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Not Keynes Or Kuznets Or Krugman But Cowperthwaite
From Sean Corrigan of Diapason
Before we really get into the detail this week, let us just deal with one simple canard: this idea that if the US Congress does not immediately roll over and allow the Administration to have its head in consuming the capital of the nation at its present, unsustainable rate, the whole house of cards will come crashing down around its members’ ears.
Not least of the reasons for our rejection of this cheap exercise in scaremongering is that the $85 billion or so which will supposedly be trimmed back in the course of the next fiscal year, should the dreaded ‘Sequester’ actually take place, is no more than the amount of new money the Federal Reserve has pledged to inject into the system each and every month, for ever and ever, Amen.
It would also be remarkable if the fictional Keynesian ‘multiplier’ - so remarkable in its absence when the government was spending an extra $1 trillion annually with hardly any unequivocally attributable addition to jobs (Solyndra, anyone?) - will now become so magnified in its effects that a trimming of that largesse 1/12 the scale will instantly cause 700, 000 positions to evaporate. Right! What we are being asked to swallow whole is the idea that if government spending slips back by no more than 1.5% of its inordinately large total - a proportion which is actually more like 0.25% of total, economy-wide, annual turnover and which is equivalent to around 75 cents per head per day - that the Apocalypse will be ushered in forthwith.
Well, your author, for one does not believe that the economy - any economy - is THAT fragile. After all, the sum in question is roughly of the order of the official tally of retail sales of sporting goods. Where Nike goes, there goes America??
Nor is he convinced that the state controls or even monitors its budgets with that degree of accuracy in the first instance. Just think ‘Pentagon’, not to
mention ‘black-ops budget’. In that light $85 billion is all noise and no signal. Finally, if none of this has assuaged your worries then, by implication, you must believe that we are now locked in to spending over a $1 trillion more than revenues in perpetuity. If so, stop selling your gold, for heaven’s sake, give your assault rifle a quick once-over, and make sure the axle has been greased on your wheelbarrow.
Partly this lack of comprehension is just another example of the strategy of the ‘Big Lie’ as instituted by Bernays, refined by Goebbels, and institutionalized ad nauseam by today’s cradle-to-grave, career-politician spin-doctors. Partly it emanates from the dreadful pseudomathematical juggernaut of macroeconomics and its intellectually impoverished inability to recognise that its devotees’ cherished time series aggregates are nothing more than a pale, fictional reflection of the joint actions of millions upon millions of disparate individuals, each ceaselessly selecting from their non-ordinal and ever-varying lists of subjective preferences in order to achieve a momentary elevation in their psychic and material condition.
It is bad enough when we forget just how approximate all these numbers are when we elevate them to the status of the fundamental laws of nature
by which we must ‘govern’ the running of our rigid economic ‘machinery’ (another pernicious, but all-pervasive metaphor which obscures clear thinking about the functioning of what is really a complex, evolving ecosystem of interpersonal exchange).
But when we then lose sight of the underlying reality itself, put effect before cause, and regard those numbers’ temporal trajectory as an end in themselves, we really begin to do mischief. What we really seek is to provide the most conducive institutional conditions for the average citizen to attempt to satisfy his own unique desires as best he can—something he will fortuitously find hard to do without contributing something in return to the well-being of the fellows with whom he interacts under a mutually enriching division of labour and subject to the rule of law.
If we, as policymakers, manage to achieve that— or, more realistically, if we refrain from acting in a manner likely to jeopardize it—as and when we next take the a rough reading of the temperature of all the myriad economic processes currently underway, we may well be pleasantly surprised to see that it is has undergone a modest and entirely wholesome rise. If, however, we construct a spurious mechanics of the nation-at-large and start throwing levers willy-nilly because some statistical fiction seems to have had a fleeting numerical correlation with that temperature in the past, if it subsequently rises at all, we have no way of knowing whether this is all to the good, or whether this is because the organism is now suffering heatstroke, a fever, or is, indeed, spontaneously self-combusting.
