"Common Good"? Hogwash.

[Bill Mattocks]

The problem with this line of thinking is that the Central Bank is continually confiscating part of our income through inflation. For middle class people, the effect of losing buying power year after year after year makes it nigh impossible to save very much. The government has under reported inflation for fifty years and people just don't realize that they are being hit by this hidden tax. When one couples this with the income the government outright confiscates, it's no wonder that people are left impoverished at the end of their lives.

Another classic problem is that retirement savings are meant to work through compound interest over a long period of time. Small investments at the beginning of a working career are not the same as small investments made at the end of a working career. In fact, not even very large investments (assuming such funds are available) make up for the 30-40 years of compound interest that has been missed. One cannot really start late and make up the difference.

 

[Omar B]

Of course you're right as always Bill, even though the French Revolution was not a capitalist society so the rules of the distribution of money was vastly different and the government's power was vastly larger than it is even now. So the example doesnt really fit at all.

But as you said, people will take if you don't give. Zombie Apocalypse!

 

[Omar B]

Money's value is actually determined by how much is in circulation. Money is created when people take out loans. People take out more loans when they cannot save enough to purchase goods. People cannot save enough to purchase goods because of limited incomes, heavy tax burdens, and backdoor income confiscation due to inflation. Private industries exert downward pressure on incomes. Governments exert upward pressure on taxes. The Central Bank determines inflation. At every step of the way, we see that the regular person has very little impact on the value of money.

I agree whole heartedly with you man. Those loans devalue money because it's pretty much a blank check drawn on basically no value produced in the form of goods or work. They didn't have money to pay back the loan in the first place and then it's compounded by them wanting to throw more money at the problem.

Great post!

 

[Sukerkin]

In answer to your earlier question, Omar, I used to be what is termed a Neo-Keynsian in terms of my views on what constituted a viable model for maintaining a reasonable equilibrium for the 'ordinary' person in a society.

At present, it is my view that there is no cohesive model that actually works. Part of the problem is that certain forces have acted to disconnect 'money' from the value of the products and the means of production.

What makes this a really bad problem is that a couple of those forces are significant elements of the Western economies viz the banking sector, the stock exchanges and the legal fiction that is the 'corporation'. These have created an enormous conflation of illusiory wealth by means of credit, over-production of 'baseless' cash and the harvesting of the 'real' resources of the world to prop up a relatively few economies in a non-sustainable style.

Another related big problem is that, if you are socialist/liberal in your outlook (as I mostly am), it is tempting to try and get government to act as a stabaliser on errant market fluctuations. But economies are hugely complex flows and eddies of activity and predicting and managing them is as fruitless a task as predicting the weather :lol:. That means that too heavy a government hand on the 'regulator' can make matters worse rather than better.

It's why I believe that the only hope of reasonable success in management of economies is to have what we call a Mixed one - where the government takes care of certain essentials that private enterprise just does not do well (civil infrastructure, heath care, power, water etc) and non-corporate private enterprise takes care of the rest.

We had that more or less in Britain and it worked pretty well. If we hadn't impoverished ourselves with two World Wars and getting a conscience too late about Empire and trying to be a little America we'd be doing alright. Sadly, we did do all those things and fell right into the same bear-pit that the USA is in now.

Anyhow, huge precis coming up.

Control of economies by control of the money supply was a popular theory embraced by America in particular but also by other nations, including Britain. Sadly, those theories were based upon shaky foundations that were hidden by the short-term apparent gains for those in financial and political positions of superiority.

In part they were genuinely an attempt to propose an alternative to the earlier models which had seen government try to achieve the same stated goal by control of expenditure in capital projects when times were 'hard'. Those Keynsian models had worked for a time but failed to handle certain circumstances when stagflation came into existence.

So, at present, tho they would never admit it, our 'leaders' have no cogent basis upon which to found their decisions as both major approaches seem to fail. That is, as noted above, because certain key 'institutions' in capitalist economies are poisoned chalices that afflict the very body of which they are a part.

I don't have a solution that has a snowballs chance in hell of ever being implemented because most of them involve the removal of power and wealth from those very institutions that are a part of the problem.

To give an idea of how wrong things have gone, when I first started studying economics in the '70's, it was assumed that by now, with increasing automation and efficiency in production, we would either be working part-time or only if we wanted to!

 

[Omar B]

In answer to your earlier question, Omar, I used to be what is termed a Neo-Keynsian in terms of my views on what constituted a viable model for maintaining a reasonable equilibrium for the 'ordinary' person in a society.

At present, it is my view that there is no cohesive model that actually works. Part of the problem is that certain forces have acted to disconnect 'money' from the value of the products and the means of production.

What makes this a really bad problem is that a couple of those forces are significant elements of the Western economies viz the banking sector, the stock exchanges and the legal fiction that is the 'corporation'. These have created an enormous conflation of illusiory wealth by means of credit, over-production of 'baseless' cash and the harvesting of the 'real' resources of the world to prop up a relatively few economies in a non-sustainable style.

Another related big problem is that, if you are socialist/liberal in your outlook (as I mostly am), it is tempting to try and get government to act as a stabaliser on errant market fluctuations. But economies are hugely complex flows and eddies of activity and predicting and managing them is as fruitless a task as predicting the weather :lol:. That means that too heavy a government hand on the 'regulator' can make matters worse rather than better.

