on one because he might be more fit, or wealthy, or whatever, doesn't change the fact that some have more than others. To assume otherwise is to deny reality. Everyone is unique, and is born with something, some combination, that others do not have.
I'm advocating that people should not be slaves. I am advocating that we are equal and free, and as such, do not need to be ruled over. The government is only a violent middleman. We can't figure out how to take care of each other without having a gun in our faces?
reply to; Back to my point;...Yes, you made that point, but yet you didn't. Correlation is not causation. Yes, it would have been difficult,{Switzerland} costly,and wasn't that strategically important. Low ROI, as you said. Poland didn't fare so well. When you say it is more profitable to trade than to conquer, that seems to assume facts not in evidence. But then maybe, if you could have told that to Alexander and Napoleon, they would have just said, oh yeah, you must be right.
In an age of nuclear weapons, the disparity isn't so great as it was in the times of Alexander or others. Just like the colonists were able to defeat the indigenous people of America so easily... they had the weapons. If both sides are properly armed, trade is vastly more profitable. Seems reasonable to me. The point isn't pacificism. The point is equal armament in a voluntary way. Equal measures to maintain self-defense and deterrence.
You can't stop people who are insane, but you can deter them. Like a bear attacking a campsite. You don't have to outrun the bear, you only have to outrun the other campers. Harsh, but like I said, this isn't utopian.
Reply to; my only point;..Well in theory, states are or could be voluntary. I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but I'm guessing you are much younger than I am. I have seen this state, the US, operate in a much better fashion. Still far from perfect, but better. Perhaps that colors my perception as to what's possible. You make a good point about the question of whether life on earth will become untenable.
Im 30. States aren't voluntary, or I would have left the USA already. I can't afford the trip yet, and I haven't secured enough income to move to another place and give up my citizenship. The United States is the only tax farm (as far as I know) that makes citizens who leave the country still pay taxes back to it. Not much voluntary about that. And because of rampant passport/visa laws, which were seriously established in the 70s, if I am right on the timing, it has become much much harder to emmigrate and immigrate.
Not much in those statements I disagree with. I just don't think it's practical to have that balance of armament without a state. Yes, it is more practical to trade with China or Russia than to try to conquer them. Iraq wasn't so lucky, or well armed.
My only point is that rather than "states", let's just have voluntary communities. As armament becomes more available, we will get to that point anyway, which is why established powers are so invested in stopping other people from becoming as well armed (and spending nonsensical amounts on continuing to develop arms, even when they are generations ahead). This is all assuming that living on the Earth isn't unteneble (polluted or used up), or destroyed first.
Throw the sick to the lions. Nice.
For someone who has "worked 40 years", that makes you about 60. Your childish assertions are merely strawmen. If you wish to talk intelligently about anything, feel free, as you can see myself and notaneoliberal are doing. Since you seem unable to add anything intelligent to a discussion, which, you're free to flippantly spout nonsense, why bother? Is life so miserable that you have to hassle complete strangers on a message board who are discussing ideas?
Strawman my ass. It's what you said. Liar.
"Like a bear attacking a campsite. You don't have to outrun the bear, you only have to outrun the other campers. Harsh, but like I said, this isn't utopian."
I'm referring to countries, not individual sick people. If you could read, you would be able to avoid making yourself look foolish.
In a system that I would advocate, communities and families would take care of their own, not an overarching state.
Seriously, you're just embarrassing yourself. And being a jerk.
So throw whole countries full of people to the "bears" then.
OK, now I get it.
That's supposed to be different.
What you are advocating was called "the wild,wild west".
It was marginally better than the Chile experiment.
The big embarrassment is yours, in your final insinuation.
If you can make a complete ass out of yourself by interjecting into a discussion and inferring nonsense, you pretty much have to!
Correct. It's an irresistible knee-jerk thing for him.
I wouldn't have to, if you wouldn't drop other conversion I've had with you.
You should finish what you start.
