I've been telling you that MS econ is based on false assumptions, why doesn't this change your mind? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15188399
It seems to me that the only other field where, can people get away with using false assumptions is religion.**

Can you imagine the mess our tech would be in if even 30% of the key assumptions on with mathematics is based were really false?

Can you imagine the mess engineering would be in if 30% of its assumptions were false?

Why then do so many of you here not care that the MS econ. theory that you support is clearly based on many false assumptions?

Or, maybe you deny this. Do you really believe that ---
1] It s OK to prove things about reality with false assumptions?
2] That the market is best understood as the 'perfect market' where every player knows everything about everything.
3] That banks really do move money from some account on their books to the account of the borrower?
4] That the US, UK, Japanese, Aust., Canadian, etc. national debts will be paid off some day by running a surplus so as to pay it with money from tax collections, without incuring new debt?
5] That the natural world can absorb all the pollution that the economy can dump into it?
6] That the population of the Earth can be stabalized by moving millions people per year off the earth to some other planet?
7] Or that, the population of the Earth can keep growing at 1% to 3% year for 1000 years?
8] That the GDP of every nation can keep growing at 1% to 3% year for 1000 years?
And many others?

Why?

Why don't you see that the US economy is in a mess,*** and it was even before the pandemic?
And, that this mess could very likely be the result policy makers mainly using an economic theory that is based on false assumptions, and it doesn't care about real world counter evidence either. It just hand waves it away.


. ** . If you don't grok this, then think about India. From the Western POV most of the assumptions that underlie Hinduism are false, and yet in India it is the dominant religion.
. *** . I think that the most obvious area of the US economy, that is a mess, is unemployment. MS econ. prides itself on efficiency. It would not tolerate a huge pile of iron ingots just sitting there not claimed by anyone. Yet, it tolerates massive unemployment. This unemployment is a huge pile of potential work that the American society could be using, but we just let it sit there being unused. this is clearly not efficient.
.
#15188682
Steve_American wrote:
8] About the GDP growing at 3% for 1000 years.

Rugoz wrote:That's certainly possible, and I hope it will happen.

As for the rest, I've never seen so many straw men in a single post. Congrats.

Image


Ok lets do some math.
At 3% growth the GP will double about each 72/3 = 24 years. This is 41.667 X 24 = 1000.
So, he thinks that the world can support the US doubling its GDP 42 times.
This is 2^42, or 2 to the 42 power.
From google => 2 to the power of 42 = 2^42 = 4,398,046,511,104.
This is 4,398 trillion times what it is now. Or, 4.398 million billion times what it is now.

I don't know about you-all but this seems impossible.

PS, sorry I didn't say this before, but I meant GDP adjusted for inflation, not just the dollar amount.
.
#15189445
late wrote:This is science, you need a better theory to replace the one you have. The infighting you're seeing is largely about what is going to replace it.

Over the last couple of decades, conservative economists have taken a beating...

Try this:

https://evonomics.com/


Sir, the mere fact that over 90% of Econ. graguate students in 2 studies in the early then late 90s said that they bother looking at reality because it would not advance their careers, means Econ. as taught today is no where near a 'science'.

You-all can also try this site. Institute for New Economic Thinking.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/

You-all can try MMT too.
I have recently posted links to Prof. Bill Mitchell's blog. He co-authored a real text book for econimics college classes. He also has lauched an online course "MMTed" recently.

I have also wrote about Prof. Randall Wray's posts. He has a Primer for beginners in MMT with 52 posts IIRC, 1 a week for a year from over 10 years ago.

I also like Preof. Stephanie Kelton and Warren Mosler.
#15189510
Steve_American wrote:
Sir, the mere fact that over 90% of Econ. graguate students in 2 studies in the early then late 90s said that they bother looking at reality because it would not advance their careers, means Econ. as taught today is no where near a 'science'.

You-all can also try this site. Institute for New Economic Thinking.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/

You-all can try MMT too.
I have recently posted links to Prof. Bill Mitchell's blog. He co-authored a real text book for econimics college classes. He also has lauched an online course "MMTed" recently.

