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#15249609
late wrote:
I don't click on your goofy links anymore. If it's something real, news or something, I would.



Yeah -- no prob. The graphic illustrations / diagrams are there as *supplemental* material, and are *optional*, of course.


late wrote:
But...

You didn't respond to my point, which is annoying, and suggests to me you can't.



Okay, *this* -- ?


late wrote:
Capitalism is a completely artificial construct. In capitalism, value is what we say it is...

People often forget that economics is a social science...



I have no contention here.

I would only go 'further', as I did, to ask:


ckaihatsu wrote:
Follow-up -- you have no objection to the theory / structure of 'base and superstructure', do you, late?



I swear I'm not been contentious -- your positing of capitalism squarely in the 'social' domain ('social science'), means that *logically* you *agree* with the Marxist-Leninist (not one myself) construction of 'base and superstructure'.


---


late wrote:
As an example, a lot of the value of gold is because it is long seen as a store of value. But it's not 'natural' or intrinsic. Part of it's value is determined by belief.



Of course. That's the archetypal example.

I mean to ask, though, what are the possible / conceivable *sources* of material-value input, for any given transaction of (exchange-) value.

'Goods and services', *correct* -- ? And how are each 'goods' valued (in currency) exactly, and how are 'services' valued (in currency) -- this same situation keeps cropping-up in exchanges with TTP: Is *social organization* ('executive' functioning) the source of value, or is it wage-work *commodity production* that's the source of value -- ?


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show
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#15249610
late wrote:I don't click on your goofy links anymore. If it's something real, news or something, I would.

But...

You didn't respond to my point, which is annoying, and suggests to me you can't.

As an example, a lot of the value of gold is because it is long seen as a store of value. But it's not 'natural' or intrinsic. Part of it's value is determined by belief.


The value of gold is that the labor is already built in to the gold itself. You have to mine a large amount of earth, separate it out by chemical means, and then process it to where it's in a usable form. It's also finite and you don't get more gold until you put in the labor to get it. It has some industrial value, but less than silver. It's also divisible, so you can trade the amount you want for the product you want without gubmint intervention. That makes it a store of value. Plus it's universally recognized and it doesn't degrade over time. You can lay down a certain amount of gold in the early 1900's for a suit and get about the same suit of similar quality today for the same amount of gold. Can't say that about a federal reserve note.

If you have it in physical possession, the government can't just confiscate it in an emergency. They can try, but good luck. Can't say that about currency or electronic accounts which a central authority can do damn near anything they want with at a moment's notice.

There are a lot of scams out there like paper gold, funds that invest in paper that promise they hold the physical gold for you. That leads to shenanigans like hypothecation where some organization does hold some gold and fifty different people have claim to the same gold. All good until the SHTF and the doors are padlocked. Always hold precious metals yourself.

Which brings me to two questions.

Why is the left so against people being self-sufficient and holding precious metals? Because when the SHTF, they want as much control over the masses as possible. PM's obviate some of that, and they can't stand that.

Why is the left against anything that challenges printing and stretching the U.S. dollar? Because it's a threat to the Free Shit Army and their quest to equalize everyone, regardless of those who earn their way and those who don't.
#15249611
Steve_American wrote:Lurkers, I tried to argue with Bluto, and he replied with that.

Ok, I'm back to replying to you.
Bluto says there are no free lunches. What do you call the situation we have now in which banks get to create new dollars with every loan they make? Before you deny that this is the true situation read some of this linked peer reviewed article. Read the abstract and jump to part 3 in the Outline in the top left corner.
It certainly seems like banks get free money to make their loans. A free lunch.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 1914001070

.


I told you I read the Creature from Jekyll Island long ago. I understand the fractional banking system and the money expansion mechanism instituted by creating loans. We are NOT in disagreement on that. Can you get that through your thick head?
#15249616
@BlutoSays your statements keep revealing you don't study history and especially not the Federal Reserve's history. Is Richard M. Nixon a Commie or a Liberal? He was the one who got rid of the gold standard. Dollars used to be backed up by the gold in Ft. Knox etc. Nixon had to get rid of it. Why?