Call me an ass again and I won't be so nice.
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"Where were they before the housing bubble burst?"
Mainstream economics teaches that there is a business cycle in capitalism, so there will inevitably be booms and busts. It also teaches that the market is unpredictable. Anyone who tells you they know how to predict the market is a scam artist.
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"Mainstream economics is leading the world off the fiscal cliff."
Capitalism is leading the world off a cliff. Poverty, homelessness, financial struggle, inequality, concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few are all the product of capitalism.
Capitalism is an unfair system because it is based on theft, exploitation and welfare for the lucky, as explained here. It pays you based on how lucky or unique you are. The only fair economic system is socialism, as explained here, which pays you based on how hard you work.
In capitalism, half of all the income workers produce gets paid to a small handful of gamblers who got lucky investing in the market like bankers and entrepreneurs. Workers have to work for free for 6 months each year just to pay off the gambling winnings of investors. And most of the remaining income gets paid to a small handful of people who have bargaining power merely because they are unique like athletes and celebrities. There is something terribly flawed with a system that pays Kim Kardashian hundreds of times more than a brain surgeon for each hour worked.
The vast majority of the workers who produce everything - the engineers, construction workers, factory workers, doctors, miners, farmers, teachers - have to fight over the few crumbs that remain.
Even though worker productivity is $65 per hour, enough to make every worker wealthy, most workers are broke because they only get paid a tiny fraction of the $65 per hour they produce. Most of that $65 unfairly gets paid to the lucky and unique.
So workers get a very, very bad deal in capitalism.
The only fair system is one which pays workers 100% of the income since they do 100% of the work (no income should be paid to investors) and that income should be allocated based on how hard you work.
If you and I both work 40 hours, we should both get paid the same amount. The only fair reason for you to get paid more than me is if you worked harder. And the way you pay people based on how hard they work is by limiting differences in income to only what is necessary to get people to do physically or mentally difficult jobs and to get people to give their maximum performance in performance based jobs.
If we allocated income that way, we would be able to pay every worker from $115,000 per year to $460,000 per year as explained here for working just 20 hours per week as explained here. Everyone would be wealthy. Workers would get paid fairly and none of them would be broke.
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"You know what differs the Austrians from all other economists? Austrians don't attempt to make abstract models and crackpot theories. Austrians try to look at human action, and math, and figure out how it works."
That is the opposite of what austrian economics is!
Austrian economics is based on praxeology WHICH IS A REJECTION OF MATH AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES! They believe the scientific method does not apply to economics.
They also do in fact have theories, like their theory of the business cycle which claims that all business cycles are the result of central banks.
It is a crackpot theory, like all their theories, because it is not peer reviewed and the reason why it is not peer reviewed is because it is disputed by all the evidence.
The business cycle is an unavoidable consequence of an unplanned economy. There were cycles before and after central banks.
And if you got your economics education from a mainstream academic institution, and not the internet or the mises website, you would learn that the reason why we had a great depression is because the right-wing loons convinced the government not to use the central bank to stop the banking crisis and the reason why we only had a recession in 2008 and not a depression is because the central bank did in fact step in to stop the banking crisis.
Austrian economics is not a science. It is an ideology that wants to eliminate government so that we can have completely unregulated markets. It wants libertarianism.
Libertarianism is a society where everyone fends for themselves so that the strong can dominate the weak until society is eventually ruled entirely by a small group of rich people.
If you want society to be completely ruled and dominated by the 1%, you want libertarianism.
If you want a society where freedom only exists for the few at the top who have most of the money, you want libertarianism.
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"Let's have a voluntary society. You guys can run your market socialism. Other people can try out what they want. Whatever."
Agreed.
I wrote a post on how to actually make that work and have a society that has multiple competing economic systems which you can read here.
I read your article, and I agree. People should have the choice of what they want.
