Psedo intellectuals like Piketty should absolutely be denounced. If this sad episode of inflation should teach us anything it is that people who espouse crack pot theories like MMT and such cannot and should not be taken seriously. I would love for an economist to estimate what the current inflation rate would be had Build Back Broke bill passed. Guessing 10%+ and trending upwards. Republicans should be hammering democrats on that. Joe Manchin saved America.
Free Markets/Capitalism is what happens when government does nothing. No intervention.
Free Markets are what people do if government simply provides a court system for enforcing contracts. People will act on their own self interest.
Also, the way you combat these loons is with ridicule. If you read any of the dissidents of the old USSR they all agreed that mockery was the one thing that the Left couldn't deal with effectively.
The Dems sure have a lot of dense people in their cult. But Jennifer Granholm has got to be among the dumbest. Perhaps dumber than AOC. Absolutely clueless. Thanks for pointing out her idiocy.
More than we would like to admit, the United States has become a centrally planned economy. The "free market" is a vague anachronism.
So, what we are seeing is the result of this planning.
We have been taught over and over again (at least classical economics students anyway) that central planning fails because a few bureaucrats and politicians with perverse incentives cannot outsmart a free market of millions of people. But over and over again they meddle, they scheme, they plot and they coerce. Every industry.
Then there is the macroeconomic central planner -- the Fed. If ever there is a lesson in Central Planning Failure -- there it is! I remember going back to my locked down business in January 2021. The first thing that was evident was that labor was not coming back, and the ones that did knew they were in demand, and knew they could get more money -- a lot more money. They just weren't willing to work in a public-facing job wearing masks all day for the same money. Not when unemployment and government was literally cajoling them to stay home and get benefits. So the premium increased -- big time, which meant huge wage inflation. I didn't see that ending for a long time, because it didn't feel temporary. That situation -- a year and a half later -- still exists and is worse than ever.
The second thing I saw was the scarcity of product and price increases. And there was no glee in it. We would get letters from suppliers essentially saying, "we're very sorry, but we have to do this", and then hike prices 25%." They were facing the same things. Letter after letter, email after email.
I said at the time to anyone who would listen, this is not transitory, because we in the trenches of small business knew it. Then I turn on the TV and the internet, and all I here is a bunch of Central Planners saying "transitory." Nothing to see here. They were clueless, and I just shook my head. I was ready (hoping) to be wrong, but didn't feel it.
I envisioned them with their government spreadsheets put together by junior bureaucrats and 2 years post college darlings. Then, a simple correlation of "supply chain" and inflation. Oh, that's it!
When you are disconnected from the real economy, you would have no way of knowing what we saw. You would say things like "transitory" because your staff couldn't see it either. They're behind their computers waiting for the latest poll and raw data from an index. These things are good during stable times, but I don't think they can foretell what is happening in the trenches very well. So the Central Planners are behind the ball and fail -- every time.
I hate to say it, but the only ones that I think can see the "real" economy are the bankers and the investment bankers. They see the money, the accounts, and they have their own internals, which are crisp and on the button. The big banks have economics departments that get to use all their data -- from the working electrician's salary direct deposit to his car payment. To the small business accounts and their velocity and sales. I assume they put it all into their own indices and intelligence.
When Jamie Dimon says something, I listen. He's seeing something that perhaps he doesn't want to share the raw data about, but his macro statement is likely based on real, current data.
So here we sit, lessons of Central Planning being relearned again -- ala the 70's. People will get horrified by the Democrats (the Central Planners) and revert to the alternative. Ronald DeSantis (Reagan) will win in 2024 and start deregulating, with the same charm and disarming apropos that Reagan had, perhaps upped a notch. Perhaps some Millennials and Gen Z will convert, after they see happens. Before I studied economics, I was a Bill Clinton democrat because my parents were. Then I started to learn and I went extreme conservative, which is where I am today. I am disgusted by the economics ignorance we see everywhere.
The old saying that, "if you're not a liberal at age 20 you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative at age 40 you have no brain" certainly applies here.
Wow, history is not supposed to repeat, but it sure feels like it does.
Picketty, like Bernie Sanders, is a snakeoil salesman. They really enjoy telling people what they want to hear and make lots of money doing it. One thing I'll quibble with in this article. I somewhat disagree that humans are hard-wired for capitalism. I think of capitalism as that standard state of nature. Like gravity. Like water that fish swim in. The exchange of things of value is just how humans interact in the world. The hard-wiring inherent to humans is that we do whatever we can to manipulate that reality to our advantage. This desire results in things like Ponzi schemes and Modern Monetary Theory, which basically boils down to an academic argument for wealth transfers and enslavement of the masses, as anyone with a modicum of common sense can see (and all Socialists glom onto). But because the desire to manipulate capitalism is the standard of human behavior, it makes a lot of people feel good to hear about getting free money for nothing, so snakeoil salesmen like Piketty and Sanders will always get rich selling their utopian fantasies whether they're wrapped in populist appeals to emotion (Sanders) or materialist academic jargon (Piketty). The result is the same. They get rich, and the middle class gets our pockets picked.
Totally agree with commentary on the current crop of Ds. It's too bad the current R alternative is a hodgepodge of gobbledygook. A reminder: current Rs are for high spending and low taxes. They are for minimizing even legal immigration. And they are protectionists to boot. All lead to low growth and high deficits. There's no free market from them even if they're not as kooky as the left. As always, Mencken was right about the relationship between government and the electorate.
