[noemon]

We 're saying the same thing.

'Cheap money' is effectively what you call 'rent'.

And your second point is spot on.

My wording was poor, but the point I was trying to make to Potemkin was that this issue is no longer as simple as reducing corruption to effect positive ROI. It has gone beyond that and is now structural.

[Robert Urbanek]

He will govern like that other Javier from No Country for Old Men.

[Istanbuller]

To sum up, things are finally getting in the right direction for Argentina. Set Argentinian people free again. Make Argentina great again.

[Truth To Power]

There is nothing "funny" or "magical" about it. Free markets work, government doesn't. It is scientific.

I guess that must be why there is a strong positive statistical relationship between the size of countries' public sectors as a fraction of GDP and their per-capita income....

ALL wealthy countries have a large public sector (>30% of GDP), and ALL countries with small public sectors (<20% of GDP) are poor. Granted, there are a few poor countries with large public sectors, like North Korea and Cuba, but their governments are tyrannical dictatorships, and not democratically accountable. Countries that have been at war also tend to have large public -- i.e., military -- sectors but still be poor.

Coincidence?

[noemon]

The public sector bonus is a way to redistribute money in an economy and it is also subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Rich countries form large public sectors as a consequence of becoming rich. Not prior I believe. Cheap money allowed booty-less countries to form large public sectors until interest caught up with them.

To become a rich country, the traditional method is booty and plunder. Even little countries that did not plunder, became rich by becoming attendant to the countries that did, like for example Switzerland.

In today's world even the opportunity for plunder has been diminished, along with the opportunity to make an honest living with an honest day's work.

[Truth To Power]

'Cheap money' is effectively what you call 'rent'.

More specifically, cheap money is how banksters -- especially American ones, as they are entitled to issue the world's reserve currency -- extort economic rent (in the form of interest) from the productive. See Prof. Michael Hudson's "Superimperialism" -- or, for a less technical account of the same phenomenon, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," by John Perkins.

My wording was poor, but the point I was trying to make to Potemkin was that this issue is no longer as simple as reducing corruption to effect positive ROI. It has gone beyond that and is now structural.

I couldn't tell if it was your wording that wasn't clear or your thinking, so I have done my best to make the issue as clear as possible. Hope it helped.

[Istanbuller]

:lol: I guess that must be why there is a strong positive statistical relationship between the size of countries' public sectors as a fraction of GDP and their per-capita income....

ALL wealthy countries have a large public sector (>30% of GDP), and ALL countries with small public sectors (<20% of GDP) are poor. Granted, there are a few poor countries with large public sectors, like North Korea and Cuba, but their governments are tyrannical dictatorships, and not democratically accountable. Countries that have been at war also tend to have large public -- i.e., military -- sectors but still be poor.

Coincidence?

GDP is tricky when you increase government expenditure to make figures looking rich. But actually it means you are living on debt. Purchasing power constantly decrease. Your parents were able to buy more things with their cash.

American economy and European countries economies still lagging behind pre-2008 levels. All those government expenditures, bailouts, central command policies do not make your economy booming. These made you impoverished.

[Tainari88]

No, it's down to rent seeking. Larger and larger fractions of almost all advanced capitalist economies are based on extraction of economic rents -- returns obtained by legally depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible -- rather than production. Rents are derived from government-issued and -enforced privilege, and can't really be a basis for export industries: you can't export land titles, IP monopolies, or bank licenses -- unless you are the USA, and can back them up with military force.

That is not really the case. What has actually happened is that regulatory and tax environments have been tailored to favor privilege over production, so that the productive have to pay all the taxes, and rich, greedy, privileged parasites pocket all the value created by public spending in return for no contribution to its production.

Well, TTP I agree with this assessment of yours 100%.

[Truth To Power]

The public sector bonus is a way to redistribute money in an economy and it is also subject to the law of diminishing returns.

Rich countries form large public sectors as a consequence of becoming rich. Not prior I believe. Cheap money allowed booty-less countries to form large public sectors until interest caught up with them.