I completely disagree that "capitalism" is the problem though, because the only capitalism you really see these days is people doing business transactions via craigslist, or in the parking lot in the middle of the night; mutually beneficial transactions. What we have now, as a system, is so far away from capitalism that it's laughable.. crony capitalism. corporatism, whatever. But to say that our economy is going down the tubes because of voluntary, mutually-beneficial transactions between two people on a large scale is just wrong. There is all kinds of licensing, regulations, legal hurdles, favoritism, corporate welfare, protectionism and on and on and on. Large companies dominate the landscape because their business is upheld by government laws, which is in turn influenced by corporate moneys....a vicious cycle, and a far cry from capitalism.
I've written a book about the ills of the system. You can see a simple chart of the idea here, and it hinges on the monopoly of violence.
http://endlessunlimited.com/?page_id=217
I know a lot about anarcho-capitalism, libertarianism and voluntarianism. I listened to tons of Stefan Molyneux's podcasts and used to regularly listen to Free Talk Live.
But I never heard of anyone who described themselves as advocating any of them and not also advocating privatization. So I am interested in hearing how you explain that.
Although we don't have completely free markets, we have had minimal regulations and lots of regulations. And the evidence is clear. The less regulation we had, the more inequality, poverty, fraud, recessions and inflation we had.
Before things like OSHA, social security, medicaid, medicare and hospitals having to treat everyone regardless of ability to pay, life was pretty brutal for most. Society was significantly worse for most. I'm not sure why you would want to return to that.
A return to times past doesn't mean a return to the technology of the past. In the civil war era, they were cutting off limbs with hacksaws... who wants a return to that? In fact, as technology has allowed the individual to live more prosperously, the Institution should be diminishing, yet it is the exact opposite; which is very troubling.
I'm not saying the elimination of regulations will mean we will return to the technology of the past.
I'm saying the elimination of regulations will mean we will return to a significant portion of the population not being able to afford the basics of survival like housing and medical care.
Have you ever read Walden? It seems the indigenous people of the country afforded good housing rather easily, and with less than a weeks work.
Are you a fan of the Zeitgeist movement? Seems like something you'd be into.
Walden, if my memory serves me correctly, was a socialist system that allocated everything equally. There were no unregulated markets. It is nothing like what you advocate. If you allocate income via the market, you will have enormous inequality and all the poverty that comes with it.
The Zeitgeist Movement promotes conspiracy theories, doesn't understand economics, wants to eliminate money and wants to eliminate markets. I am against all of that.
However, I am open to the idea that a centrally planned economy in a democratic, open society, with the right kinds of accountability and incentives, that uses money and calculates based on labor time could work well.
But eliminating money is not at all workable.
I think you're thinking about "Walden Two". Completely different book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Two
Also, the problem with economists is that they try to devise economic theories without first considering moral truths. They should start with moral truths, then build a theory.
You seem to have a specific moral truth in mind?
The non-aggression principle should certainly be a starting point. But, of course, this carries with it all sorts of unfashionable baggage--that everyone is actually equal, therefore slavery is wrong, compulsory rulers are evil, etc.
Ah so natural law. Yes, Bayes Theorem is narrowing in on you pretty efficiently. I don't think that the Ayn-Rand-and-Lao-Tsu jab was too far off the mark.
Are you going to mention Ludwig Von Mises next? Or have I already missed that part?
I have yet to hear a convincing refutation of natural law. Also, I have things to disagree with of all the peeps you have mentioned, but I dont toss the baby out with the bathwater.
In a world filled with unique individuals, you're welcome to label and classify if it helps you pigeonhole and rationalize. Gotta do what you gotta do.
This would be a great discussion sometimes, because I think Zeitgeist highlights the fundamental mistakes that economists make, in theorizing.
1- misunderstanding of human nature
2- misunderstanding of violence
You don't happen to live in the pacific northwest do you?
I suppose you'd have to read Walden again (it's free on the internet, and the bit on housing starts around p16).
