Prices of everything going up, uP, UP

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Originally Posted By: 3311
Originally Posted By: Spyder7


Regardless, there can be little common ground between us because we just don't see things from the same lens. Not that mine is the polar opposite of yours, its more that its a middle road position (with its inherent risk of being run over from either side) which rejects extreme ideologies on both ends of the spectrum, including yours.


-Spyder

Spyder, Can you honestly reread your own posts and still think you have a "middle road position"? I shudder to think of the company you keep. Student?
Not meant to be a personal attack. I respect your opinion but yours is not a position of "middle of the road".
I suspect at a latter age you will have an epiphany, at least I hope so, and come to realization "what [censored] was I thinking".
It's that [censored] Canadian beer I was talking about yesterday, its got your brain pickled my friend.
smile.gif



Student? Once upon a time. I haven't forgotten the things I learned though, and have been fortunate enough to apply a lot of it professionally and even in day-to-day life.

I'm 37 and have had 3 careers since university:

#1: tech support for a major US internet company who outsourced their support to the company I worked for, and who in turn spread them throughout NA and overseas. Fun times. People from the south thought I was from Michigan, people from Michigan could tell I was Canadian. I got to hear a lot of amusing rants from both groups that had nothing to do with the problem they were calling in about.

#2: Took a chance on something very different and went into Loss Prevention after burnout from career #1. After making too many arrests that sent some to jail for the pettiest of crimes (and which put me up close and personal with man's capacity for poor decision making and outright stupidity), I switched to uniform and moved up quickly to Operations Manager (working every position in between) with somewhere on the other side of 100 people who reported, directly, or ultimately, to me.

Being undercut by our major competitor led to a race to the bottom and we ran a very lean ship in every respect, including on the management and supervision side. Punching 60 hour weeks while remaining on call 24/7, 365, and unable to take a sick day without having to still run things from home, and then have to do 5 days work in 4, I jumped at an opportunity when an opportunity elsewhere came up (I'd also hit the ceiling in terms of there being nowhere left to move up to).

#3 Treating addictions and substance abuse at a short-term detox. Prior to that, I had thought Loss Prevention an eye opener - nothing compared to what I've seen since or the stories I've heard.

Off topic, but that should answer your question.

-Spyder
 
Originally Posted By: Spyder7
Originally Posted By: 3311
Originally Posted By: Spyder7


Regardless, there can be little common ground between us because we just don't see things from the same lens. Not that mine is the polar opposite of yours, its more that its a middle road position (with its inherent risk of being run over from either side) which rejects extreme ideologies on both ends of the spectrum, including yours.


-Spyder

Spyder, Can you honestly reread your own posts and still think you have a "middle road position"? I shudder to think of the company you keep. Student?
Not meant to be a personal attack. I respect your opinion but yours is not a position of "middle of the road".
I suspect at a latter age you will have an epiphany, at least I hope so, and come to realization "what [censored] was I thinking".
It's that [censored] Canadian beer I was talking about yesterday, its got your brain pickled my friend.
smile.gif



Student? Once upon a time. I haven't forgotten the things I learned though, and have been fortunate enough to apply a lot of it professionally and even in day-to-day life.

I'm 37 and have had 3 careers since university:

#1: tech support for a major US internet company who outsourced their support to the company I worked for, and who in turn spread them throughout NA and overseas. Fun times. People from the south thought I was from Michigan, people from Michigan could tell I was Canadian. I got to hear a lot of amusing rants from both groups that had nothing to do with the problem they were calling in about.

#2: Took a chance on something very different and went into Loss Prevention after burnout from career #1. After making too many arrests that sent some to jail for the pettiest of crimes (and which put me up close and personal with man's capacity for poor decision making and outright stupidity), I switched to uniform and moved up quickly to Operations Manager (working every position in between) with somewhere on the other side of 100 people who reported, directly, or ultimately, to me.

Being undercut by our major competitor led to a race to the bottom and we ran a very lean ship in every respect, including on the management and supervision side. Punching 60 hour weeks while remaining on call 24/7, 365, and unable to take a sick day without having to still run things from home, and then have to do 5 days work in 4, I jumped at an opportunity when an opportunity elsewhere came up (I'd also hit the ceiling in terms of there being nowhere left to move up to).

#3 Treating addictions and substance abuse at a short-term detox. Prior to that, I had thought Loss Prevention an eye opener - nothing compared to what I've seen since or the stories I've heard.

Off topic, but that should answer your question.

-Spyder
I hope you found what you are looking for with your career. It is a wonderful thing to help someone in dire need of it.
 
Originally Posted By: 3311
]I hope you found what you are looking for with your career. It is a wonderful thing to help someone in dire need of it.