You don't know what you are talking about. You literally think a precious metal was considered a precious metal by who? And why? Do you know why the Spanish were looking for Gold and found it in the Incan Empire and the Aztec Empire?

Who was obsessed with gold? Lol.

Bluto don't be a person who painfully wants to be right but never reads. Read. Learn. And then try to argue. Because all you are doing now is looking foolish. :D

Nixon the Hippie from the seventies got rid of the gold standard.

Why did the Nixon administration decide to abandon the gold standard in 1971 How did this change American currency?
President Nixon chose to abandon the gold standard and move to a fiat currency because monetary policy was limited under the gold standard. Any time the U.S. wanted to increase the amount of money that was in circulation they needed to ensure there was enough gold in the reserve to match it.


https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+did ... e&ie=UTF-8

The gold standard was abandoned due to its propensity for volatility, as well as the constraints it imposed on governments: by retaining a fixed exchange rate, governments were hamstrung in engaging in expansionary policies to, for example, reduce unemployment during economic recessions.
#15249618
BlutoSays wrote:
If you have it in physical possession, the government can't just confiscate it in an emergency. They can try, but good luck. Can't say that about currency or electronic accounts which a central authority can do damn near anything they want with at a moment's notice.



Anything to say about *Lebanon* these days -- ? You're not screaming your head off about it?


BlutoSays wrote:
Why is the left so against people being self-sufficient and holding precious metals? Because when the SHTF,



You *agree*, don't you, with the theme in this thread of 'social construction' -- ?

In a *disaster situation* people are *no longer* self-sufficient, by definition, so then what good are metals and even one's own 'self-sufficiency' -- ?

What's far more desirable is *robust infrastructure* that can *prevent* calamities, as with anything else.

Then it's an *administrative* concern, and not a personal / individual one.


BlutoSays wrote:
Why is the left against anything that challenges printing and stretching the U.S. dollar? Because it's a threat to the Free Shit Army and their quest to equalize everyone, regardless of those who earn their way and those who don't.



The *opposite* of money-printing is standing still (at-best) and *not* catching up to empirical population growth. The population *will* grow, and a stagnating economy means that it's *lessening* in size in relation to extant numbers. Worse, we all know about the *austerity* regimes of the past 40 years of policy -- austerity effectively *rewards pre-existing wealth over growth*, which then is no longer materially-constructive, historically-progressive social economic activity.

Contrary to standing-still is *money printing*, which at least 'pauses' the economy, so-to-speak, but doesn't alleviate any *structural*, institutional inertia, such as the perennial *bad debt*, which is now being dramatically exposed in the light of the market slump -- see cryptocurrencies.

Who's the 'Free Shit Army' -- ? Any attempt to play off of the FSA from Syria?
#15249622
Tainari88 wrote:
@BlutoSays your statements keep revealing you don't study history and especially not the Federal Reserve's history. Is Richard M. Nixon a Commie or a Liberal? He was the one who got rid of the gold standard. Dollars used to be backed up by the gold in Ft. Knox etc. Nixon had to get rid of it. Why?

You don't know what you are talking about. You literally think a precious metal was considered a precious metal by who? And why? Do you know why the Spanish were looking for Gold and found it in the Incan Empire and the Aztec Empire?

Who was obsessed with gold? Lol.

Bluto don't be a person who painfully wants to be right but never reads. Read. Learn. And then try to argue. Because all you are doing now is looking foolish. :D

Nixon the Hippie from the seventies got rid of the gold standard.