I agree with your evaluation of Zeitgeist. If money was done away with, it would start again, as it has before. People want to trade. Ignoring markets is a recipe for failure. But I would also say that centralization is as well.
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com
no password or signup
Our OWS Working Group has one goal only -
To do what 80% of Americans polled want ......... To get corrupting money out
......... of our political system by passing
......... a Constitutional Amendment that will:
►Reverse the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United that enabled super-pacs
►Reverse the 1976 Supreme Court decision Buckley that equated money is speech
►Eliminate the 1886 judicially created fiction that corporations are people .
.
.
We will attract candidates to support an amendment,
and
we will attract voters to support an amendment,
and
we will attract voters to support candidates who support an amendment
You can't get money out of our political system.
And overturning Citizens United means banning political speech. That is oppressive and will never work. You would have to shut down every newspaper, blog, tv show, radio show and movie that offered political opinions.
You will turn our country into North Korea.
And even if you managed to shut down every media apparatus that people are spending money on, that won't employ a single person or lift a single person out of poverty or financial struggle.
It won't solve anything. And it will make our country tyrannical.
Yes, it is possible to get the money out of our political system. Politicians are beholden to their financial donors because it's not possible to get elected without accepting private funding. Changing that would change everything. It is possible.
We already have limits on how much you can donate to a candidate.
So it is fine to allow Koch to spend $500 million promoting his candidate so long as the candidates have public funding?
And who is going to fund the candidate to get them popular enough to qualify for public funding?
Also, Citizens United allows you to invest your own money in making political statements. That is part of your right to free speech. Reversing that means you have to shut down all political media. That is insane. And tyrannical.
NOT TRUE- If all you did was "reverse citizens united" - McCainFeingold would kick in again - money is not speech
Have you read the CU decision? or Buckley?
They are both on our site
McCain-Feingold censored advertising of political messages for everyone except established media companies and candidates during an election.
Citizens United made a movie with a political message and advertised it during an election. The supreme court rightfully said McCain-Feingold or any other law cannot censor their ability to advertise their political message because it is a violation of their right to free speech.
You want to censor everyone except established media and their candidates.
You want to censor my ability to advertise my political message to the public during an election that all the candidates running are a bunch of frauds picked by the establishment to do the bidding of the rich.
Since it costs money to speak my voice to the masses, money does equal speech.
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Turn on the radio or television and you will hear millions of dollars speaking.
Tyranny is popular these days. Watch how many peeps vote for it in November.
I agree.
However, since you are a libertarian, we probably don't agree on what constitutes tyranny.
Libertarians believe in capitalism and unfettered markets. In capitalism, the more money you have, the more money you get paid. So it inevitably leads to greater and greater concentrations of income. And since the amount of income you have determines how much power and freedom you have, it always results in a tyranny of the wealthy.
This is unfair and unjust because capitalism is an economic system based on theft, exploitation and welfare for the lucky as explained here. And capitalism allocates income based on how lucky or unique you are. The only fair economic system is socialism which is a system that allocates income based on how hard you work as explained here.
I'm not a libertarian. I'd be closest to a voluntaryist. I don't believe in any state-sanctioned violence, only a voluntary society.
When people enter into voluntary agreements with each other, under no duress or coercion, they do so to their mutual benefit. (as a simple example) If I have sheep and you have apples, and we trade sheep for apples, we both benefit. Where's the exploitation? It's a simple argument. If there is no monopoly of violence, there is much less (it's not utopian) extortion, murder, theft, and violence, in trade and in society as a whole.
Sorry, there's just no way to say that when one person can hold a gun to another and force them into a system, such as your socialist example, that it's "fair". Doesn't matter how you arrange the deck chairs; slavery is slavery. Call it what you want.
"I don't believe in any state-sanctioned violence, only a voluntary society. "
Do you believe in privatization of the planet and its resources?
Since Mother Nature does not have a store where you can purchase the planet, 100% of this privatization came by way of pillage and plunder, not voluntary agreement.