I have also wrote about Prof. Randall Wray's posts. He has a Primer for beginners in MMT with 52 posts IIRC, 1 a week for a year from over 10 years ago.

I also like Preof. Stephanie Kelton and Warren Mosler.



We went over MMT before, it is flawed.

Conflating kids with the science doesn't say a damn thing.
#15189750
Steve_American wrote:It seems to me that the only other field where, can people get away with using false assumptions is religion.**

See climate "science" since the anti-fossil-fuel hate campaign.
Why then do so many of you here not care that the MS econ. theory that you support is clearly based on many false assumptions?

I don't support it, but, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair
Or, maybe you deny this. Do you really believe that ---
1] It s OK to prove things about reality with false assumptions?
2] That the market is best understood as the 'perfect market' where every player knows everything about everything.

That's just the start of it. Modern mainstream neoclassical economics is riddled with not only false assumptions, but invalid definitions intended to obscure and confuse matters rather than clarify and illuminate them.
3] That banks really do move money from some account on their books to the account of the borrower?

Some neoclassicals are aware that private commercial banks create debt money de novo when they lend. Others, like Nobel laureate Greg Mankiw, give baldly false accounts of bank lending and the nature of the money supply in the textbooks they write.
4] That the US, UK, Japanese, Aust., Canadian, etc. national debts will be paid off some day by running a surplus so as to pay it with money from tax collections, without incuring new debt?
5] That the natural world can absorb all the pollution that the economy can dump into it?
6] That the population of the Earth can be stabalized by moving millions people per year off the earth to some other planet?
7] Or that, the population of the Earth can keep growing at 1% to 3% year for 1000 years?
8] That the GDP of every nation can keep growing at 1% to 3% year for 1000 years?

AFAIK, none of these are assumptions of modern mainstream neoclassical economics, and they look like strawman fallacies to me. There is enough dishonesty and absurdity to denounce in modern mainstream neoclassical economics without making up more.
And many others?

Yes. See Economyths by David Orrell, Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, and J is for Junk Economics by Michael Hudson, among others.
Why don't you see that the US economy is in a mess,*** and it was even before the pandemic?
And, that this mess could very likely be the result policy makers mainly using an economic theory that is based on false assumptions, and it doesn't care about real world counter evidence either. It just hand waves it away.
I think that the most obvious area of the US economy, that is a mess, is unemployment. MS econ. prides itself on efficiency. It would not tolerate a huge pile of iron ingots just sitting there not claimed by anyone. Yet, it tolerates massive unemployment. This unemployment is a huge pile of potential work that the American society could be using, but we just let it sit there being unused. this is clearly not efficient.

<modern mainstream neoclassical economist waves hand> "The unemployed are merely expressing their preference for leisure. Problem solved!"
#15189751
"But what I’d like to suggest is that the upcoming generation of economists needs to help their discipline come to terms with some epochal realities of our times. A number of forces — climate change, collapsing ecosystems (fisheries, coral reefs, soil desertification, loss of water, biodiversity loss), savage wealth inequality, tech monopolies, and their data-surveillance, the growing precarity of livelihoods – are challenging some foundational assumptions of standard economics.

My advice to an aspiring economist, therefore, is to immerse yourself in disciplines and ways of life that lie outside of the prevailing economic paradigm and typical career paths. The future will require economics to rethink itself in light of what’s happening outside of its aging, self-referential modes of thought. It needs to seriously reexamine its ontological and epistemological premises to take account of the different ways of knowing and being beyond those of the modern, industrialized West. In short, the discipline, as currently taught, desperately needs to get beyond its “One-World World” perspective, as anthropologist Arturo Escobar puts it. Outside of its narrow, asocial, and transaction-focused way of seeing the world, there is actually a pluriverse of life that intimately conjoins the human with the more-than-human and the individual with social collectives.