It's why I believe that the only hope of reasonable success in management of economies is to have what we call a Mixed one - where the government takes care of certain essentials that private enterprise just does not do well (civil infrastructure, heath care, power, water etc) and non-corporate private enterprise takes care of the rest.

We had that more or less in Britain and it worked pretty well. If we hadn't impoverished ourselves with two World Wars and getting a conscience too late about Empire and trying to be a little America we'd be doing alright. Sadly, we did do all those things and fell right into the same bear-pit that the USA is in now.

Anyhow, huge precis coming up.

Control of economies by control of the money supply was a popular theory embraced by America in particular but also by other nations, including Britain. Sadly, those theories were based upon shaky foundations that were hidden by the short-term apparent gains for those in financial and political positions of superiority.

In part they were genuinely an attempt to propose an alternative to the earlier models which had seen government try to achieve the same stated goal by control of expenditure in capital projects when times were 'hard'. Those Keynsian models had worked for a time but failed to handle certain circumstances when stagflation came into existence.

So, at present, tho they would never admit it, our 'leaders' have no cogent basis upon which to found their decisions as both major approaches seem to fail. That is, as noted above, because certain key 'institutions' in capitalist economies are poisoned chalices that afflict the very body of which they are a part.

I don't have a solution that has a snowballs chance in hell of ever being implemented because most of them involve the removal of power and wealth from those very institutions that are a part of the problem.

To give an idea of how wrong things have gone, when I first started studying economics in the '70's, it was assumed that by now, with increasing automation and efficiency in production, we would either be working part-time or only if we wanted to!

Quoted, bolded and highlighted for truth. I like your take on the issue man, I'll be looking up info on this model, or if you can point me to books that would flesh it out. I'm used to thinking of economics from the Austrian and Chicago models.

 

[elder999]

In answer to your earlier question, Omar, I used to be what is termed a Neo-Keynsian in terms of my views on what constituted a viable model for maintaining a reasonable equilibrium for the 'ordinary' person in a society.

At present, it is my view that there is no cohesive model that actually works. Part of the problem is that certain forces have acted to disconnect 'money' from the value of the products and the means of production.!

And I'm still a Malthusian....hehehe..there is no viable model for maintaining equilibrium for anyone-much less the 'ordinary' person...that's why I have a boat, and more than enough food and ammo for a year
....bwahhahah...haha...and all that

 

[Omar B]

How does one measure ammo for time? Ammo for a week, day, hour, year?

 

[elder999]

How does one measure ammo for time? Ammo for a week, day, hour, year?

Well, I also handload-but do you really want to know?!!!

It's ugly: one deer every two months, an elk every 6, a family of about 10 shooters-two handguns, a shotgun and a rifle each,a pair of higher caliber rifles for the family unit, and anticipate killing about 100 people a month. Caluclate in some misses, don't add damage from the variety of non firearm dirty tricks we have for eliminating "others," and then......

.......do the math yourself.

Of course, those numbers are much lower for the boat......when we can expect being able to run away....sometimes.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Just out of curiousity....

If it's ok to take some of my money and give it to those who don't have any, and
if it's ok to take some of my property and give it to those who have none, and
if it's ok to take some of my food and give it to those who have none.....

when are you going to try and take my wifes "girl parts" and give them to those who can't get laid otherwise?

Also, will Sci-Fi and Gamer geeks be included in -that- give away? Cuz, if so, you better also take some of my soap and insist they use it or she's gonna hurt them some.

 

[Omar B]

Well, I also handload-but do you really want to know?!!!
It's ugly: one deer every two months, an elk every 6, a family of about 10 shooters-two handguns, a shotgun and a rifle each,a pair of higher caliber rifles for the family unit, and anticipate killing about 100 people a month. Caluclate in some misses, don't add damage from the variety of non firearm dirty tricks we have for eliminating "others," and then......
.......do the math yourself.
Of course, those numbers are much lower for the boat......when we can expect being able to run away....sometimes.

I was kidding ya man, but good explanation anyways. The first time I ever held or even fired a gun was this summer! I know next to nothing about guns and such except for Ian Flemming, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and other thriller type novels.

 

[Sukerkin]

I've been 'out of the loop' for quite a while on the academic Economic front, I do confess. So much of what I speak of is memories of what I was taught in the 70's and early 80's and what I read up on for discussions here when it came to showing the failure of Monetarism.

I know that it is bad form to use Wikipedia as a basis of argument but it is useful as a source of finding more authoratitive texts on a subject (I also noted, with a small degree of pride that my memory still works, that some of the preamble reads very much like what I wrote above ).

Have a look at these and see where they lead you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Keynesian_economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Keynesian_economics

Also:

http://www.swan.ac.uk/economics/cware/ec304/topic2.pdf

An interesting snippet here (not sure of the credability of the poster as he doesn't seem to seperate politics and economics very well):

http://decisionoptions.blogspot.com/2009/04/rise-of-neo-keynesian-economics-and.html

This seems a concise snapshot:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/New_Keynesian_economics

A good book to cover the whole subject area might be "A History of post Keynesian economics since 1936" by J.E. King. It's available on Google Books if you can stand reading on screen.

Hope those help as vague pointers in the direction of research materials anyhow.