Like Mark Twain said, "There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed."
Privatization of the Earth and its resources means you are claiming control over a portion of the planet for your own private benefit to the exclusion of everyone else and using whatever force is necessary to maintain your control. That is unjust and barbaric.
When you privatize a part of the planet, you are stealing that part of the planet from everyone else.
Every single good and service we produce in our economy are produced using these stolen resources. Every single business is essentially trafficking in stolen goods. So our entire economy is based on ill-gotten gains.
The planet and its rich resources rightfully belong to everyone which gives everyone a natural right to be able to participate in converting the planet's resources into useful goods and services and a natural right to get paid fully for that work, without exploitation.
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"Where's the exploitation?"
Exploitation is using another person's labor without paying them an adequate compensation.
An adequate compensation is the amount of income you would receive if we allocated income fairly. Since the whole purpose of income is to get people to work and work hard, the only fair way to allocate income is to pay 100% of our income to workers since they do 100% of the work and to limit differences in income between workers to only what is necessary to get workers to work hard - to do undesirable jobs and to give their maximum performance in performance based jobs.
Allocating income this way will enable us to pay every worker from $115k to $460k per year for working just 20 hours per week. You are being exploited if you get paid less than that and 95%+ are.
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"Sorry, there's just no way to say that when one person can hold a gun to another and force them into a system, such as your socialist example"
I agree. People should be free to participate in the economic system they want. I wrote a post here that explains how we can have multiple economic systems in the same geographic location that compete against each other for your voluntary membership.
I don't believe in the privatization of the Earth. That's what I wrote about in my book. I agree with Rousseau:
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
The closest to my ideal in recent times would be the Iroquois, as described in the first chapter of People's History by Howard Zinn.
Ok, you are a socialist, not a capitalist.
But weren't you the one telling people to learn economics from Mises? Or am I confusing you with someone else?
man, the labels are killing you. I'm not a socialist. Yes, Mises is legit. The closest to my beliefs is voluntaryist.
Mises was an ardent supporter of capitalism based entirely on privatization!
You can't do what Mises advocated without privatization. How does your economic system work without privatization?
First off, just because somebody says something I disagree with doesn't mean I have to toss the baby out with the bath water. It doesn't mean that EVERYTHING THEY EVER SAID is nonsense, or whatever. That's just childish.
Also, a disclaimer, anyone could surely poke a hole or two in what I am about to project, but that's not the point. If we can agree that monopolies are evil, resisting them is the first step toward something better.
Ownership in my theoretical system is based on mastery. There is no paper deed, or cutting up of land based on arbitrary lines. If I can build something and maintain the land, I own it. In private law, there are multiple judges, enforcement and law are separate, and there wouldn't be corporations, since they're a state-created fiction. Each person can use and "own" what they can master. So there would be no Ted Turners, owning 3x the size of Rhode Island. There would be no hierarchy as in socialism. When a person dies, their heirs could take over the mastery, or the "ownership" passes back to the Earth. Don't have a place to call your own? You only have to go out and find something unoccupied. Communities would evolve and devolve as their owners adapted to the land.
I do believe in ownership, but not through paper deeds and legal transactions. I believe in ownership through mastery. VERY different.
"doesn't mean I have to toss the baby out with the bath water"
Privatization is the baby! It is the heart of what Mises advocates. In his book socialism, the heart of his argument is that you need private ownership in the factors of production (land and resources).
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"If I can build something and maintain the land, I own it"
That is privatization. What about everyone else who wants to build on that land and use that land's resources?
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"There would be no hierarchy as in socialism"
What hierarchy do you think exists in socialism?
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"I believe in ownership through mastery. VERY different."
So if I am terrible working with my computer, I lose my computer?
I think you should just embrace democratic market socialism. It is based on freedom, voluntary arrangements, markets in allocating goods and services, equal ownership in the means of production and allocating income based on how hard you work instead of allocating income through the market.