As various “externalities” from climate change to market abuses disrupt social stability and indeed, confidence in markets themselves, future economists will need to address a gaping hole in standard economic theory: How shall the anti-social, ecologically destructive tendencies of ‘free markets’ be reliably constrained or prevented in the first place? Given the political sabotage and systemic failures of government regulation over the past fifty years, this is a profound question. It’s entirely possible that waning social trust and legitimacy in the market/state system will intensify strongman, authoritarian responses, hastening the corporate neofeudalism underway.

Economists of all ages – but especially younger ones who have the suppleness and imagination to grow – need to pay attention to these outsider voices. There is a new world that is fast-overtaking us, and it needs to be seen and explained on its own terms."

https://evonomics.com/my-advice-to-an-aspiring-economist-dont-be-an-economist/
#15189854
Truth To Power wrote:I don't support it, but, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair


Economic theory is pretty much useless outside of academia.

Truth To Power wrote:That's just the start of it. Modern mainstream neoclassical economics is riddled with not only false assumptions, but invalid definitions intended to obscure and confuse matters rather than clarify and illuminate them.


Every theory about human behavior is "riddled" with false assumptions. Neoclassical theory is not the only mainstream theory.

Truth To Power wrote:<modern mainstream neoclassical economist waves hand> "The unemployed are merely expressing their preference for leisure. Problem solved!"


What "modern" to you? 100 years ago? The neoclassical synthesis didn't happen? You people are so silly.
#15189859
@Steve_American

Has anyone said MS economics is flawless? It has been the cause of many contradictions and as such been the catalyst of many bubble bursts. That isn't to say MMT is wrong, it is right in many of its statements. Although I am sure if we just kept shaking the money tree we may well see new forms of contradictions in any case. I suppose what I am saying is nobody really has said the MSc is based on no assumptions or that the system is perfect. It just seems to me that you are basing your threads on MMTs assumptions being not flawless and then critiquing MMT on MS economics and saying because one system fails the other must surely succeed. It doesn't work like that I am afraid. They may both be failed systems.
#15189951
B0ycey wrote:@Steve_American

Has anyone said MS economics is flawless? It has been the cause of many contradictions and as such been the catalyst of many bubble bursts. That isn't to say MMT is wrong, it is right in many of its statements. Although I am sure if we just kept shaking the money tree we may well see new forms of contradictions in any case. I suppose what I am saying is nobody really has said the MSc is based on no assumptions or that the system is perfect. It just seems to me that you are basing your threads on MMTs assumptions being not flawless and then critiquing MMT on MS economics and saying because one system fails the other must surely succeed. It doesn't work like that I am afraid. They may both be failed systems.


Sir, frankly, nobody has said much at all.
All I have seen is people saying something like, "My gut feeling is that deficit spending (maybe with some not creating debt), will someday, somehow lead to something bad. Maybe hyperinflation."

Not one person has put together an argument to prove one place where MMT is wrong.
They all argue from authority, or their gut.

They don't respond to my assertion that, "Yes, there may be problems in the future, but there are massive problems now. Why not help the people alive now and hope we can handle the problems in the future? Especially, when some of the problems now WILL devastate the people of the future."

And, "Why is it OK for Congress to use the (supposedly) limited amount of deficit spending to give $2T to corps and multi-billionaires? So, that later, many in Congress balk at deficit spending to help the mass of the people?" Why not demand equal money for the masses as is spent for the multi-billionaires?

We know why? Because the rich control the Gov. with bribes in the $X00s millions to get multi-billions.
.
#15189965
Steve_American wrote:Not one person has put together an argument to prove one place where MMT is wrong.