To reiterate; instead of fretting that we have “blundered in the control of a delicate machine”, let us recognise that there is no such construction: that
we must not rely on what are essentially static, equilibrium relations between non-existent, top-down concepts, we must learn to deal with a dynamic, nonequilibrium, emergent order, bubbling up from the smallest scale, that it is a process not a pattern; a becoming not a being.
It is therefore not Keynes or Kuznets to whom should be looking, much less the ineffable Krugman, but the shining example of Sir John Cowperthwaite whose enlightened strategy of what he called ‘positive non-interventionism’ in 1960s Hong Kong— coupled with a near blanket ban on the collation of official statistics for fear their provision would tempt men into meddling (“If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning.’’)—allowed the entrepôt to more than quadruple its GDP per capita (it really is a hard habit to break, isn’t it?) in comparison with its colonial masters in Britain, in the space of single generation.
A man who eschewed tariffs in an era of protection; who abstained from government borrowing at a time when his peers were fast becoming ’all Keynesians now’; who capped income taxes at a modest 15% in an age when the rich were being ‘squeezed until their pips squeaked’; and who refused all acts of corporate welfare, Cowperthwaite’s assessment of his own role was characteristically modest, once declaring that, as regards his contribution to Hong Kong’s success, "I did very little. All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it"
Today, when we are plagued with the grossest of governmental interventions, the maddest of monetary manipulations, and the most invidious of attacks on individual wealth, it might serve to reflect upon some of Sir John’s expressed principles.
On capital controls: "… money comes here and stays here because it can go if it wants to. Try to hedge it around with prohibitions and it would go and we could not stop it and no more would come."
Re the role of the state vis-à-vis the private sector in production: "…when government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else."
On what we Austrians would call the great ‘knowledge’ problem—so routinely overlooked by the meddlers in office: "In the long run, the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government, and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster."
Or this: "For us, a multiplicity of individual decisions by businessmen and industrialists will still, I am convinced, produce a better and wiser result than a single decision by a Government or by a board with its inevitably limited knowledge of the myriad factors involved, and its inflexibility."
And again: "I must confess my distaste for any proposal to use public funds for the support of selected, and thereby, privileged, industrialists, the more particularly if this is to be based on bureaucratic views of what is good and what is bad by way of industrial development. An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands."
Are you listening, Mr Cameron; écoutez-vous, M. Hollande?
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That's the best chart on ZH ever.
Human nature is like water. Individuals act in their own best interest, just like water seeks its own level and cannot be compressed.
Almost Laffer's Curve-like in its simplicity.
so simple that a child can understand ..
Why are our politicians in denial about the laws of nature? They have restudied them so many times and disagreed with the results until they were blue in the face, and still refuse to see the light. This is precisley how I proved that the law is a joke not to be taken seriously ever again in my eyes.
All this talk about Keynes and such. I don't think the guy expected a country - America - to act like Enron. Actually, America IS Enron, economically, financially, mentally and morally.
And it will go the same way.
Keynes, nothing he wrote and theorized is applicable to today.
Actually, America right now is at a similar point when Enron was financially cavitating and all that was left was a share price and massive falsification of everything, to mask the 100 trillion dollar train wreck.
The bilge pumps are cranking to the tune of $85B a month and Shadow Stats figures make that look realistic to maintain min buoyancy, but what will happen when Enromerica is forced to turn the tap off, and Mark to Market on the US economy finally ends and things become REAL.
by this executive order, I hereby affirm the independent authority of the FR to directly fund, from its own unlimited reserves, the continuing operation of the government's programs for the american people.
Not only will this direct fiscal partnership promote the effective operation of government on behalf of the people, it will also allow congress to get back to its important and primary responsibility to establish regulations, as set forth in our founding documents.
hugs,
constitutionalist sine qua non
Yeah, recirculating in rotary wing aerodynamics creates what???
3% growth of crime, sure, the economy, noooo way!
Actually, America IS Enron, economically, financially, mentally and morally.
The difference is, the shareholders were pretty much in the dark about what was going on with Enron. The American taxpayers, however, are aware and are saying, "more, more, more".
What makes you think they are in denial, or uninformed?