I thought I had. In March my aunt in NB was killed in a head on collision with an impaired driver. With a relapse rate over 90%, and in having many clients who are awaiting court for impaired driving offenses (sometimes repeat offense) at a time I was going through a flare up with a chronic illness of my own, and becoming increasingly cynical when faced with the revolving door and clients lining up their next fix before they're even out the door, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back came, and I'm in a transition process to career #4.

I may return to addictions again, later on. As it stands right now, there is too much baggage to be able to check it at the door, and I've never been one who could "fake it to make it." I lost my ability to be empathic or sympathetic, and its not a field you can work in when every face you see has become a reminder of utter senseless stupidity and the price paid by those who never should have to, and the only thing you can offer now is a grim face and stone cold silence while you bite your tongue hard enough to draw blood.

Edit: footnote to the above: between accumulated annual leave and other severance, as well as cashing out my pension benefits, I have the luxury of taking the time off I need with no worries about having to go on the dole. I'd work 2 jobs making minimum wage first if it came to it, but I have enough education and experience that its not a matter of finding work for me, but choosing where to go next (a luxury I'm fortunate to have and realize few others are so lucky).

-Spyder
 
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You can't get the money to buy what you want to buy unless the government gives you that money. Wow this is getting really bad now. LOL

There is no money shortage. And:
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And there you have it: When MMTers speak of "net saving," they don't mean that people collectively save more than people collectively borrow. No, they mean people collectively save more than people collectively invest.

I'm not trying to make fun of Nick Rowe; he is a professional economist who has written some very nuanced posts relating MMT to more orthodox mainstream economics. But look at what he was forced to type: "Define 'private saving' as 'private saving minus investment.'" As I noted in my response to Rowe, if we define "private saving" as "private saving," then my critique of MMT stands. (That's supposed to be funny, by the way — at least insofar as economics can be funny.)

Now Nick Rowe and the MMTers are certainly correct when they observe that "private saving net of private investment" can't grow without a government budget deficit (again if we disregard foreign trade). But so what? The whole benefit of private saving is that it allows for more private investment.

This is the fundamental problem with relying on macro-accounting tautologies; people often bring in causal arguments from economic theories without realizing they are doing so. Let's look again at the equation causing so much confusion:
G − T = S − I

As a free-market economist, I don't need to run from this tautology. I can use it to underscore the familiar "crowding out" critique of government deficit spending. Specifically, if government spending (G) goes up while tax revenue (T) remains the same, then the left-hand side of the equation gets bigger as the government budget deficit grows. So the accounting tells us that the right-hand side must get bigger too. It may happen partially because people cut down on consumption and save more (due to higher interest rates and their expectation of higher tax burdens in the future), but it may also happen because private-sector investment goes down. In other words, as the government borrows and spends more, the equation tells us we might see lower private consumption, rising interest rates, and real resources being siphoned out of private investment into pork-barrel spending projects. I can tell my "story" of the dangers of government deficit spending with that equation just fine.

http://mises.org/daily/5260/The-UpsideDown-World-of-MMT
 
I have a follow up article I'll have to find that refutes Murphy even further. I don't consider Murphy that good of an economist.
 
Mises institute is full of economic crack heads. The president is Doug French, a failed banker who lost a lot of money in real estate. He has a degree in Econ from UNLV. The guy is a snake oil salesman.
 
$9.99 for a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada Extra IPA.

And the state charges sales tax on top of all the alcohol taxes. Double taxation.

What a rip.

Didn't we throw tea overboard in 1773 to protest these sorts of taxes & prices?

Uggh.
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
$9.99 for a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada Extra IPA.

And the state charges sales tax on top of all the alcohol taxes. Double taxation.

What a rip.

Didn't we throw tea overboard in 1773 to protest these sorts of taxes & prices?

Uggh.


You do know that most of the world charge heavy tax on tobacco, alcohol, and fragrance unless you are traveling internationally (duty free) right?
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
$9.99 for a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada Extra IPA.

And the state charges sales tax on top of all the alcohol taxes. Double taxation.

What a rip.

Didn't we throw tea overboard in 1773 to protest these sorts of taxes & prices?

Uggh.


+1
 
Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
$9.99 for a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada Extra IPA.

And the state charges sales tax on top of all the alcohol taxes. Double taxation.

What a rip.

Didn't we throw tea overboard in 1773 to protest these sorts of taxes & prices?

Uggh.


I doubt throwing tea overboard would have much effect on things today
wink.gif


Unless you live in England
laugh.gif

-Spyder
 
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Originally Posted By: buster
Where is the Inflation? A few years ago, Peter Biff said we'd have hyper inflation. Where is it? Tempest, you're striking out.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/inflation-expectations/


All comes down to what people are trying to hedge. The inflation adjustment on those bonds is based on the government defined CPI. This leaves out food and energy, which are major problems right now. So the people that are making that spread are not concerned much with those items, only a "general level of price increase" as defined by the government, because that CPI is how their returns are determined.