MMT gets a lot of things right, but it unfortunately mistakes an accounting sleight-of-hand for economic reality, and consequently does get at least three things wrong:
1. The function of taxation is not to remove money from the economy. It is to transfer purchasing power from the private to the public sector.
2. The MMT job guarantee is a band-aid solution that will not work because it misapprehends the nature of the problem. Unemployment is not caused by lack of demand. It is caused by legal privilege, especially landowner privilege, that forces workers to pay the privileged full market value just for permission to work, and many of them can't afford it. If everyone is guaranteed a job at a living wage, landowners will just charge workers that much more for permission to access the enhanced economic opportunity.
3. The problem with the current debt money system is not that government doesn't spend enough or that it worries too much about deficits and debt. The problem is that private-bank-issued debt money per se has an inherently destabilizing positive feedback effect. The solution is therefore not to add more government-issued money to the system but to remove private commercial banks' privilege of increasing the money supply by creating additional debt money de novo in order to give themselves income by charging interest on it.
They don't respond to my assertion that, "Yes, there may be problems in the future, but there are massive problems now. Why not help the people alive now and hope we can handle the problems in the future? Especially, when some of the problems now WILL devastate the people of the future."

My response: you can't solve those problems by misunderstanding them or help those people by ignoring what is really harming them.
"Why is it OK for Congress to use the (supposedly) limited amount of deficit spending to give $2T to corps and multi-billionaires? So, that later, many in Congress balk at deficit spending to help the mass of the people?" Why not demand equal money for the masses as is spent for the multi-billionaires?

Because the debt money system guarantees that the economy is permanently addicted to debt.
We know why? Because the rich control the Gov. with bribes in the $X00s millions to get multi-billions.

Of course. But it's not just or even mainly the bribes and corruption. It's the whole institutional structure built on the altar of the Great God Property, and the constant procession of human sacrifices laid on that altar.
#15189976
Truth To Power wrote:MMT gets a lot of things right, but it unfortunately mistakes an accounting sleight-of-hand for economic reality, and consequently does get at least three things wrong:
1. The function of taxation is not to remove money from the economy. It is to transfer purchasing power from the private to the public sector.
2. The MMT job guarantee is a band-aid solution that will not work because it misapprehends the nature of the problem. Unemployment is not caused by lack of demand. It is caused by legal privilege, especially landowner privilege, that forces workers to pay the privileged full market value just for permission to work, and many of them can't afford it. If everyone is guaranteed a job at a living wage, landowners will just charge workers that much more for permission to access the enhanced economic opportunity.
3. The problem with the current debt money system is not that government doesn't spend enough or that it worries too much about deficits and debt. The problem is that private-bank-issued debt money per se has an inherently destabilizing positive feedback effect. The solution is therefore not to add more government-issued money to the system but to remove private commercial banks' privilege of increasing the money supply by creating additional debt money de novo in order to give themselves income by charging interest on it.


Finally, someone makes an argument.
1] Yes, you are right, but that is what MMT says. MMT only says that taxation is used to remove excess money from the economy when inflation is starting to get too high. MMT also says that taxation is what gives fiat money its universal value inside a nation.
2] OK, define "will not work". IMO, the JGP will certainly work in that it will give a job to everyone who wants one. So, all people who are not working are doing it by choice. It isn't a terrible min. wage job either. At $25/hr it is 2.4 times the current min. wage in the US.
. . . Maybe you mean that it will cause inflation. If so say so and explain how it will.
3] I think you are wrong here. Yes, banks creating money is destabilizing. However, some element in the economy must be adding money to replace the money going into savings. Also, money used to buy stuff from overseas. This was a huge problem way back in the 13 colonies. England wanted taxes paid in gold or paper English money. So, there was always a shortage of hard money. Nobody understood the economy then like MMT does. [See, i.e., google "the paradox of thrift".]
. . . MMT says to look at the EU & EZ for great examples of how a lack of growth in the money supply strangles national economies.

My response: you can't solve those problems by misunderstanding them or help those people by ignoring what is really harming them.


IMO, MMT doesn't misunderstand the problems. And spending money on many problems will actually solve them.

Because the debt money system guarantees that the economy is permanently addicted to debt.