They are lazy, immoral, greedy, power loving people looking after their own best interests. Only through government could they achieve the wealth, comfort and status with so little risk, so surely.
Wiki Public Choice Theory.
"Why are our politicians in denial about the laws of nature?"
Because the laws of nature do not serve the immediate purposes of the politicians owners.
Also known as "not enough opportunities for graft."
"Why are our politicians in denial about the laws of nature?"
Because, as Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Robert Anton Wilson's law of political math states:
If A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then A is greater than C, except where prohibited by law.
Trust me, Krugman is eminently Effable...
FORWARD SOVIET!
yes, very true .. i wish Krugman understands.
"Human nature is like water. Individuals act in their own best interest, just like water seeks its own level and cannot be compressed. "
I would like to change this a bit. As our bodies are primarily a water based electrical grid capable of kinetics I submit to you this: as a whole body water is an incompressible force that self levels and is capable of tremendous amounts of work. Electricity powers the world around us as a body electric, but the electron only seeks a path to ground.
Therefore when an uneducated undisciplined individual is left to his own devices he follows the immutable laws of nature and seeks his own level all the way to ground.
I stand idly by and watch people do this to themselves everyday with their drug of choice (gmo food, tv, drugs, gambling, sports, you name it) so I know that the laws of nature still apply. My question is this, what does it take for a person to become more than just a sum of his constituents? How do you posititively influence anyone when the biggest personal freedom their uneducated mind can handle is coke or pepsi? I believe in individualism, free markets, informed consumerism and the like. I do not want to see masses of people told what is best for them by a pack of lying hypocrites. How do I folks around me from just checking their brain at the door?
Something happened to me years ago that made me what I am today. There are folks in my life who could really use some of whatever that event was and i can't put my finger on it for anything. any thoughts?
You got "lucky" in the intelligence lottery. (Or unlucky, since ignorance is apparently bliss).
Dunning-Kruger Effect means democracy cannot work, since average competency is so low, it ensures elected officials are slightly above mediocre at best:
http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scien...
Peachfuzz, that is the dilemma. With so many variables, there is no one answer. Some people see connections more broadly or further ahead. Some people operate on what is currently in place, and do not look ahead - maybe from fear, inability, or lack of influence. Why bother with anything other than today if you don't think you have any influence? The flaw inherent in fractional reserve banking steals choice. People know they have little influence, but they don't know why. That kind of theft is hard to explain. Maybe the Italian guy will do it ;)
Peachfuzz, the short version of my answer:
find a way to offer people better choices ;)
Sigh....
Too much common sense and individual choice for our bankers and politicians who give the central bankers and central planners the job of handing taxpayer money to bankers for their profit, and to politicians to buy votes.
The banking class and political class will not allow common sense and individual choice (or consequences) as it undermines their power.
Cowperwaithe was and is a hero. Well said Mr Corrigan.
He was perhaps distinguished more by being incorruptible than by being wise. Bureaucrats who lord over centrally planned systems don't necessarily believe the theories, or even understand them. They just know which way the wind is blowing, career-wise; and that crony capitalism pays handsome dividends to bureaucrats who cooperate.
...He was perhaps distinguished more by being incorruptible than by being wise...and that be truth!
All over 'the Empire' -in it's day of splendor, Britain sent out men who cared not a whit for personal gain, nor the pillaging of other people's treasure. They saw themselves, and acted as, servants of King and country, and emissaries of a culture of justice and fair play. Their careers in the colonies were dedicated to buffering the locals from the most rapacious and greed-struck of their countrymen, and establishing, where they could, a rule of law that protected everyone from tyrants, both imported and domestic.
How naive and forlorn they seem now, those men of moral stature whose labors were not just in vain, in the end, but were incorporated into the calumnious campaign by which the usurpers of their own homeland would extend their dominion of evil over the greater part of this earth. Hard as it is to believe in this present era of unbridled corruption and venality, there was a time when the term 'civil service' had a whole different meaning in the minds of those who were employed to effectuate the policies of the day...not capo enforcers on the part of their kleptocrat overlords, but men whose self esteem rested upon bettering the lives of those on whom their duties were focussed.
