The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. -John Maynard KeynesNovan Leon said:
Yeah, an economist who doesn't consider the long run. I want to follow his ideas, all right!
Were Raeganomics really all that bad?
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Yeah, an economist who doesn't consider the long run. I want to follow his ideas, all right!
Indeed it is.Novan Leon said:
Do you know what socialism means? Because I'm not convinced you do. Socialism is worker control of the means of production. It doesn't necessitate central planning, in fact there are free market socialists [http://www.mutualist.org]. You'd know that if you read a couple of books on socialism instead of relying on what the dictionary told you.
Communism is a classless, stateless society characterised by gift economies based on the principle of 'from each according to his ability to each according to their need. It is a type of socialism but a very specific type. So far this isn't boding very well for your understanding of politics, but lets ignore that for a minute.
Take away the the part about centralised ownership and control and you get to the heart of what's wrong with this statement. Their is a huge difference between resources allocated according to the whims of a dictator and resources allocated according via participatory democratic methods.
A system isn't a good system if it only 'makes a few people rich'. If that's the case why not just stick to Feudalism? That would make a few people rich.Inarticulate_Underachiever said:
Hate to break it to you buddy, but the Keynes basically designed the entirity of modern macroeconomics. So, if you really want to, you can, but you'll pretty much fail at, well, everything.FiveSpeedf150 said:
Keynes was saying, at that point, that worrying about the long run is foolish in an economic recession, buffoon.
Whoa there, no need to resort to name calling. I'm not a fan of Keynesian economics because he leans too far away from laissez-faire capitalism for my tastes. And I still maintain my stance that careful consideration of longterm implications is never foolish, regardless of current circumstances.Rolling Thunder said:
And... you're free to disagree.
Well, the sad truth is you can't make everyone rich. I agree with the theory that if you divided all the money in the US up equally right now in about 15 years or so most of the rich would be rich again and most of the poor would be poor again. Now, there would be some deviations such as paris hilton probably having to work the local street corner for food money, but yeah...Aardvark Soup said:
Actually, Keynes never leans away from Laissez-Faire save in highly limited scenarios, that being that of economic recession. The lean away from pure Laissez-Faire begain, quite ironically, with Adam Smith (the father of capitalism), who pointed out that certain services were best produced by the state (in terms of efficency. Smith never advocated one way or another), such as policing, roads, courts, poor relief, and basic healthcare. With this we can see that, in essence, Laissez-Faire never really got off the ground save with it's resurgance with the publishing of AtlasFiveSpeedf150 said:
And you should recall that at the time, Keynes was writing during the most hideously crippling Depression the world has ever seen, where much of the attempts at curbing it and ending it, especially on the part of the U.S government, were being hamstrung by their over-consideration of the long term, in particular with regards to deficit finance. This quote is often taken out of context, as you have done so earlier, to mean that Keynesian economics pays little or no attention to the long term. This is incorrect.
Even beyond that, it's worth noting that Economics is still a social science, emphasis on the science part. Insofar as Keynes pushed back against the prevailing laissez-faire prescription of the time, it was very much because it ended up that a lot of the circumstances of the Great Depression were not explainable by the prevailing theories of the time. When evidence arises that cannot be explained by our current theories, we try to formulate new theories that explains all the evidence in a parsimonious manner. Science.Rolling Thunder said:
Laissez-faire, as an economic policy prescription, was, it ends up, founded on an incomplete understanding of the underlying economic behavior. And, being perfectly fair, so is the purest formulations of economic interventionism, in light of new Keynsian synthesis that provides the prevailing theoretical framework today. But, ignoring the actual economic behavior because you like a particular prescription, however obsolete the theory that it's based on, is insane. It's like complaining about modern biology, because the science has largely discredited trepanation and bloodletting, and those were just cool.
You're splitting hairs.tan-z said:
Free market socialism exists only in a theoretical sense, and it's feasibility in the real world is highly debatable. I think reading too many books on socialism is the cause of the problem here.
I challenge you to point out a single Communist society that is both classless and stateless, much less demonstrate how this is the norm.tan-z said:
In an economic sense, both encroach equally on the free market. I don't see how the political engine for managing the free market changes the level of interference.tan-z said:
Why is it so bad for only a few people to be rich, as long as everyone has equal freedom and opportunity, regardless of material possessions?Aardvark Soup said:
I think watching too much McCarthyite propaganda is the cause of the problem here. Free-market socialism is not impossible. In fact the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque region of northern spain would suggest quite the opposite.Novan Leon said:
Why would I need to show a communist society that was both classless and stateless if communism is both of those by definition. Anything that is neither cannot claim to be communist, this includes the soviet union, china and cuba.tan-z said:
As for examples, their are a couple of tribes that lived in a manner similar to communism. I believe Marx was quite fond of pointing to the example of the iroqouis although to my mind the best example would be Catalhoyuk [http://www.urkommunismus.de/catalhueyuek_en.html].
Because your stuck in some kind of conservative mind loop in which the only possibilities are the free market and central planning and any new system that comes along is placed into either of those categories, or at least that's the impression I'm getting. It certainly takes a special kind of mind to say that in economic terms their is no difference between resources allocated by a dictator and resources allocated by the people through democratic methods.
And I thought you were a fan of Milton Friedman? Isn't Friedman's response to the whole chile thing the fact that the free market was imposed by a dictatorship and not by a democracy and that the liberalisation of their economy helped them liberalise their political system?