If you are terrible at your computer, you would stop using it, get better, or get rid of it. Or I suppose you could be a patriotic american and rent a storage shed.
"If you are terrible at your computer, you would stop using it, get better, or get rid of it."
I thought you were only allowed to own something if you were a master at it?
Owning land and owning a computer are two different things. There's a moral difference between owning land (which is a product of nothing and nobody) and owning a pot I created on the wheel (a product of my labor).
So how do you become the owner of a computer?
And if owning resources requires mastery, does that mean only geologists/miners or other resource experts can own resources?
What if more than 1 person wants to own the same land and resources?
What about the people who are born after all the land or most desirable land is owned?
I'm going to write a book on this. If you want a copy in a few years, send me an email. I'll send you one.
Pardon some simple questions
Do you know ANYTHING about Citizens United?
Before CU, for example, you would contend that political speech was banned?
McCain-Feingold never existed?
Do you know ANYTHING about Citizens United?
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com
A constitutional amendment to Overturn Citizens United and Corporate Personhood
For a complete analysis of the amendment issue, and the text of all amendments,
and our comparison of all of the amendments, and the Citizens United case
transcript, and the Citizens United decision, and the Buckley decision,
and analysis of corporate personhood, and analysis of Article III,
and the ABC News poll on CU / CP,
and the PFAW poll on CU / CP,
and 70+ videos on CU / CP from
Chomsky, Hedges, Witchcraft, Reich, Nader , Justice Stevens,
Warren, Lessig, Hartmann, Maher, Kucinich, Graysonm Yugur Sanders, Hightower, etc.
JOIN our OWS Working Group: http://nycga.net/groups/restore-democracy
REGULAR MEETINGS:
Wednesdays 5:30-7:30PM @ 60 Wall St – The Atrium
Our OWS Working Group has one goal -
.... To support the OWS Declaration
......... “a democratic government derives
......... its just power from the people,
......... not from corporations”
.... and to do what polls show
.... 80% of Americans want -
......... To get corrupting money out
......... of our political system by passing
......... a Constitutional Amendment that will:
►Reverse the 2010 Supreme Court decision
Citizens United that enabled super-pacs
►Reverse the 1976 Supreme Court decision
Buckley that equated money is speech
►Eliminate the 1886 judicially created fiction
that corporations are people
The Citizens United ruling allows me and my friends to pool our money and advertise our political ideas before an election.
It upheld our first amendment right to free speech.
McCain-Feingold made that illegal. It prevented us not only from advertising our political message before an election, it also prevented us from advertising any product (like a documentary or a blog) that carried a political message.
That is tyrannical.
What you want to do is ban the advertisement of all political speech right before an election for everyone except the couple of people who made it on an election ballot.
That is tyrannical.
It also lets david koch & shelly to do this & without limits
money is not speech period. corporations are not people period. CU expanded both of the above fictions. McCain Feingold did too
if you are seriuos about wanting to understand this issue, please visit:
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com
A constitutional amendment to
For a complete analysis of the amendment issue,
JOIN our OWS Working Group:
http://nycga.net/groups/restore-democracy
REGULAR MEETINGS:
Wednesdays 5:30-7:30PM @ 60 Wall St – The Atrium
Our OWS Working Group has one goal -
To support the OWS Declaration
and to do what polls show
80% of Americans want -
►Reverse the 2010 Supreme Court decision
…Citizens United that enabled super-pacs
►Reverse the 1976 Supreme Court decision
…Buckley that equated money is speech
►Eliminate the 1886 judicially created fiction
…that corporations are people
"To get corrupting money out "
You mean get everyone's money out except for the money held by the few media conglomerates and the 2 establishment party candidates.
No thanks. That is tyrannical.
I would never back your effort to squash all dissenting voices during election time.
"money is not speech period. corporations are not people period"
Arresting me and the members of my progressive collective because we ran ads during an election informing the public that unregulated free market capitalism is unfair IS TYRANNICAL!