As a breed, the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Irish, and Scots seemed more disposed to the concepts of personal liberty and economic freedom than almost any of the rest of their European neighbors, and this showed most clearly in the men who manned the stations of their colonies. No kinder, more capable, and far-seeing administrator ever existed than Hastings in India. After him, Wellesley gave great credit as the kind of military campaigner who can both appreciate, nourish, and motivate those under his command, Indian and Scots\English alike. While with the French, the preaching of 'liberty' ran to currents of blood in the streets, for a time, though already dying by the day of Johnson&Boswell, the blood of Englishmen ran true with the currents of liberty practiced.
Both men's diaries are a marvel of egalitarian and humanistic thought in the day and age of European ethnocentricism. How cruel that both men's legacies are to have labored under the illusions that they could stem the tide of avarice that swept all before it, as the devolution of their race kept pace with the devolving sanities and moralities of their imposed Dutch-German 'royal family'...a false but effective cover for the moneychangers who hopped the channel with BillyO to set their plague of usury and corruption upon the people of the Isles. Marrying into nobility, by the time of Wellington's death the die was set, and the day was lost to the once great British peoples. Montefsiores, Goldsmiths, and Bauers(by another name!)became the real royalty, and powerbrokers, by whose dictat the Empire became a sad, furtive enforcer of the the sionist will to world dominance, paying with the blood of it's best the tax of betrayal and corruption by it's political class in wars around the world.
All over now. What's left of England is hardly worth calling a third rate imitation of itself. And of those who still call themselves "English" that's a term which increasingly causes derision and disdain when they put foot outside the 'new world order' hellhole they call home now. Cowperthwaite...a throw back to a forgotten time. And People.
Pity.
If I could give you ten up arrows, I would.
Gunga Din would be proud of you as would Kim.
Not so much Tippu Sultan...
What took you so long> Were you waiting for someone else to step up to the plate to bowl a few hackneyed cliches>>>or did you have other fires to douse in thy own house Squire?
Really, you should be talking to Misean, not me at all...explaining to him that, as a continental with a de rigeur disdain for les Anglos...you simply had to explode at the author...for even daring to consider a Bloke could be commendable...let alone a colonial servant of the crown!...it's genetic for you...like sickle cell for others...he would surely understand if you just explained it to him!
I myself understand thy complaint, and commiserate with you weekly for the weakness of your wicket...but this is the bottom line frere Jacques...
we went to too many places, and fought too many times, spilling our blood, Scotsmen, Welsh. Irish and Cornishmen, as well as Northumbrians and all the rest south of the Wall...for the wrong rulers and the wrong reasons....
but where e'er we went in the wide world, we fought as well as men can fight, and did it with honor, no matter what betrayals awaited our return. You skulk and scorn from the thickets of your avaricious 'hedge' rows, but secretly you know...the is no other legacy we want for.
The "Sepoy General" would be proud.
you sound like O'Driscol playing rugby!
Multiculturalism asserts that what we have now is equally good.
Joyful -- Logged in specifically to congratulate and thank you for your outstanding depiction of an elusive era, and for you citation of high-minded men in extraordinary circumstance.
Regardless of a reader's agreement, such a picture inspires this reader that perhaps such high-minded men reside in these extraordinary times.
.
edit -- That first post. Dunno about the second. But don't stop.
.
Though I have lost both King and Country, I am compelled to honor those of our forebearers who were faithful servants of theirs.
Yes, there are many men(and women) among us still worthy of respect; we have been deviously directed to doubt our own cultures' capacity to provide us the leaders we need, and to believe instead, only in our weakness and servility to tyranny and vice.
We are capable of rising above our betrayers. With many a bitter lesson learned. Thank you for your kind words, my second screed is just a rejoinder to that special person among us who delights in the usual provocations of the pedestrian kind!
You've given me a new favorite hero. Thank you. I'm sending this to Bruce Rauner of GTCR to see if he would positively non intervene in Illinois this way as Governor.
Bullshit: the cause of current demise of capitalism is the Oligarchy scam. Its the concentration of riches in the hands of the 1%; all illegally attained in Caymanista caves. That is the CAUSE. Runaway capitalism in NWO deregulated hubris.