This has little to do with everyday reality where food prices and energy prices have a very real impact on the living standards of real people. These economists are again, living in a world of arbitrarily defined measures, derived from imperfect information. The fallacy of all central planning.
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The goal of the core CPI is to remove the most volatile cost-push components of the headline number. This creates a series that indicates whether short-term commodity price changes are resulting in more permanent price level pressures. As a result, core CPI is primarily useful as a policy metric rather than a measure of how price changes are affecting the average person.

http://www.thumbcharts.com/1282/what-core-cpi-leaves-out

And I never claimed "hyper inflation", I have simply stated that the FED has set up the preconditions for rather painful inflation in the future. If it comes or not, depends on a great many things.
 
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And I never claimed "hyper inflation", I have simply stated that the FED has set up the preconditions for rather painful inflation in the future. If it comes or not, depends on a great many things.


I don't remember you saying that, but if you did, then I agree.

You keep mentioning central planning. I don't advocate large scale central planning. Thinking about this from the MMT perspective, the quickest, most effective way to help restore lost demand and keep the economy going would have been a significant tax cut. The Payroll Tax cut may have possibly prevented such an upturn in the unemployment rate. Having an extra $500-$600 a month in my pocket would have significantly helped.

In a balance sheet recession, like this one, the private sector accumulates too much debt. Until that is paid down, consumers are reluctant to spend. Tax cuts are a more effective, direct way to regulate demand under this monetary system we have. The monetarists are the problem.
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest


All comes down to what people are trying to hedge. The inflation adjustment on those bonds is based on the government defined CPI. This leaves out food and energy, which are major problems right now. So the people that are making that spread are not concerned much with those items, only a "general level of price increase" as defined by the government, because that CPI is how their returns are determined.

This has little to do with everyday reality where food prices and energy prices have a very real impact on the living standards of real people. These economists are again, living in a world of arbitrarily defined measures, derived from imperfect information. The fallacy of all central planning.



Tempest, you had me in general agreement up until that last sentence. There you used a term readily associated with the Soviet style economies it actually describes, in a thinly veiled attempt to lump government spending into the same thing. And which is demonstrably false.

In a centrally planned economy, government attempts to predict the needs of consumers, and match supply to meet that demand. Thus, the supply side of the economy is 100% government controlled while they also heavily influence the demand side as well, though no centrally planned economy can ever entirely control it (as they can on the supply side).

The free market economy that exists in the US, though not a pure free market, is in no way a centrally planned economy. That you don't like the government influence still doesn't make it into something it isn't.

I welcome your viewpoints, even though I disagree with them. From my POV, though, you undermine your arguments when you use polarizing terms that are also inaccurate.

-Spyder
 
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Originally Posted By: buster

You keep mentioning central planning. I don't advocate large scale central planning. Thinking about this from the MMT perspective, the quickest, most effective way to help restore lost demand and keep the economy going would have been a significant tax cut. The Payroll Tax cut may have possibly prevented such an upturn in the unemployment rate. Having an extra $500-$600 a month in my pocket would have significantly helped.

In a balance sheet recession, like this one, the private sector accumulates too much debt. Until that is paid down, consumers are reluctant to spend. Tax cuts are a more effective, direct way to regulate demand under this monetary system we have. The monetarists are the problem.

Letting people keep more of their own money is always best. If one is going to run a deficit, tax cuts are certainly preferable to "stimulus" programs that spend lots of future people's money (cost to the people), generate 450,000 government jobs (cost to the people), and destroy 1,000,000 private sector jobs (cost to the people).
http://web.econ.ohio-state.edu/dupor/arra10_may11.pdf

The fact is that MMT requires the government to get money supply, taxes, and government spending "just right" to work. It has neither the information or competency to do any of that.

The Soviet Union could print all it wanted, spend all it wanted, had great amounts of natural resources, and had a job guarantee program. This is not far off from what the MMT people want (they want a "mixed" economy but never give any "optimum" ratio), yet it was a terrible failure. There are reasons for these things.
 
Quote:
The free market economy that exists in the US, though not a pure free market, is in no way a centrally planned economy. That you don't like the government influence still doesn't make it into something it isn't.

The FED, via government authority, determines money supply and interest rate. If the hand full of people that control these things don't figure properly, the economy is put into turmoil. The easy money policy of the FED is one reason the economy is in this current state, and there have been many economic hard times since its inception so it's rather obvious they are not competent to carry out their charged duties.

Further, government spending and regulation significantly affects the economic landscape of any country. The larger the spending and regulation, the larger the central planning effect. The US government spends 25% of GDP and it's regulations dominate another 10%. This does not include state spending and regulation.

So we do not have Soviet level central planning, but a great portion of our economy is in fact planned.
 
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