The Biden Administration

[marshwiggle]

I'm pointing out that the problem pre-existed the printing, and was not solved by the printing because the debt was owed in a different currency--and with the pre-existing conditions worsening economic capacity, it entirely undermined the value of the local currency so that it couldn't be exchanged for the stabler foreign currency at a suitable rate. I agree that printing money didn't save them. But it didn't save them because they had the wrong money, and they had external creditors who wanted other money they couldn't print. (In the historical cases, the money might also have been constrained by the gold standard or something [I know Germany suspended it for the war, but after that I don't know]. I don't know. If so, that's another important constraining factor.)

This is the important point. If a country was totally self-sufficient, and didn't need to trade with anyone else, they could do whatever they wanted with their currency. However, if they have to trade with others, then unless they're trading hard goods exclusively, the perceived value of their currency to their trading partners is critical. A country can't just arbitrarily pretend the value of a good or service is what they want it to be. Ultimately it's only as valuable as someone else is willing to buy or sell it for.

[mahagonny]

When will the Attorney General make up his mind whether parents who want to protect and nurture their kids in healthy ways are domestic terrorists?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrick-garland-gets-schooled-fbi-school-board-loudoun-county-11634854437

He should rescind his original statement about the parents challenging the school board and then make amends best he can. Or better still, quit his job.

It seems to have dawned on him that the Oct 4 statement was at the very least, tone deaf. My twelve year old niece could have predicted that. But then, she's probably a racist.

Another of Biden's spectacular f***ups.

ETA: Oh yeah,  son-in-law is in the 'diversity' enforcement business. Conflict of interest much?

Well, how about some nuanced discussion?

As usual, I am interested in what people think.

[Ruralguy]

Are you? You seem to have the answers and are simply looking for questions to fit them to.

[mahagonny]

Are you? You seem to have the answers and are simply looking for questions to fit them to.

Well, sometimes the answers are easy.

ETA: LarryC suggesting waiting until five posts had appeared before jumping back in. Sounds like a plan. sometimes I think it's not the point of view that wears out its welcome, but the frequency. Then again, maybe both.

[mahagonny]

Nobody defends Merrick Garland. And I agree.

[Anselm]

Sure, it helps to have the global reserve currency but I fail to see how a nation can quickly increase the money supply with no negative consequences.  Otherwise they can print even more money and give us all UBI and pet unicorns.   My hunch is that this inflation is not transitory.  I will wait a few months and see (or at least until we get 5 more posts here).

[mamselle]

In this room, we have a discussion of money theory.

While in this room...my take on it:

Manchen and little-miss-what's-her-name have managed to pull solo grandstanding stunts, and seem to be getting the results they seem to be getting.

What's that going to be about going forward? Won't some version of some of the things they're demanding be excluded still need to be passed at some point, anyway?

Vainglory hounds. They're no better than McConnell.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

I hope progressives stick to the plan and torpedo the reconciliation package (unless those two shape the fuck up).  If they get what they want, there's not really anything left worth passing.

But yeah, they can just reintroduce the house bill (or whatever it is; late day brain fog) they want whenever. It's just that it real bad policy and quite unpopular, so they actually want it tied to the reconciliation package.

If they were smart, they wouldn't have torpedoed it quite so much, so that progressives would actually have a hard time voting against it.

[Ruralguy]

They might have Grand Canyon and Appalachian sized egos, but they represent the views of a great many people, including myself.

That doesn't mean I support their precise views (they don't agree with each other), but 4.5 trillion is just excessive. Maybe each problem needs to be addressed in some way at some time.

[dismalist]

Here's how majoritarian democracy works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb_kJJnD8V4

Let us be careful what we wish for.

[Parasaurolophus]

They might have Grand Canyon and Appalachian sized egos, but they represent the views of a great many people, including myself.

That doesn't mean I support their precise views (they don't agree with each other), but 4.5 trillion is just excessive. Maybe each problem needs to be addressed in some way at some time.

FWIW, it's not 4.5 trillion. It started at 6, got compromised to 4.5, then 3.5, and the further watering down they want would bring it to 1-1.5 trillion. Over ten years. Over that ten-year period, it's less than 1.2% of US GDP.

In other words, this is $350 billion dollars a year. Which is not a lot of money, especially when you consider the bang for buck. Most of that spending is likely to bring down inflation because it's going towards green infrastructure and increasing productive capacity. Plus, there's the immediate relief of bringing down drug prices, paid sick leave, childcare, cutting taxes for 90% of Americans, etc. It's a small price to pay for all that. (And if you want to be serious about addressing climate change, it's nowhere near enough.)

And the increase to the corporate tax rate would still leave it well below where it was in 2016.


It's actually not particularly expensive. It's pretty easy to point to more expensive and less useful things.

[dismalist]

They might have Grand Canyon and Appalachian sized egos, but they represent the views of a great many people, including myself.

That doesn't mean I support their precise views (they don't agree with each other), but 4.5 trillion is just excessive. Maybe each problem needs to be addressed in some way at some time.

FWIW, it's not 4.5 trillion. It started at 6, got compromised to 4.5, then 3.5, and the further watering down they want would bring it to 1-1.5 trillion. Over ten years. Over that ten-year period, it's less than 1.2% of US GDP.

In other words, this is $350 billion dollars a year. Which is not a lot of money, especially when you consider the bang for buck. Most of that spending is likely to bring down inflation because it's going towards green infrastructure and increasing productive capacity. Plus, there's the immediate relief of bringing down drug prices, paid sick leave, childcare, cutting taxes for 90% of Americans, etc. It's a small price to pay for all that. (And if you want to be serious about addressing climate change, it's nowhere near enough.)

And the increase to the corporate tax rate would still leave it well below where it was in 2016.


It's actually not particularly expensive. It's pretty easy to point to more expensive and less useful things.

Everything is small compared to GDP! :-)

Spending does not bring down inflation, quite the opposite.

Some people may not want what is in the bill. People differ in their interests.

[mahagonny]

Well, I certainly want it, because in all those trillions, there's got to be something in there somewhere for adjunct faculty. There it is: inflation and unemployment, because we're not competitive for the real jobs, and our jobs are going away, in the interest of equity and the preservation of truth-telling (tenure). And then higher taxes when you are working again somehow. Well...you can't have everything.

[Ruralguy]

Uh, of course its at least 4.5 trillion because of the two separate bills. You can't forget that, its important.

In any case, the 3.5 is unlikely to survive past 2 trillion, so surviving spending between both bills is unlikely to be more than 3 trillion, and I am willing to wager that it will be between two and three for both bills together.

[Puget]

I hope progressives stick to the plan and torpedo the reconciliation package (unless those two shape the fuck up).  If they get what they want, there's not really anything left worth passing.

But yeah, they can just reintroduce the house bill (or whatever it is; late day brain fog) they want whenever. It's just that it real bad policy and quite unpopular, so they actually want it tied to the reconciliation package.

If they were smart, they wouldn't have torpedoed it quite so much, so that progressives would actually have a hard time voting against it.

That would be very stupid, because then they would have nothing. WV will never have another D senator almost certainly, and Manchin's whole brand there is that he's not like other Ds, so there is no leverage to make him do anything he doesn't want to do. If you tell him he can have the progressive version or nothing he will absolutely choose nothing.

This is how the sausage gets made. It isn't pretty, but the alternative is everyone goes hungry. The problem with a lot of progressives is they would rather make a point by going hungry, except it isn't the generally well-off folks taking this stance that actually suffer as a result, it is all the people who would have benefited from the bill, scaled back and imperfect as it is. Actually caring about people rather than politics requires not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, something the far left often has trouble remembering.