The EFFECT is socialised debt and CAVE IN of FIRST WORLD governments under the threat of Jamie Dimon : we hold the financial WMD and we'll just drop it if you tax us too much. WE WON, we OWN YOU, YOU DONT OWN US!
That private wealth either comes back via taxes into the common pot or it burns in depression and undoubtedly Armageddon to achieve painful asset destruction world wide so as to rebuild whats left, just like in WW2/WW1 aftermath.
TO avoid this calamity the governments have to nationalise the banks and clean out the Augean stables of private finance and its impact on public finance worldwide.
OR...History repeats.
Don't fuck us around with your LAFFTER curve and your spiel of phony private wealth running from phony pillar to crappy post; its all toast.
You are just a spokesman for private wealth...
bad hair day ?
bad hair do?
I don't go to the hair dresser! sorry!
You're fired up the nicht FP.
Have a scotch and relax.
Dream of the day you can sign into ZH with facebook....
I am totally relaxed and spellbound that a guy can extrapolate world economic nirvana based on the example of HK; ex elitist brit colony whose financial DNA is so specific!
Thats like making an example of the Monaco state as world model.
Why not the Vatican while we are at it?
Hey, Duke, apart from that nothing a good drink and a sunday lunch can't solve. I enjoyed the rugby last night and Federer at Indian Wells.
"Life's a wonderful thing", if you look at the right direction...'I've got the world on a string...I'm in love with life!'
Cheers and beers!
I find your arguments on oligarchy compelling as ever and am with you 100%. Green :)
there is the feeling we are sliding back in to the normal for humans
feudalism - with the good life for the few...
the 'progress' of the last 100 years was brought about by the social conscience forced upon by 2 world wars
nursing homes in the hamptons that were bankers mansions in the 1920's are now being closed and sold back to the oligarchs...
anyway the rugby was not as muddy as i like it.
cheers to you buddy.
I hate human nature
When you engage in such a digital screed of illogic and ad-hominem, do you find it necessary to clean the spittle off your monitor? Or are you able to refrain from screaming as you type? (Now that I think about it, the former would require you to be doing two things at once, which suggests the latter, but sans restraint, rather inablility, but I dither).
Please explain how, since it is the act of the institution, which is your savior, creating a monopoly bank allowed to legally counterfeit legal tender, (priniting "Monopoly" money if you will), and said institution (we'll stay away from Public-Choice Theory here, and not point out the parrallels to the above article that said institution is just a bunch of individuals) currently cannot exist without the largesse of the monopoly bank, how said institution will SOLVE the problem by doing EVEN MORE of the same?
its not ad hominem in my book; if the man believes what he says thats fine.
Its the message I decry not the man.
Never said he had bad breath!
I don't scream, at least my ears don't reverberate when I write. I provide historical context, logic and counter examples. I may be passionate in my convictions but I don't debase people just their wrong logic or factual interpretation; IMO.
If you find my logic illogical thats ok by me. For people here on ZH I am not pointing in the wrong direction when I say "oligarchy scam" 'cos ZH says exactly the same thing.
What ZH does not say and there is where we may possibly differ is that I consider the Oligarchy scam as PRIME CAUSE Of capitalist world. Not statist knee jerk now to correct it; which in my book is EFFECT. But I've said this many times here so its nothing new.
The C banks that print money do it to keep the world economy afloat in a dire context of world recession, as a result of a 30 + year PAx Americana trend. We are now sitting between Charybdis and Scylla. So there is no easy way out.
Read what I write here-below as elsewhere and maybe, maybe, the spittle that you think you perceive on my screen will disappear like 'hey presto' from your own apparently delusioned state. I hope so anyways.
"You are just a spokesman for private wealth..." IS ad-hominem, as stated, since it does not seek to refute the points made by Mr. Corrigan, but merely to slander Mr. Corrigan (although I am not sure he would take it as slander, but rather you mean such a statement to be dark and evil).
As to the rest of your comments, they are little more than a mish-mash of slogans. There are neither examples, nor arguments, nor logicical analysis contained therein.