Why did the Nixon administration decide to abandon the gold standard in 1971 How did this change American currency?
President Nixon chose to abandon the gold standard and move to a fiat currency because monetary policy was limited under the gold standard. Any time the U.S. wanted to increase the amount of money that was in circulation they needed to ensure there was enough gold in the reserve to match it.


https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+did ... e&ie=UTF-8

The gold standard was abandoned due to its propensity for volatility, as well as the constraints it imposed on governments: by retaining a fixed exchange rate, governments were hamstrung in engaging in expansionary policies to, for example, reduce unemployment during economic recessions.



---



But the talk of cannibalism justified the Spanish using their guns to terrify the indigenous peoples and their iron swords and crossbows to cut them down. Well into the 20th century, the myth of general ‘cannibalism’ among ‘savage’ peoples remained a potent justification for colonialism.11

Despite his crude methods, Columbus found very little gold. He was not any more successful on the next voyage he made in 1493, with much greater investment by the monarchs, a much larger fleet and 1,500 would-be settlers—‘artisans of all kinds, labourers and peasants to work the land, the caballeros [knights], hidalgos [gentlemen] and other men of worth drawn by the fame of gold and the wonders of the land’12—as well as many soldiers and three priests. After establishing seven settlements, each with a fort and several gallows, across the island of Hispaniola (Haiti), he decreed that every ‘Indian’ over the age of 14 had to supply a certain amount of gold every three months. Those who did not were to be punished by having their hands cut off and left to bleed to death.13 Yet despite this barbarity, they could not meet the demand for gold, for the simple reason that no one had discovered more than very small quantities on the island.

Columbus tried to supplement his hunt for wealth from gold with another source—slavery. In February 1495 he rounded up 1,600 Tainos—the ‘gentle’, ‘peaceful’ and helpful people of two and a half years before—and sent 550 of them in chains on a ship to Seville with the aim of selling them as slaves. Two hundred died on the passage across the Atlantic. He followed this by establishing an encomienda system, which enabled appointed colonists to use the forced labour of Indians.

The impact of Columbus’s measures on the people he still insisted on calling ‘Indians’ was disastrous. The population of Hispaniola was probably well over a million, and possibly much higher, at the time of Columbus’s first landing 14—20 years later it was around 28,000, and by 1542 it was 200. The settler-turned-priest Las Casas blamed the methods of the colonists, ‘the greatest outrages and slaughterings of people’.15 More recently, another cause has often been stated as more important—the diseases brought by the Europeans to which the ‘Indians’ had no immunity. Measles, influenza, typhus, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria and, above all, smallpox would have done terrible damage to people who had never encountered them before. Yet it is difficult to believe that disease alone accounts for the virtual obliteration of the islands’ original inhabitants. In most parts of the mainland Americas at least some of the ‘Indians’ survived. The scale of the deaths in the earliest Spanish colonies must owe something to the barbarity of the methods of Columbus and his settlers.

Yet the barbarity in itself could not provide Columbus, the settlers and their royal sponsors with the wealth they wanted.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 163-164
#15249624
ckaihatsu wrote:


I swear I'm not been contentious

-- your positing of capitalism squarely in the 'social' domain ('social science'), means that *logically* you *agree* with the Marxist-Leninist (not one myself) construction of 'base and superstructure'.




Didn't say you were.

I don't know what that means.

To sort of answer something you said, the value at a particular moment is the one where a buyer is willing to buy and a seller is willing to sell. You really ought to read Debt, the fist 5,000 years.
#15249630
Tainari88 wrote:


Nixon the Hippie from the seventies got rid of the gold standard.

Why did the Nixon administration decide to abandon the gold standard in 1971 How did this change American currency?
President Nixon chose to abandon the gold standard and move to a fiat currency because monetary policy was limited under the gold standard. Any time the U.S. wanted to increase the amount of money that was in circulation they needed to ensure there was enough gold in the reserve to match it.



Nixon hated hippies with a passion. It's not important, unless you happened to be one..

After WW2 we set up a brilliant global economic standard that came to be known as Bretton Woods.

Bretton Woods was designed to punish countries that spent too much money. The USA spent too much money, and France did a run on our gold. Basically they were carting it out of the country and making good money doing it.