Psedo intellectuals like Piketty should absolutely be denounced. If this sad episode of inflation should teach us anything it is that people who espouse crack pot theories like MMT and such cannot and should not be taken seriously. I would love for an economist to estimate what the current inflation rate would be had Build Back Broke bill passed. Guessing 10%+ and trending upwards. Republicans should be hammering democrats on that. Joe Manchin saved America.
Free Markets/Capitalism is what happens when government does nothing. No intervention.
Free Markets are what people do if government simply provides a court system for enforcing contracts. People will act on their own self interest.
Also, the way you combat these loons is with ridicule. If you read any of the dissidents of the old USSR they all agreed that mockery was the one thing that the Left couldn't deal with effectively.
The Dems sure have a lot of dense people in their cult. But Jennifer Granholm has got to be among the dumbest. Perhaps dumber than AOC. Absolutely clueless. Thanks for pointing out her idiocy.
"I remain steadfast, 320 on the $SPY is where it’s going and then it gets interesting"
Interesting. In traditional Minnesotan that is how we say something is really awful but we want to be nice about it.
More than we would like to admit, the United States has become a centrally planned economy. The "free market" is a vague anachronism.
So, what we are seeing is the result of this planning.
We have been taught over and over again (at least classical economics students anyway) that central planning fails because a few bureaucrats and politicians with perverse incentives cannot outsmart a free market of millions of people. But over and over again they meddle, they scheme, they plot and they coerce. Every industry.
Then there is the macroeconomic central planner -- the Fed. If ever there is a lesson in Central Planning Failure -- there it is! I remember going back to my locked down business in January 2021. The first thing that was evident was that labor was not coming back, and the ones that did knew they were in demand, and knew they could get more money -- a lot more money. They just weren't willing to work in a public-facing job wearing masks all day for the same money. Not when unemployment and government was literally cajoling them to stay home and get benefits. So the premium increased -- big time, which meant huge wage inflation. I didn't see that ending for a long time, because it didn't feel temporary. That situation -- a year and a half later -- still exists and is worse than ever.
The second thing I saw was the scarcity of product and price increases. And there was no glee in it. We would get letters from suppliers essentially saying, "we're very sorry, but we have to do this", and then hike prices 25%." They were facing the same things. Letter after letter, email after email.
I said at the time to anyone who would listen, this is not transitory, because we in the trenches of small business knew it. Then I turn on the TV and the internet, and all I here is a bunch of Central Planners saying "transitory." Nothing to see here. They were clueless, and I just shook my head. I was ready (hoping) to be wrong, but didn't feel it.
I envisioned them with their government spreadsheets put together by junior bureaucrats and 2 years post college darlings. Then, a simple correlation of "supply chain" and inflation. Oh, that's it!
When you are disconnected from the real economy, you would have no way of knowing what we saw. You would say things like "transitory" because your staff couldn't see it either. They're behind their computers waiting for the latest poll and raw data from an index. These things are good during stable times, but I don't think they can foretell what is happening in the trenches very well. So the Central Planners are behind the ball and fail -- every time.
I hate to say it, but the only ones that I think can see the "real" economy are the bankers and the investment bankers. They see the money, the accounts, and they have their own internals, which are crisp and on the button. The big banks have economics departments that get to use all their data -- from the working electrician's salary direct deposit to his car payment. To the small business accounts and their velocity and sales. I assume they put it all into their own indices and intelligence.
When Jamie Dimon says something, I listen. He's seeing something that perhaps he doesn't want to share the raw data about, but his macro statement is likely based on real, current data.
So here we sit, lessons of Central Planning being relearned again -- ala the 70's. People will get horrified by the Democrats (the Central Planners) and revert to the alternative. Ronald DeSantis (Reagan) will win in 2024 and start deregulating, with the same charm and disarming apropos that Reagan had, perhaps upped a notch. Perhaps some Millennials and Gen Z will convert, after they see happens. Before I studied economics, I was a Bill Clinton democrat because my parents were. Then I started to learn and I went extreme conservative, which is where I am today. I am disgusted by the economics ignorance we see everywhere.
The old saying that, "if you're not a liberal at age 20 you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative at age 40 you have no brain" certainly applies here.
Wow, history is not supposed to repeat, but it sure feels like it does.
Picketty, like Bernie Sanders, is a snakeoil salesman. They really enjoy telling people what they want to hear and make lots of money doing it. One thing I'll quibble with in this article. I somewhat disagree that humans are hard-wired for capitalism. I think of capitalism as that standard state of nature. Like gravity. Like water that fish swim in. The exchange of things of value is just how humans interact in the world. The hard-wiring inherent to humans is that we do whatever we can to manipulate that reality to our advantage. This desire results in things like Ponzi schemes and Modern Monetary Theory, which basically boils down to an academic argument for wealth transfers and enslavement of the masses, as anyone with a modicum of common sense can see (and all Socialists glom onto). But because the desire to manipulate capitalism is the standard of human behavior, it makes a lot of people feel good to hear about getting free money for nothing, so snakeoil salesmen like Piketty and Sanders will always get rich selling their utopian fantasies whether they're wrapped in populist appeals to emotion (Sanders) or materialist academic jargon (Piketty). The result is the same. They get rich, and the middle class gets our pockets picked.
Totally agree with commentary on the current crop of Ds. It's too bad the current R alternative is a hodgepodge of gobbledygook. A reminder: current Rs are for high spending and low taxes. They are for minimizing even legal immigration. And they are protectionists to boot. All lead to low growth and high deficits. There's no free market from them even if they're not as kooky as the left. As always, Mencken was right about the relationship between government and the electorate.