Further, you have completely ignored the question, which is again, how does the government solve the problem it created by doing more of the same, given that said institution is one of a group of extraodinarily corrupted and greedy shills for the very interests you wish to have vanquished?
like I said : you and I don't agree on cause and effect. Nor on what constitutes "ad-hominem"...Corrigen IMO is a spokeman for a corrupt, broken model. And I copiously talk on substance : the free market is all but free. Even you let that slip...from your lips.
Its 30 years of deregulated Pax Americana that created that problem...If you looked at the bigger picture, instead of the smaller post 2008 money printing, you may just have another vision of things.
I have always said : nationalise the banks, shut down the casino, separate savings and pensions from speculative plays; inhibit all naked speculation feeding financialisation, push the resulting banking structure to lend to real economy. Support that with CB liquidity, from an honest CB, not the current FED and maybe we can start tne ball rolling. All over first world who created this financialista crisis.
What's your problem? My position on the main issue is clear if you know how to read. I am aiming at those "greedy shills". You are not! Nor is this writer of the post. He wants more of the same! I want our governments to act like governments. I want these sick markets cleaned out first and foremost. I know its near impossible; whence Charybdis and Scylla.
If you have a better idea spread it out. Otherwise stay silent.
AS for my sloganising on ZH read this, just for starters as of today; you could go back over 2 years.
3316601
3315893
3316537
Just saying this is not sloganising...not asking u to agree with it.
Tis folly to joust with a windmill, I have heard, so I will only make a few observations.
Firstly, an ad-hominem attack is a well established logical fallacy, which, to be relevent at ALL, has an established definition. To wit, in simple terms, attacking the speaker rather than the argument. There is nothing really to argue. Since you continually attack Mr. Corrigan's character and/or motives, you are engaging in ad-hominem, by definition.
We, further, do not disagree on cause and effect, as you have laid out no causal chain for me to disagree with. So I am not at clear as to what your point is. The most you lay out is a conclusionary slogan, a rather undefined term, "Pax-Americana" (which given the number of wars that have occurred over the last 100 years leaves me wondering just when this "Pax" occurred). How does this establish either a cause or an effect?
As to asserting that "Corrigen IMO is a spokeman for a corrupt, broken model", are you incapable of READING? The entirety of his argument is AGAINST the status quo. Surely if you disagree with that, you could point to some specifics.
Next, after you dispense with ad-hominems against Mr. Corrigan, you aim your ad-hominems against me, suggesting that I don't have a grasp of the bigger picture. And yet you are unable to actually refute any point I make.
Finally you return to your lord and savior, "The Government", which must somehow NOT be an organization of men, to grasp the sword of justice and smote down the evil money men. However, once again, you evade, rather unskillfully (and NO, that is NOT ad-hominem, as I have quite thoroughly described the path of your evasion) my central question, which I feel it pointless to keep reiterating.
Then in what can only be described as a fit of pique you challenge me to come up with a better sollution than giving yet more power to the people who make up the government. I am under no obligation to do so and you have no authority to silence me for not doing so, as YOU have not presented any kind of solution whatsoever. As I said, a mish-mash of slogans is not a solution.
Furthermore, since Mr. Corrigan is actually suggesting qutie a substantially different path than the one all nations are currently on, I suggest that my defense of Mr.Corrigan stand as affirming his "plan" (for lack of better term).
I shall sit on pins and needles, with great anticipation, as I await your next fascinating fucilade of vitriol.
you look too confortable in your quixotic stance to be further disturbed. Ride on Rocinante.
...I am not pointing in the wrong direction when I say "oligarchy scam" 'cos ZH says exactly the same thing...
as I try to remind you gently, from time to time, Squire, the ZH flow runs the gamut of speculations from the 'phony moon landing' to the absence of cheese in the diets of chinese...including even, things that go 'schlump in the night' - and start with the letter K -
...it's all OK...
but oligarchy scam is just betwixt and between...it's like being half pregnant - you can't get there from here...or anywhere else.