Anyway, I think I'm going to try a different tact since I can see you're not going to be easily convinced. I found this article that I thought you might find interesting, it's a critique of reagonomics by the free market economist Murray Rothbard - http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1544
Actually the french Laissez-faire economist Gustave de Molinari argued in the 19th century that all of those things were best provided by the free market.Rolling Thunder said:
yrogerg said:
Your argument is based on the fallacious assumption that Keynesian theory is somehow obsolete. Parts of it are, or rather have been surpassed by newer economic theories in the Post-Keynesian period and the Saltwater school of economics. The fact that these are newer theories, however, does not invalidate the original obserbvations and analysis performed by Keynes nor does it refute any parts of the theory. Indeed, it proves the very strength of it, that sixty-plus years of economic theory can be based on the works of one man.
Actually, I was agreeing with you, and asserting that Keynes's original formulation was very much based on the fact that the behavior of the economy during the Great Depression didn't actually match the predictions set forward by prior theory. Particularly with regard to the sensitivity of wages and prices to market forces, IIRC.Rolling Thunder said:
I'd say that the current synthesis holds that this is not the absolute complete story, but I absolutely agree that we're talking a level of difference akin to that between Origin of Species and the neo-Darwinian synthesis, not the difference between Ptolemy and Copernicus.
Many 19th century physicians argued that human health was ruled by the four humours...tan-z said:
As opposed to studying or working in public policy, or academia? Yes, economies are multifaceted, but that's even more reason to read thoroughly and thoughtfully. Trying to assess a subject so complex from a narrow perspective is likely to lead to skewed thinking.Novan Leon said:
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Ive always been confused by this, republicans seem to be more spend crazy them dems but they always say they are for fiscal reponsibility, I mean the seem to love to throw as much as they can into the military but when it comes to infrastructure or citizens of the US they balk and call it wasteful. From what Ive been reading under every republican pres in the last 30 years our deficite has gone up while under the dems it tends to go down or at least slow in growth.thiosk said:
This is a perfect example of why there is such a disconnect between your point of view and my own. In all of my comments I am talking about the real-world implementations of these political ideologies whereas you're talking about them in the context of their most idealistic definition.tan-z said:
This becomes a debate on semantics. If you're going to say that self-proclaimed and almost universally accepted Communist nations like the Soviet Union, China and Cuba aren't, in fact, Communist at all, then it becomes extremely difficult to discuss anything until we agree on the precise definitions of the subjects we're discussing. To be honest, I'm getting tired and I don't feel it's worth the effort just to keep this debate going, especially since we're going so far off-topic.
You fail to demonstrate how the two are different in the context of the free market, other than the way they're derived.tan-z said:
I never said I was a fan of Milton Friedman, and I haven't done enough homework on the Chile issue to give you a proper response.tan-z said:
While the article is interesting, it is primarily a critique of Reagan's actions on the economy, not Reaganomics itself. In fact, for each principle that the author mentions, he actually demonstrates how Reagan failed to follow his own economic rhetoric (ie. Reaganomics) on the matter, the end result having a negative impact on the economy. This actually results in the author supporting Reaganomic principles instead of disproving them. Regardless, it's just another opinion piece from another noteworthy economist among many.tan-z said:
My opinion is that you, and others like you, often spend too much time working within a theoretical mindset and not enough time examining historical precedent, the impact of human nature on economics, and the real wold practicality of the ideas you propose or support. I think that many members of academia are too concerned with research and hypothesis, and not concerned enough with testing and result analysis. The former is easy and gives you freedom to explore new ideas, but the latter destroys false notions and gives you the real answers about what works and what doesn't. People naturally accept ideas that support their own pre-existing notions about the world, and unless we continually put our own ideas through the fire by testing and (re)validation, we end up with grand ideas with very little substance.
I'm going to go ahead and bow out of the discussion for now. I think I've had my say. I might reply here and there but I've probably said all I can at this point.
EDIT: Re-phrasing for clarification and grammatical changes.
...in that 19th century ideas about medicine are demonstrably false, whereas 19th century ideas about economics can still be justified given a sufficiently shaky grasp on history and econometrics?Rolling Thunder said:
Well, I could wax poetic about how the republican party and the democratic party are nothing more than different names for the same bullshit. However, that deficit up and down business is really quite meaningless, you can pick and choose specific numbers and indicators in order to make any case you want.Worgen said:
The president, however, matters little; honestly, its the congress. Under clinton the republican congress helped drive an enormous economic expansion... and president clinton was great for staying out of the way of Bush and Reagan policies. The deficit decreased through revenue expansion, not due to changes in spending-- spending has gone up continuously.
Now when the neoconservatives took control under the republican banner, well, revenues fell, spending went up, and our overseas adventurism took a turn for the more-violent. Worse, years of power had corrupted the republican members of congress, and the scandals are still sorting themselves out. These are not natural republican tendencies-- remember, we elected Nixon, the republican, to end vietnam-- he was only disgraced by the political machinations of watergate but the election of the republican party signaled the real end of support for that war.
After they've been in charge for a few more years, it will hit the democrats hard in exactly the same way.
I support a "throw the fucking bums out" strategy, and implore all my american brethren to consider it as well. Republican? Democrat? Who cares. Replace the Incumbents at the polls next year-- a freshman congress might actually accomplish something if they don't have to fight through all the lines of entrenchment established by career senators, representatives, and lobbyists.
Won't happen though, the democrats and republicans have a stranglehold over our political system, and we're going to be stuck, mired in the same bullshit until the country collapses in on itself.