And that's why Nixon went off gold. We had to cut the budget a lot, or go off gold. And cutting the budget meant, for starters, leaving Vietnam. While Nixon had said he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam conflict, he didn't have a secret plan. So he spent even more...

So... we set up the best international finance system in history only to destroy it a generation later.

Geniuses we are not.
#15249633
late wrote:
Didn't say you were.



Didn't *say* you didn't say you were. (grin)


late wrote:
I don't know what that means.



I don't mean to impose -- I'm saying that if capitalist 'value' is a social construction, then that's part of the *superstructure*, while the material reality and dynamics being *reflected* by such currency is the 'base' of society, or how it physically carries-out its production for itself.

So, the *present-day* 'base' and 'superstructure' don't really *have* to be exactly what they are today -- *alternatives*, etc.


late wrote:
To sort of answer something you said, the value at a particular moment is the one where a buyer is willing to buy and a seller is willing to sell. You really ought to read Debt, the fist 5,000 years.



'Debt' implies *exchange values*, and the world really needs to get to a socio-political economy of fulfilling human *need* equally, everywhere, first. Ditto for global warming, etc.
#15249640
Potemkin wrote:1] Okay, back to basics. People work and produce things, and this creates a certain amount of social wealth in the form of goods and services. In return for the work they do in creating this social wealth, people are given currency which entitles them to a certain fixed share of the social wealth. Currency, in this sense, is therefore a way of rationing out the finite social wealth among the population. It can therefore be thought of as ‘congealed labour-power’. Do you agree with this so far?

2] Now, it is indeed true that banks create loans by creating currency out of thin air, out of nothing. This causes no economic harm, nor does it increase inflation, so long as the loan is repaid. After all, being given the loan entitles the borrower to a certain share of goods and services, which are real and have been produced by human labour-power, by the sweat of somebody’s brow. The borrower must repay that loan by working to produce more goods and services to the same value, which he repays to the bank. This, in effect, destroys the money created out of thin air by the bank. The net result is that the borrower consumed goods and services to the same value as those he produced in order to repay the loan. He just got access to the goods and services he consumed sooner than he otherwise would have done, which is why he borrowed the money in the first place. All is well, economically speaking. But, and here’s the zinger, if he fails to repay the loan, then he has consumed goods and services in excess of those he has produced, and has therefore taken more than his fair share of the social wealth, which currency is intended to ration out. This is not okay, economically speaking. There is now more currency in circulation than there should be, and its value in relation to goods and services will therefore decrease. We call this ‘inflation’. And the deadbeat borrower is what we call a ‘free-rider’, aka a ‘moocher’.


1] IMHO, you are assuming something that has never been proven. That is, that the income of everyone is perfectly related to the value they have contributed to the society. I flatly deny that this is so. Corps with monopolies are taking more than they provide to society. By definition, this means others are getting less that they contribute.

2] IMHO, here you are again assuming something that has never been proven. That is, that paying the debt 30 years later has no effect on the inflation in the 1st 5 years.

You seem to also assuming that it is OK to have forgiven the PPP loans.

We are speaking of student debt here. So, let me put it this way. Suppose we had decided that High Schools should have been privatized in the 80s and that as a result the corps running our HS had doubled or tripled the tuition for HS. The students had been forced to get student loans as a result. These corps have effective monopoly pricing power. So, are you saying that these students must pay for their education? It seems to me that over 150 years of US history have shown that HS students should not be forced to repay the cost of their education. They do it later by paying taxes with rich people paying more. This system has worked very well.

After WWII the US provide college educations to many people. This was not inflationary and paid for itself in increased tax revenues.

It seems like you are saying that it is inflationary to forgive debts, but it is not inflationary to have just given the education to the HS or college students by the US Gov. providing the funding with direct or indirect grants.

Finally, the money supply theory of inflation was "proven" by using false premises. Therefore, the proof is NOT VALID.