There are only 3 kinds of money. Gold, etc., fiat money, and debt money.
. . . a] Banks create debt money with loans if they are allowed to. Pawnbrokers don't create money because they are not allowed to.
. . . b] Gold money can't increase so it strangles the economy.
. . . c] Fiat money is the answer. Frankly, the world has had a fiat money system since the end of WWII. Brenton Woods made the US dollar the world's reserve currency, and the US kept adding dollars to the system. Finally, in 1971 France forced the US to abandon the pretext that it was backing the dollar with gold. This action by France was part of the problem we had with inflation in the 70s and 80s. It took everyone 20 years to grok that money doesn't need to be backed by gold. That the economy will work just fine with 'naked' fiat money. Like the US$, the euro, the Japanese Yen, and the Swiss franc.

The thing is that most fiat money today is not debt money, because for example 45% of the Japanese national debt is held by the BOJ, so when the Japanese Gov. pays the BOJ when a bond comes due, the BoJ turns around and pays all or over 97% of the payment back to the Japanese Gov.
. . . The rest of the money isn't debt money because it can be (and must be) rolled over FOREVER. See my thread on why this is.
. . . . . The main reason is that taxing that much money out of any nation's economy (US, EU, UK, Aust., Canada, Japan, etc) will stop almost all spending and crash the economy. It is kind of like "The Hotel California". You can add money at a reasonable rate into an economy without hurting the econ., but there is no rate at which you can extract it from an economy without crashing the econ.. This is because there is a big gap between -0.001 (a small rate of removal) and +2.000 (the normal addition rate). Slowing the removal rate to +0.500 is not extracting money from the economy, it is just slowing the adding; and econ. history shows that this rate of adding $ will cause a recession. So, my point is proved.

Of course. But it's not just or even mainly the bribes and corruption. It's the whole institutional structure built on the altar of the Great God Property, and the constant procession of human sacrifices laid on that altar.


That is your opinion. My opinion is it is the bribes, because without the bribes in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the Gov. worked just fine. The Gov. followed the rules established by FDR and the New Deal, and it worked wonderful. It was the best time in human history for the masses (in the West at least) to be growing up. Then, in the late 80s the USSC ruled that spending money was a part of free speech, and it struck down the antibribery election finance laws.
#15189985
Steve_American wrote:Sir, frankly, nobody has said much at all.
All I have seen is people saying something like, "My gut feeling is that deficit spending (maybe with some not creating debt), will someday, somehow lead to something bad. Maybe hyperinflation."

Not one person has put together an argument to prove one place where MMT is wrong.
They all argue from authority, or their gut.


But there have been historical events to say that "money printing" causes inflation and as such MMT is wrong... or not wrong actually, but will suffer from contradictions and assertions which is true with MSc as well I guess.

Also, we are running the economy on MSc economics, so the mere fact the economy is stuttering along and hasn't failed means there isn't a link to say their assertions are wrong. Or I should say your original points which are not assertions and are in fact not shared by MSc economists anyway and are in fact points you made that no one claimed ever but I guess are based on principles or practices. The only point that barely has some truth to it was point three in which banks operate on a fractional reserve and although we have had the argument that Banks create new money on PoFo before, what people ignore is loans are assets and should they be defaulted on they then become toxic and have the potential to take a bank down if enough people do so and as such they aren't really new money actually and are in fact an asset which brings money back into the system.

But to get back onto MMT, or more specifically the claim "that nobody says much at all", it is difficult to explain that MMT is wrong when you seem to ignore Weimar, Zimbabwe, Argentina and the 70s as examples and primarily look at the US borrowing in specifically today for your assertions. Without going into detail on the Petrol Dollar, that the Dollar being the global reserve currency, countries using the Dollar as their main currency, Chinese and Japanese holdings and that commodity exchange and deals specifically are exchanged in Dollars, all I will say is the US specifically has been in a fortunate position since Bretton Woods due to there being a huge demand for Dollars and as such the US has been able to borrow more than anyone else but this borrowing isn't without risk and should demand for Dollars fall, it may well cause hyper inflation actually due to an increased supply of dollars into the market and a lower demand for them. And in laymen that is basically saying that "Money Printing" has a limit and that the US may have exceeded that limit but the way the global economy works means you need Dollars to exchange to do business which clouds a contradiction that MMT has.