Banning everyone from marketing their political views except giant media conglomerates and the 2 candidates anointed by the establishment political machine is fascist.
I advocate banning them all MONEY IS NOT SPEECH
until SCOTUS stepped in, there were a miriad of restrictions. Why not give YOUR money to the candidate of your choice
So you want to shut down all media from talking politics and the only ones able to make political statements are the couple of candidates able to meet the onerous candidate qualifications?
So you are pro censorship?
If you look at the PROPOSED amendments on our site, you will see that
most SPECIFICALLY protect freedom of the press.
http://corporationsarenotpeopple.webuda,com note the move to amend amendment
So you want to shut down all speech except for the few media mega-corporations and the couple of candidates able to meet the onerous candidate qualifications?
So you want to censor everyone except for a couple of corporations and the candidates they anoint?
THE solution hthat already has 80% support in the polls:
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com
A constitutional amendment to Overturn Citizens United and Corporate Personhood
For a complete analysis of the amendment issue, and the text of all amendments,
and our comparison of all of the amendments, and the Citizens United case
transcript, and the Citizens United decision, and the Buckley decision,
and analysis of corporate personhood, and analysis of Article III,
and the ABC News poll on CU / CP,
and the PFAW poll on CU / CP,
and 70+ videos on CU / CP from
Chomsky, Hedges, Witchcraft, Reich, Nader , Justice Stevens,
Warren, Lessig, Hartmann, Maher, Kucinich, Graysonm Yugur Sanders, Hightower, etc.
http://corporationsarenotpeople.webuda.com no password or signup
JOIN our OWS Working Group: http://nycga.net/groups/restore-democracy
REGULAR MEETINGS: Wednesdays 5:30-7:30PM @ 60 Wall St – The Atrium
[Removed]
I wonder how many potential Occupy supporters you have personally scared away? It has to be in the thousands at least.
All of the S17 protests are triggering a whole new mass of Googlers who follow the first search result for "Occupy Wall Street" to this web site. They show up here and they find silly, unrealistic proposals like this one, conspiracy theories, and partisan squabbling. Not very inspiring.
Having the Fed spend QE money on the unemployed instead of on bailing out rich investors and big bank is not silly or unrealistic.
Regulating what income people are paid who are the recipients of this public money is not silly or unrealistic.
You are clueless.
And these solution are far superior to what you have offered. What solutions have you offered again?
Universal employment at $50/hr, financed directly by the Fed? You think that's realistic? Sustainable?
Universal employment is realistic and sustainable since we will never run out of work to do. We will always think of more new things to consume, new projects to tackle and new goals to pursue than we could ever complete.
A minimum income of $50/hr is only possible if public workers are as productive as US workers are today (that's very realistic), we pay 100% of the public market's income to workers and none to investors (that is 100% certain since that is just a matter of making that the rule) and we limit top pay to just 8 times more than bottom pay (that is also 100% certain since that is just a matter of making that the rule).
What solutions have you offered again?
You're proposing that all of these people should work directly for the Fed, which is independent and does not answer to voters?
You're proposing that the government gets involved in risking money on venture capital startups?
No, I do not say people will work directly for the Fed.
The way our current economy works is the Fed gives money to private banks and those private banks invest that money in private companies.
What I am proposing is for the Fed to give money to a public bank and for those public banks to invest that money in public companies. You would then work for those publicly owned companies.
Although these companies would be start-ups, as I explain in the post, it would not be risky because this public market would be protected, just like every new market was protected when it first developed, by requiring all the companies and workers in the public market to buy from other public companies.
So if you launch a cell phone company, that company would be guaranteed to succeed because it is guaranteed to get all the workers in the public market as customers.
Why not just have the Fed buy companies now and make them employees owned by re selling them to the employees? Why try to create new companies?
Just do a General Motors type deal, although GM is now a huge loser company.