BTW -- I'll go further. I assert that is is impossible to prove anything about reality with a pure deductive proof. Such proofs can always be created to prove anything as long as false premises are allowed. So, I'm asserting that all of math has not been proven to be about reality, unless its premises have been shown to somehow be "true" about reality. I know that math works, so I'm asserting that there are further elements in the final proof that relate math to reality.

So, I reject you points.

.
#15249641
BlutoSays wrote:I told you I read the Creature from Jekyll Island long ago. I understand the fractional banking system and the money expansion mechanism instituted by creating loans. We are NOT in disagreement on that. Can you get that through your thick head?


OK, great, you know that banks create new dollars with every loan.
Many others here don't accept that that is true.

However, you said there are no free lunches.
I pointed out that their is free money being given to banks every business day.
I assert that free money is better than free lunches.

I'll also point out that Trump has declared bankruptcy 6 times (IIRC). Bankruptcy means he didn't repay his loans. Are all business people and ordinary people who declare bankruptcy being inflationary? Are they freeloaders?

.
#15249642
Potemkin wrote:
There is now more currency in circulation than there should be, and its value in relation to goods and services will therefore decrease. We call this ‘inflation’.




[T]he large volumes of precious metals from America led to inflation, which had a negative effect on the poorer part of the population [of Spain], as goods became overpriced. This also hampered exports, as expensive goods could not compete in international markets. Moreover, the large cash inflows from silver hindered the industrial development in Spain as entrepreneurship seems to be indispensable.[1]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ ... _New_World



---


Potemkin wrote:
And the deadbeat borrower is what we call a ‘free-rider’, aka a ‘moocher’.



Question: Do you think that the total of all face values (on all currency bills) reflects total labor input, as you're implying -- ?

Consider that as soon as someone has *savings*, that's *rentier capital* by-default, and can make an active claim against the pool of *pre-existing* values in the economy, meaning interest payments and rent payments.

Face values are just one piece of the puzzle, since the U.S., for example, has had low GDP for decades now, yet enjoys international confidence because of the dollar's world reserve currency status and function.

(The following can be stretched to illustrate the *current* historical situation.)


Pies Must Line Up

Spoiler: show
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#15249644
ckaihatsu wrote:



I don't mean to impose -- I'm saying that if capitalist 'value' is a social construction, then that's part of the *superstructure*, while the material reality and dynamics being *reflected* by such currency is the 'base' of society, or how it physically carries-out its production for itself.



"or how it physically carries-out its production for itself"???
#15249649
Steve_American wrote:1] IMHO, you are assuming something that has never been proven. That is, that the income of everyone is perfectly related to the value they have contributed to the society. I flatly deny that this is so.

So do I. And my argument is of course highly simplified, but does not rest on the assumption that the rationing out of the social wealth is actually fair. It may or may not be; my argument only logically depends on the assumption that currency is a means of rationing the distribution of goods and services. Do you deny that this is the main function of currency?

Corps with monopolies are taking more than they provide to society. By definition, this means others are getting less that they contribute.

Indeed. We call this ‘exploitation’, and it is endemic to the capitalist mode of production. In fact, capitalism requires it.

2] IMHO, here you are again assuming something that has never been proven. That is, that paying the debt 30 years later has no effect on the inflation in the 1st 5 years.

My argument is highly simplified; for example, I ignored the concept of ‘interest’. This does not affect the logical validity of my argument, however.

You seem to also assuming that it is OK to have forgiven the PPP loans.

My argument actually implies the opposite - that the people who had their PPP loans forgiven are, in fact, freeloaders and moochers.

We are speaking of student debt here. So, let me put it this way. Suppose we had decided that High Schools should have been privatized in the 80s and that as a result the corps running our HS had doubled or tripled the tuition for HS. The students had been forced to get student loans as a result. These corps have effective monopoly pricing power. So, are you saying that these students must pay for their education? It seems to me that over 150 years of US history have shown that HS students should not be forced to repay the cost of their education. They do it later by paying taxes with rich people paying more. This system has worked very well.