Also it needs to be said that we have seen inflation since Covid19 and currently that inflation has eased slightly the past few months and perhaps that may well be because people aren't spending yet to the levels we had pre Covid so please don't be over confident that we have seen the worse of this yet.
#15190019
B0ycey wrote:But there have been historical events to say that "money printing" causes inflation and as such MMT is wrong... or not wrong actually, but will suffer from contradictions and assertions which is true with MSc as well I guess.

Also, we are running the economy on MSc economics, so the mere fact the economy is stuttering along and hasn't failed means there isn't a link to say their assertions are wrong. Or I should say your original points which are not assertions and are in fact not shared by MSc economists anyway and are in fact points you made that no one claimed ever but I guess are based on principles or practices. The only point that barely has some truth to it was point three in which banks operate on a fractional reserve and although we have had the argument that Banks create new money on PoFo before, what people ignore is loans are assets and should they be defaulted on they then become toxic and have the potential to take a bank down if enough people do so and as such they aren't really new money actually and are in fact an asset which brings money back into the system.

But to get back onto MMT, or more specifically the claim "that nobody says much at all", it is difficult to explain that MMT is wrong when you seem to ignore Weimar, Zimbabwe, Argentina and the 70s as examples and primarily look at the US borrowing in specifically today for your assertions. Without going into detail on the Petrol Dollar, that the Dollar being the global reserve currency, countries using the Dollar as their main currency, Chinese and Japanese holdings and that commodity exchange and deals specifically are exchanged in Dollars, all I will say is the US specifically has been in a fortunate position since Bretton Woods due to there being a huge demand for Dollars and as such the US has been able to borrow more than anyone else but this borrowing isn't without risk and should demand for Dollars fall, it may well cause hyper inflation actually due to an increased supply of dollars into the market and a lower demand for them. And in laymen that is basically saying that "Money Printing" has a limit and that the US may have exceeded that limit but the way the global economy works means you need Dollars to exchange to do business which clouds a contradiction that MMT has.

Also it needs to be said that we have seen inflation since Covid19 and currently that inflation has eased slightly the past few months and perhaps that may well be because people aren't spending yet to the levels we had pre Covid so please don't be over confident that we have seen the worse of this yet.