The extraordinary passion with which you have applied yourself to today's message from the asylum must be taken by the astute observer as a sign that your boiling inner turmoil over stepping up and admitting the truth...that YOU TOO are one of us...a Conspiracy Theorist writ large!!!!...has reached the point of crisis and finality. Step into the warmth, mon liege...the crackling fire of our hearth will warm your aching bones, and a glass of Veuve Verte will settle the nerves and stiffen the spirit for the long ride back to sanity.
lol, K logic of first quality. You must be scared to look over your shoulder lest you see the shadow of a lurking conspiring Konradien Kardashian Khazarian.
No crisis here other than the one we discuss on the world scene. Its big enuff to feed a thousand conspiracy theories, the stuff that legends are made off. I'll grant u that.
Print the legend never the truth; and then you become John Ford...
Also looks like what happens when the Morgue controls Gold, Silver and Natural Gas markets.
I love the convexity in the chart at the bottom, very true
Not that I don't love the article (actually I feel like sending it to everyone I know), but how do they know GDP per capita quadrupled in a generation if they weren't allowed to compile the statistics?
Compare Hong Kong to Detroit, there's your answer.....
Too many brack wappers, not enough won-ton.
Who yo baby daddy?
Sum ting Wong
hong kong had a strong manufacturing base in 1980s. it all moved to china over time.
"the dreadful pseudomathematical juggernaut of macroeconomics"
Why even give legitimacy to their claims of being economists?
Mises called them econometricists, and they're not even competent at that.
When the mighty dollar caves, this sucker goes down; Mr krugman and Mr cowpie notwithstanding.
So I turn the TV on this morning and I am greeted by Krugman and Debbie Wasserman. Ugh.
Krugman's got serious weazel eyes today and Wasserman is dumber than the glass of water in front of her.
And Krugman says that the economy and deficit (except for the slow growth problem) is essentially fixed, and this woman decides to keep spouting the line that SS is fine for many years because of the trust fund. Unfuckin' believable.....
When my radio went on this a.m. the first thing I heard was a financial guru telling me that 40 billion went into the makets in the last two months. Of course he failed to mention that 170 billion went in courtesy of FED.
Welding a rack for my FAL onto my wheelbarrow fer sure.
Keys are just a side effect from me kicking Bernanke all day.
Excellent article!
"I must confess my distaste for any proposal to use public funds for the support of selected, and thereby, privileged, industrialists, the more particularly if this is to be based on bureaucratic views of what is good and what is bad by way of industrial development. An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands."
More to his point, you cannot plan an economy based on the knowns of the day which always change with the wind tomorrow, while leaving behind the bloated bureaucracy of half wits that supported the endeavor yesterday.
It becomes very expensive for the present while the privileged class, of course, who brought forward the silly notion in the first place, has already taken advantage/profit and left with it.
you'd never have had project manhattan if we followed your line of reasoning.
To turn your argument around : as the future is by definition uncertain, sending out Cristopher Columbus on a vague idea of where India lies could be a basis for finding a new frontier. Lady Isabella did it; and it wasn't India they found but the gold of the Aztecs!
The state seed money is often well spent. Another example where Private capital only invests where its particular interests lie, not in general good is the Opium trade of Brits East India CO. in China. By commissiong BArtolemeo Dias the portuguese king circumnavigated the world for everybody, just like Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Clinton admin did seed fund and develop the Internet; at least that is what the world believes; like Europe the Cern lab.
Infrastructure, hospitals and education are typically things that state has done since time immemorial. To the incommensurable benefit of all. From the Via Appia to the Via Francigena and then on to Via Domitia...it paved the empire.
The Manhattan Project came about as a means to destroy one state by another state. What if the state of Hitler had it first...along with the V2?
Still a good use of public funds falak? ;-)
I think we're talking about government meddling in an economy here, not allowing an economy to blossom.
Are you saying people would go untreated for illness, have no way to get to the doctor outside of hacking their way through the forest and their intellectual curiosity would whither & die without the benevolent hand of government guiding them?
+1
Because the doctors didn't build that. They went to government skoolz. We would all be lost without government. Nobody would learn anything without government.
Makes me wonder how people were ever smart enough to form a government in the first place..no government means no skoolz. No teachers. No learning. Oh my god what would the world come to without government?!!!!