After WWII the US provide college educations to many people. This was not inflationary and paid for itself in increased tax revenues.

It seems like you are saying that it is inflationary to forgive debts, but it is not inflationary to have just given the education to the HS or college students by the US Gov. providing the funding with direct or indirect grants.

Correct. One of the main functions of government is, and has always been, to redistribute the social wealth. From the earliest times of the existence of governments, millennia ago, governments would tax their population, and spend the money on armies and navies to conquer their neighbours or defend themselves from being conquered by their neighbours. This is not inflationary, because the social wealth already existed. It is, if you like, confiscatory rather than inflationary.

Finally, the money supply theory of inflation was "proven" by using false premises. Therefore, the proof is NOT VALID.

BTW -- I'll go further. I assert that is is impossible to prove anything about reality with a pure deductive proof. Such proofs can always be created to prove anything as long as false premises are allowed. So, I'm asserting that all of math has not been proven to be about reality, unless its premises have been shown to somehow be "true" about reality. I know that math works, so I'm asserting that there are further elements in the final proof that relate math to reality.

So, I reject you points.

.

…So you’re basically saying that no-one can use logical arguments in economics, ever? :eh:
#15249655
ckaihatsu wrote:---

Question: Do you think that the total of all face values (on all currency bills) reflects total labor input, as you're implying -- ?

I believe in the labour theory of value, and I believe that currency acts as a means of rationing finite goods and services to the population, so yes, in principle the total of all face values of the currency should indeed reflect total labour input. Money is, after all, just “congealed labour-power”, to use Marx’s phrase.

Consider that as soon as someone has *savings*, that's *rentier capital* by-default, and can make an active claim against the pool of *pre-existing* values in the economy, meaning interest payments and rent payments.

This just means that savers and rentiers have a claim on other people’s labour-power. Which they do, as we can easily observe.

Face values are just one piece of the puzzle, since the U.S., for example, has had low GDP for decades now, yet enjoys international confidence because of the dollar's world reserve currency status and function.

The world’s economy is a complex system, and having any sort of monopoly power makes all sorts of things possible which would not otherwise be possible. But it doesn’t change the fact that these games are being played with social wealth which human beings created by the sweat of their brow.
#15249660
Potemkin wrote:1] So do I. And my argument is of course highly simplified, but does not rest on the assumption that the rationing out of the social wealth is actually fair. It may or may not be; my argument only logically depends on the assumption that currency is a means of rationing the distribution of goods and services. Do you deny that this is the main function of currency?


2] Indeed. We call this ‘exploitation’, and it is endemic to the capitalist mode of production. In fact, capitalism requires it.


3] My argument is highly simplified; for example, I ignored the concept of ‘interest’. This does not affect the logical validity of my argument, however.


4] My argument actually implies the opposite - that the people who had their PPP loans forgiven are, in fact, freeloaders and moochers.


5] Correct. One of the main functions of government is, and has always been, to redistribute the social wealth. From the earliest times of the existence of governments, millennia ago, governments would tax their population, and spend the money on armies and navies to conquer their neighbours or defend themselves from being conquered by their neighbours. This is not inflationary, because the social wealth already existed. It is, if you like, confiscatory rather than inflationary.


6] …So you’re basically saying that no-one can use logical arguments in economics, ever? :eh:


6] Not really. I'm saying that every premise must be somehow based on reality and not just assumed to be true. We must not allow any false premises to slip into the proofs.

3] I don't like simplified arguments. This is how mainstream economists got to slip false premises into their theories. An example from math. Before Chaos theory was discovered, they simplified 2nd order equations and thought they were learning things. It turned out that the 2nd order terms were exactly where the true behavior of such systems was located. Simplifying the equations hit the true behavior.