In no particular order ---
1] I have pointed to Japan as an example of a nation that has been borrowing a lot (now over 256.22% of its GDP in 2020) for 28 or 29 years now and 45% of its bonds are currently held by the Bank of Japan. This is more like printing money than selling bonds to the public to fund the deficit. Is Japan in trouble yet? No? Why not?
2] All of the examples of history are from the time when the world was on the gold standard, or involved a shortage of foreign currency, or food or oil that had to be bought with foreign currency. Also, Greece uses the euro and so doesn't issue its own money. None of the cases would apply today to nations like UK, US, Canada. Aust., NZ, Japan, etc. The world changed in 1971. MS econ. ignores this year that changed the world. It never mentions it, because it wants to ignore the effects of this.
3] Yes, the US is special. The US$ is the worlds reserve currency. However, as of now there is no nation that can compete with the US. And this will not change in the next 20 years, during which time ACC will devastate the world as it is already starting to do. After ACC has peaked all bets are off.
. . . a] China can't be trusted and has currency controls in place.
. . . b] Russia can't be trusted.
. . . c] Germany is in the EU & EZ and uses the euro. Also, it doesn't sell many bonds in any year. So its bonds can't be enough to meet the world demand.
. . . d] The UK, maybe, but I think not. At least it is out of the EU. But, it doesn't want to run large deficits.
. . . e] All other nations are just too small.
4] I didn't make up any of my assertions. Everyone was lifted from others. For example, in the last week or so I saw a youtube video and I think I posted a link here to it somewhere. In it they asserted that MS econ. does exclude from consideration all thoughts about the Earth setting limits like the 2 I mentioned. The fact that you have not seen a MS source say those things is not really evidence that it hasn't said them.
5] Bank loans create cash and the asset you mentioned. As such they have no net effect on net worth, but they do add to incomes in the here and now. I have explained the process a few times here. Yes, I'm not an expert and so may not be believed or may even get some points wrong. Yet, nobody has said that I am wrong in my explanations of how bank loans cause many recessions.
6] Of course the economy is sputtering along. How can it fail? What would you see as a failure? I think that you don't grok my point. My point is that all predictions made by MS economists have failed to come true. Over a year ago I asked anyone here to find one prediction that did come true. No one did. Oh, 3 claimed they did, but none was made by a MS economist. Prof. Steve Keen is not MS. I can point to several predictions that MMTers claim to have made in print, that did come true. So, in 40 years of Neo-liberal MS econ. not one true prediction, but about 5 in 25 years for MMTers. 5 to 0 is a good batting average.
. . . If you want to you can find one prediction by a MS econ., and I'll look at it and see if it is a good example. I'm open to this and I'm honest, and I will admit I'm wrong. If you can find 1 good example. So, far this year we have seen many predictions of high inflation turning to hyperinflation and none have come true yet.
. . . So, did any economists predict the GFC/2008? Yes. Steve Keen did and so did 1 MMTer. Did any MS economist predict it? I've not heard of any. They were all claiming that such a crash was a thing of the past.
7] Did you ever look up or read the report that I have mentioned 3 times by the conservative respected MS econ. Cato Institute about the examples of hyperinflation in history? It found 47 IIRC examples, and all were after 1900. All your examples were in the list. However, in every case the cause was not too much money, instead it was shortages of food, oil, or foreign currency. For example, the one in Weimar Ger. was caused by Ger. being unable to pay the reparations in the treaty in the required gold, Francs, or Pounds. So, it tried to buy gold with printed money and didn't stop when the inflation started. All they had to do was stop printing money to buy gold. Of course France and Great Britain would have punished Ger. for that.
. . . Zimbabwe was caused by the Gov. doing land reform that gave the land to soldiers who didn't know how to farm. The resulting crop failure caused a need to buy food from overseas. So, it printed money and this caused the inflation. The shortage always comes 1st, and then the response is to print money. Try finding the Cato Institute report and reading it. Then get back to me about this point. If you can't find it maybe I can, but I'm not as computer savvy as you are.
#15190021
Steve_American wrote:
Cato



Cato, among other things, does propaganda, so not all that respected. Wiki says they have a good relationship with the Ayn Rand Inst... It's one of hundreds of Koch puppets. If you don't know what that means, time to learn.

There is an old joke about libertarians wanting to privatise the sidewalks, that's pretty much true with Cato.

Back to your thing, Cato wants to bring back the gold standard. Which is impossible. In a recent survey of economists none of them wanted to bring back the golf standard.

Koch is one of the guys that wants to "shrink government down the size where you can drown it in a bathtub". He doesn't like conservative economists. The guy he does like makes Ayn Rand look like a liberal.

You need to be careful when picking your dance partners.
#15190029
late wrote:Cato, among other things, does propaganda, so not all that respected. Wiki says they have a good relationship with the Ayn Rand Inst... It's one of hundreds of Koch puppets. If you don't know what that means, time to learn.

There is an old joke about libertarians wanting to privatise the sidewalks, that's pretty much true with Cato.

Back to your thing, Cato wants to bring back the gold standard. Which is impossible. In a recent survey of economists none of them wanted to bring back the golf standard.

Koch is one of the guys that wants to "shrink government down the size where you can drown it in a bathtub". He doesn't like conservative economists. The guy he does like makes Ayn Rand look like a liberal.

You need to be careful when picking your dance partners.


So, let me get this straight. You think that a Koch brothers' think tank would say every case of hyperinflation was caused by shortages proves that that isn't true?
That seems counterintuitive to me.

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