The public companies will be a combination of both new companies and buying existing companies.
I work for a company founded on venture capital. I work for our investors. That's how it works. You're proposing that an independent entity with no accountability should employ all of these people.
The same accountability that exists in private companies and in your company would exist in a public company.
In a public company, if you don't perform the job you were hired to do, you would get fired, just like in a private company.
And in a public company, the people who are ultimately responsible for the success of the company get paid based on how well the company performs, just like in a private company. If the company does not perform well, the people leading it will lose out on a lot of money, just like in a private company.
You plan is to nationalize a huge chunk of the economy and have it all be governed b a government office that does not answer to voters or to any of the three branches of government. Take a step back and think about that for a moment.
Maybe you should read the post again.
Nowhere in this post does it say I want to nationalize anything. No company or industry is being nationalized.
Companies would be individually run and managed by entrepreneurs just like private companies. They would not be run by a government office.
And those companies answer to their customers, not the government, just like private companies. If they do not get enough revenue to cover their expenses, they would be shut down. If they don't deliver what their customers want, they will lose their customers to their competitors.
You're misunderstanding per capita GDP. That includes all overhead and material costs. It cannot all be paid as a wage. Your observation on protectionism, however is getting at the solution.
This wiki article might help you better understand what GDP is.
GDP = Total income paid out = Total expenses incurred by every company in the entire economy = Total price of everything we produce
GDP equals the total income paid out (wages, profit, interest, and rent). When you pay for materials or overhead, you are paying the people who sold you those materials and overhead an income. So it is all income.
There is a difference between gross income and profit. You are making my point. GDP is the total of everything spent in a year, or at least attempts to be. It is not all profit. There is a difference between income and profit. Every piece of junk, sold at your local Walmart is part of GDP. It is not all profit.
I never said GDP equals total profits.
I said GDP equals the total income paid out to everyone in the economy.
Total income includes all income that people receive like wages, interest, profit and rent.
You should see some of his other ideas about how to spend the entire GDP on social benefits that he's come up with over the last year. My favorite was the plan where everybody gets paid $400,000 of guaranteed income. People repeated the word "inflation" in a thousand ways before kind of collectively giving up.
I never advocated a plan that pays everyone $400k, that is financially impossible, or advocated a plan that pays the entire GDP out in social benefits.
I went to business school which requires a graduate level education in economics, worked for the Fed, and worked as an investment banker. I know more about economics and inflation than you.
Okay sure, I looked it up and it was actually $115k to $460k.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/solution-raise-the-minimum-wage-to-110000-per-year/
And I absolutely do not believe anything that you said in your second paragraph. There is zero chance that a person who doesn't understand the definition of "GDP" worked for the Fed or worked as an investment banker. And I know from experience from talking to you about your plan to pay everybody $115k to $460k guaranteed, that you don't understand much about inflation. Some of your explanations were really entertaining though. I could go for some more of that. [grabs some popcorn]
GDP = Total income
A $14.5 trillion GDP means we paid out $14.5 trillion in income.
It does not matter how many comments you write disputing this fact or whether you believe or not. That is what GDP is.
Read this wiki article if you don't understand what GDP is.
Or look at the data issued by the BEA, the government agency responsible for reporting our national accounts. Since you are clueless on economics, the national accounts are the national economic data every country must report like GDP and total income.
Here the BEA says we produced $14.5 trillion in income in 2010.
And here the BEA says our GDP was also $14.5 trillion in 2010.
That's because GDP = Total Income. They are the same numbers. When you buy a $100 product, you are paying someone or some people $100 in income. You are raising GDP by $100 and increasing the total income paid out by $100.
And as was explained to you, redistributing EXISTING income does not cause inflation. It is mathematically impossible to pay out $14.5 trillion in income and have the economy inflate beyond $14.5 trillion. The only way to inflate an economy is to pay out more income than you produce.
Yeah, there are a few problems with that.