2] So, if some are getting more value than they return and many, many others are getting far lass, then IMHO your argument fails to prove that forgiving debt turns people into bigger moochers than those getting 5 times their value. We tolerate the bigger moochers and come down on the little ones. IMHO, you and we should reverse that behavior.

4] MMTers would assert AFAIK, that instead of loans that were intended to be forgiven, the Gov. should have just given grants in the 1st place. Either the Gov. or a bank just created the dollars out of thin air, so nobody lost anything they had before the transaction. Some did get things they didn't have before the transaction.
. . a] MS econ. claims to have proven the money supply theory of inflation, however, it used false premises to prove it, so the proof is not valid.
. . b] MMTers claim to have proven that Gov. deficit spending is only inflationary when all the labor in the nation is being used somehow, and also, all of the real resources available that will be needed by the deficit spending are somehow also already being used. I don't claim to have understood the proofs. They are in detailed peer reviewed papers that are over my head. MMTers claim that they used no false premises. I can't confirm that claim. OTO, I have never seen an attack on MMT by a MS economists that proved that MMT had used a false premise. I have seen a few that asserted that MMT uses false premises, but it alwat took a form like Truth to Power asserting that CO2 doesn't cause the air to heat. We discount TtP's assertions because he fails to back them up. I do the same to MS Economists' assertions.

.
#15249666
Steve_American wrote:6] Not really. I'm saying that every premise must be somehow based on reality and not just assumed to be true. We must not allow any false premises to slip into the proofs.

Agreed. Please point out any false premises you think I have used.

3] I don't like simplified arguments. This is how mainstream economists got to slip false premises into their theories. An example from math. Before Chaos theory was discovered, they simplified 2nd order equations and thought they were learning things. It turned out that the 2nd order terms were exactly where the true behavior of such systems was located. Simplifying the equations hit the true behavior.

Our thoughts about the world are not the world itself. They are a map of the world. And like any map, it must be simplified in order to be useful. As Einstein pointed out, our theories about the workd must be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

2] So, if some are getting more value than they return and many, many others are getting far lass, then IMHO your argument fails to prove that forgiving debt turns people into bigger moochers than those getting 5 times their value. We tolerate the bigger moochers and come down on the little ones. IMHO, you and we should reverse that behavior.

Agreed, but this is a separate issue. It’s a critically important issue, but is not relevant to the truth or falsehood of my argument.

4] MMTers would assert AFAIK, that instead of loans that were intended to be forgiven, the Gov. should have just given grants in the 1st place.

Agreed.

Either the Gov. or a bank just created the dollars out of thin air, so nobody lost anything they had before the transaction. Some did get things they didn't have before the transaction.

Those two sentences contradict each other. As I have pointed out, the loans given by a bank are indeed created out of nothing, but to avoid damaging the economy they must be destroyed by being repaid.

. . a] MS econ. claims to have proven the money supply theory of inflation, however, it used false premises to prove it, so the proof is not valid.
. . b] MMTers claim to have proven that Gov. deficit spending is only inflationary when all the labor in the nation is being used somehow, and also, all of the real resources available that will be needed by the deficit spending are somehow also already being used. I don't claim to have understood the proofs. They are in detailed peer reviewed papers that are over my head. MMTers claim that they used no false premises. I can't confirm that claim. OTO, I have never seen an attack on MMT by a MS economists that proved that MMT had used a false premise. I have seen a few that asserted that MMT uses false premises, but it alwat took a form like Truth to Power asserting that CO2 doesn't cause the air to heat. We discount TtP's assertions because he fails to back them up. I do the same to MS Economists' assertions.

.

But for this new money not to ruin the economy, the goods and services it represents must be available. The new money just mobilises those unused resources. It does not and cannot create them.
World War II Day by Day

March 29, Friday Mackenzie King wins Canadian el[…]

Hmmm, it the Ukraine aid package is all over main[…]

The rapes by Hamas, real or imagained are irreleva[…]

@Rugoz You are a fuckin' moralist, Russia coul[…]