While poor countries often can't afford a large public sector, the example of Japan is instructive.

At the time of the Meiji Restoration, Japan was a poor, stagnant, feudal backwater with almost no public sector. Tax revenue was tiny and land rents were devoted to the samurai landowners' personal luxury consumption and maintenance of their own private armies of retainers, construction of fortifications, etc. The new Meiji government taxed away most of the land rents and spent the money on infrastructure projects, education, and creation of a modern national citizen army and navy on the Western model. The samurai did not like losing the land rent, and thought that they would easily be able to handle the new citizen army of "peasants." They rose in armed rebellion against the Meiji government, and were duly annihilated.

In a single generation, and from a standing start, diversion of land rent from parasitic private landowners to public purposes and benefit turned Japan into a modern industrial, economic and military power that was able to defeat first China and then Russia in war. If the strong and highly capable Meiji emperor had not been succeeded by his mentally deficient son, whose weakness allowed the fascists to take power with disastrous consequences, Japan might have eclipsed the old European powers economically after WW I and mounted a strong challenge to the USA.

In today's world even the opportunity for plunder has been diminished, along with the opportunity to make an honest living with an honest day's work.

The plunder just takes a different form. Consider how Western -- especially US -- banks have used debt to gain ownership of poor countries' natural resources and public infrastructure.

[Truth To Power]

GDP is tricky when you increase government expenditure to make figures looking rich. But actually it means you are living on debt. Purchasing power constantly decrease. Your parents were able to buy more things with their cash.

That simply does not describe wealthy, advanced countries with large government sectors. While the price of housing (actually land) has certainly increased far faster than earned income, most prices are lower relative to income than they were 50 or 60 years ago.

American economy and European countries economies still lagging behind pre-2008 levels. All those government expenditures, bailouts, central command policies do not make your economy booming. These made you impoverished.

Yes, there is a difference between public spending for public purposes and benefit and public spending to subsidize rich, greedy, privileged private parasites. The former makes countries richer, the latter makes them poorer.

[Potemkin]

We 're saying the same thing.

'Cheap money' is effectively what you call 'rent'.

And your second point is spot on.

My wording was poor, but the point I was trying to make to Potemkin was that this issue is no longer as simple as reducing corruption to effect positive ROI. It has gone beyond that and is now structural.

Indeed. And Marx referred to it as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. As you noted, it is indeed a structural thing.

[Truth To Power]

And Marx referred to it as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Profit is revenue less expenses, and there is no such thing as "the rate of profit." You can calculate the statistical average of firms' return on assets, obviously, but it is just an average, and has no economic significance. Marx had zero (0) understanding of business and economics, and had nothing of interest or value to say on either subject.

[Negotiator]

To sum up, things are finally getting in the right direction for Argentina. Set Argentinian people free again. Make Argentina great again.

We'll see.

For example if Trump is assassinated (literally the only thing I can see that can still stop him in 2024), then the whole concept might collapse.

[JohnRawls]

We'll see.

For example if Trump is assassinated (literally the only thing I can see that can still stop him in 2024), then the whole concept might collapse.

Trump is going to loose big time to Biden, even worse than in the previous election. The campaign didn't even start for Biden and they are even. At same point in time last time Biden had 25% lead over Trump.

Candidates have the advantage of starting the campaign early and their lead is almost by default before the President starts his campaign in earnest.

The acting President is always a punching bag before he starts his campaign basically.

[Tainari88]

@Truth To Power wrote:

The plunder just takes a different form. Consider how Western -- especially US -- banks have used debt to gain ownership of poor countries' natural resources and public infrastructure.

That is exactly has happened to Puerto Rico and also what is attempted in Honduras. The trend will continue. Because it is working in their favor. Why stop a thing that is making them both rich and powerful?

They buy out the publicly owned utilities and privatize it. They do not take the risk in capitalism. They want the profits and to farm out the risk to the public coffers and taxpayers. They win with no risk. That is what that is all about. They own nations and can dictate without having to cope with voters pressuring them to respond to their interests. It is the dictatorship of the corporations.