The answer to every problem ever dreamed of or actually encountered existed only because the lack of government allowed it to happen. It's the anarchists to blame for government not being large enough for all of our needs.
After typing this crap and rereading it, it is almost impossible to believe that some people actually believe the answers to all problems are found within government- then I think about the people with whom I share the freeways. Yep they really are that fucked in their heads.
Those who want more government should get all they ask for. Those who wish less government- those are my friends.
that reminds me of my daughter. She can't multiply in her head!
I told her that was a basic educational skill.
She said : what do I have to learn that? I have a calculator on my iphone!
We don't need state anymore; we dont need rule of law. and law courts.
We can all live on Face book! ANd worship Google as God.
MP : Well they say it won them the war!
It also created the nuclear age. Can't turn back the clock. That's my point.
Government meddling : when does a step into the unkown become "meddling"...Government can initiate break throughs. If you generalise the use of "meddling" for all government inititive its goes against the grain of history and fact. I would not buy that as an "ideological" position, something that's always valid. That's my point.
Meddling is appropriate when it is evident that private initiative gets it better; like making cars!
Medical institutions : What I am saying is that in any country the state built those hospitals when private medicine became inadequate. It goes back to Babylon. Once again I look in the direction of factually observable evolution of society, not from an ideological prism. Today, if private initiative will take on hospital care thats fine. But its selective by economic considerations and people have to pay for it. The state once again all over the world provides the safety net to those not having the resources to go to private hospitals.
To come back to what you wrote : government intiatives as seed money are inefficient in general....An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands."
I give historical counter examples refuting that generalisation.
"Well they say it won them the war!"
We had the superior economy, freer societal structure (comparing Germany or USSR or Japan or Italy to us) allowing for people to want to be with us and of course, the military strength to prevail. Oppenheimer, Einstein etal were not the least bit interested in working for that state/government.
"It also created the nuclear age. Can't turn back the clock. That's my point."
And the point is well taken. Now if we could just get the government meddling red tape out of the way to make use of nuclear energy...which was MY point ;-)
But you brought up the good of a proper basic education. Recently it came to light that 80% of government schooled students in NYC graduate and cannot read, do basic math or write well enough to enter a community college. Not a very good argument for future funding even at the current 18k per student per annum?
"Nevertheless, as CBS New York reports, Bloomberg might want to spare a few minutes to focus on this shocking statistic: Almost 80 percent of all New York City high school graduates who want to enroll in the City University’s community college system must first relearn basic reading, writing and math.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/08/about-80-percent-of-nyc-high-school-grads-cant-read-well-enough-for-community-college/#ixzz2N9iVGnjq
"To come back to what you wrote : government intiatives as seed money are inefficient in general...."An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands."
The quote is not mine, the bold is John Cowperthwaite, from the article. Unbolded is yours. Be that as it may, government provided the "seed money" from taxation (at confiscatory rates in NYC by any standard) and very little is being shown as a result (20% proficiency)...would you not agree?
not questioning state inefficiency; for somebody living in france its feels more impressive than Les Miserables!
lol...thats they way I understand it.
Take care.
Thank you falak and nmewn; great Sunday morning read.
I've been to Hong Kong and to colonial Singapore (pre1968), the cities where different like night and day; I preferred Hong Kong. Cowperthwaite's influence, in retrospect, was discernable by comparison.
Been to both in the late seventies, still preferring Hong Kong.
Propping up failed businesses is an abomination, it goes against the grain of nature. Let them collapse and crumble for there are many capable of building sound and strong enterprises if given the opportunity....
The amount of zeroes tend to numb our thinking.
Assume $50,000 is the average annual salary, then 700,000 jobs is $35 billion Only 1.65 weeks of QE.
Did the estimator tell you if the jobs are Public or Private?
Did Obama agree that such cuts would be done, soon?
To late Sean, also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kuznets has been taken over by the green masks. The meddlers in Office at Government levels are parasites and the cure is Voters pulling them off the victoms. The Consumer is the final arbiter no matter how we lament the reference in, and of the times.