[Istanbuller]

We'll see.

For example if Trump is assassinated (literally the only thing I can see that can still stop him in 2024), then the whole concept might collapse.

What does this have to do with Trump?

Trump is going to loose big time to Biden, even worse than in the previous election. The campaign didn't even start for Biden and they are even. At same point in time last time Biden had 25% lead over Trump.

Candidates have the advantage of starting the campaign early and their lead is almost by default before the President starts his campaign in earnest.

The acting President is always a punching bag before he starts his campaign basically.

There are not many differences between Biden and Trump on both social and economical issues. The USA is swelling in anti-freedom and statism in either way.

It is just Democrats killing America faster compared to Trump.

[Deutschmania]

Although I hadn't seriously expected that my favored candidate , Myriam Bregman , would ever succeed in winning the election , I am shocked to find out this evening that Pres. Milei has just appointed as his solicitor general someone whom has a history of association with fascism , and even anti-Semitism .

Nearly three decades ago, Rodolfo Barra resigned as Argentina’s justice minister in the wake of revelations about his past membership in a violent antisemitic group. Now, the newly elected prime minister has tapped Barras to head the country’s top legal office.

The appointment by Javier Milei, a far-right upstart who backs Israel and has said he wants one day to convert to Judaism, has drawn a range of reaction from Jewish groups in Argentina. The country’s main Jewish organization, DAIA, noted that Barra had expressed regret about his actions in his youth, while a new group formed after the election to oppose antisemitism called Barra’s appointment “a direct affront to the democratic and plural spirit” of Argentine.

A third group, founded to advocate for the families of the victims of two bombings in the 1990s that claimed the lives of more than 100 people at Buenos Aires’ Israeli embassy and Jewish community center, offered “absolute rejection” of the appointment, according to the Buenos Aires Herald. Barra had been investigating the bombings, which are still officially unsolved, when he resigned.

The revelations about Barra rocked Argentina’s government in 1996. A local weekly magazine revealed that Barras had belonged to the right-wing group UNES when he was a high school student. UNES was a youth group affiliated with Tacuara, an organization responsible for hundreds of antisemitic actions, including attacks against synagogues, a violent riot in the Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires and the murder of Alberto Alterman, a Jewish lawyer. The expose also included a picture of Barra joining a group of men in delivering a Nazi salute. Barras admitted that he had been part of UNES but said he had been young and ill-informed, writing in a public letter at the time, “If I was a Nazi, I regret it.” But a different magazine reported that he had graduated to another extremist group, Patria Grande, and worked in his late 20s with a noted Argentinean fascist at the University of Buenos Aires.

He resigned amid widespread pressure, including from DAIA, whose president said at the time, “Argentine Jews are not comfortable with a former Nazi in the Cabinet.” Barra was replaced by a Jewish deputy minister, Elias Jassan.

In his new role, which he is set to assume Dec. 10, Barra will helm Argentina’s legal efforts against antisemitism and discrimination. DAIA emphasized in a statement that it would keep a careful eye on his department’s activities and “will be present to ensure its adherence to the law and that this is fulfilled by the government and whoever governs.” Jewish Telegraph Agency

[KurtFF8]

This Presidency is likely going to be a disaster for the working class of Argentina. Hopefully he's not able to accomplish any of his goals.

[Tainari88]

This Presidency is likely going to be a disaster for the working class of Argentina. Hopefully he's not able to accomplish any of his goals.

I would not be at all surprised if Javier Milei winds up imprisoning and killing socialists, communists, liberals that oppose him, gays, and Jewish Argentineans. He is going to sell every single publicly owned industry, and make government completely dysfunctional and call it a resounding success of freedom. The inflation issue will not be solved and all of the austerity measures from the IMF will become much worse.

On top of that, he will be responsible for killing or locking up a bunch of effective government people who will oppose him at every turn. He will make Argentina a dictatorship full of incompetent anarchistic capitalists that have zero idea about how to make a government work for the people and by the people because all they care about our their own narrow interests. They are horrible.

A disaster for Argentina.