I don't think Conservatives or Progressives correctly understand economics

notice how old world brainwashing always gets you blind sided?


The main points of the theory are as under:

Natural Law:
Adam Smith proposes natural law in economic affairs. He advocated the philosophy of free and independent action. If every individual member of society is left to peruse his economic activity, he will maximize the output to the best of his ability. Freedom of action brings out the best of an individual which increases society wealth and progress. Adam Smith opposed any government intervention in industry and commerce.

He was a staunch free trader and advocated the policy of Laissez-Faire in economic affairs. He opines that natural laws are superior to law of states. Statutory law or manmade law can never be perfect and beneficial for the society, that is why Smith respects nature’s law because nature is just and moral. Nature teaches man the lesson of morality and honesty. These exercise favourable effects on the economic progress of society.

 

brainwashed and dilusional! Very Sad. How could you let this happen to you?

But Smith’s books, as Ludwig von Mises noted, represented “the keystone of a marvelous system of ideas.”

 

You're completely reliant on right wing group thought sites aren't you? Let's take a specific example. Smith supported income redistribution and progressive tax. How does that fit with American right wingers masquerading as libertarians?

 

Which makes us all wonder why you are here posting on it.

The Marxism philosophy forum is elsewhere mate.

 

Good that the libcommie has no shame!!

Uber liberal "Atlantic":
Yet there remains a broad consensus, even among scholars of the period, that Smith was concerned by poverty but not by economic inequality itself. According to this view, Smith hoped to ensure that all members of society could satisfy their basic needs, but he was untroubled by relative differences in income and wealth. As long as everyone has food on their tables, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads, the thinking goes, it does not matter if some have far more than others. Indeed, it is often claimed that Smith saw economic inequality as a manifestly good thing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...th-inequality-according-to-adam-smith/486071/

 

Are you sure that wasn't just your interpretation of what he was writing about? Sometimes it's easy to see things that we want to if we're looking at things through a certain lens

 

I'll ask again. Do you support Smith's preference for redistributive progressive taxation?

 

if its slightly redistributive its no big deal. Do you understand?

 

Smith wasn't talking 'slightly redistributive'. He was referring directly to the desirability of progressive taxation. You love progressivity too?

 

Smith is universally know as the father of capitalism, as the man who first pointed out the evil of libcommie mercantilist statism.

 

he was 100% capitalist so of course he was. Insanity forces you to imagine he was a fellow traveler communist

 

You're talking drivel again. Smith is a renowned classical economist. He has importance in areas such as trade, with the likes of absolute advantage. However, his great work would be alien to your 'libcommie' childishness. His support for progressive taxation, for example, is abhorrent to the right wing American

 

Smith is the father of freedom and capitalism not progressive taxation. Does the fool liberal need to see another 100 websites that agree with me and indicate your perfect foolishness?

 

Let's try and get you away from childish insulting. Smith supported progressive taxation. Do you?

 

Every household should pay the same price for govt just like they pay the same price for a can of soup in supermarket. That way you don't encourage liberal leeching and discourage the forces of evolution. Do you understand?

 

You therefore cannot use Adam Smith. He'd find that viewpoint ridiculous. Of course it's also true for all classical economists...

 

Adam Smith is the father of Republican capitalism. He taught the world why capitalism is superior to liberal statism as a primary way to organize economic life. Do you understand?

 

Smith supported progressive taxation. You do struggle with coherency...

 

All excellent questions.

Regarding wealth, there is a failure to distinguish between wealth created by borrowing money to create a business which will (hopefully) attract customers in a market place, and 'wealth' (measured by community well-being) created through performing socially useful/desired activity that does not need a market.

Recall the religious fervour that impelled the citizens of entire towns' citizens to voluntarily donate their time and labour to building the great cathedrals, in the middle ages. These people voluntarily dragged carts from quarries carrying the heavy stones required for these massive building projects. No money changed hands in a market. But what 'wealth' was created by this religious fervour!

Today we have a problem resulting from economists insisting that wealth is measured solely by money created by production and selling of goods and services in a market place. The result is entrenched poverty in wealthy as well as poor nations.

In fact technology has created the productive capacity to eliminate poverty everywhere.

A living wage could be provided to those individuals not able to compete in neoliberal markets, if government was authorised to create the funds necessary to employ people in socially useful, non-scarce resource consuming activity. Think early childhood education/childcare, assisting the elderly/disabled to live in their own homes, environmental care/rubbish collection etc etc. funded by government without raising taxation, but by printing the money for these specific purposes.

Education itself is the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student - the only resource 'consumed' is the time invested by the participants.

 

Plus the food required to fuel them during that exchange. The heat and shelter required to keep them alive during it.
Any textbooks and resources they use to aid it. Classrooms and all the rest.

Time is money.

It's an old trick and it's never worked yet.
Zimbabwe, Weimar Republic, Venezuela.

Printing money doesn't add any resources to the economy.
You can't use it to buy more resources than currently exist.

Print as much money as you like, the same total amount of resources remain available to share out. It cannot buy you any additional resources.

Slice the pie any way you like it, but the number of slices you make doesn't not make it any bigger or smaller.
Creating more money, does not create any more wealth. It only redistributes the existing wealth differently.

 

Technically that's only a subset of economists (typically the neoclassicals). Green economics, for example, focuses on sustainability but also goes further in showing how economic relations unleashes- or restricts- creativity.

 

"Zimbabwe, Weimar Republic, Venezuela".

Poor examples.
1. Zimbabe: economy destroyed as people attempted to reclaim land stolen by colonialists, with consequent loss of agricultural know -how.

2. Weimar Republic: economy destroyed by demands of massive war reparations ( by the victors, of course)

3. Venezuala: economy destroyed by the effect of a collapse in oil prices, on an oil-funded, poverty reduction socialist program. (Hint: neoliberalism doesn't reduce poverty: even the US has c. 40 million people in poverty, despite the country having the resources to clothe, feed and house everyone at above poverty level. Moreover, the US doesn't even have a high speed rail system).

"Print as much money as you like, the same total amount of resources remain available to share out. It cannot buy you any additional resources".

It can buy you labour, to eg take care of you in old age in your own home. etc etc. In fact Govt funded by money printing in this case would save real physical resources consumed in equipping nursing homes. Money is not wealth, it's a measure of wealth.

Wealth includes socially useful activity not involving exchange of money.
Eg, Einstein explored physics with mathematical tools, an entirely non-funded activity (like Beethoven writing the 9th Symphony); and discovered that E= mc2. The wealth endowed on humanity by this equation is incalculable (provided we demonstrate some wisdom in its utilisation). So time cannot be measured by money in a direct way, as the exchange of goods in a market can be measured.

Of course, much of the money exchanged in markets has detrimental effects on social well-being; eg, advertising and consumption of junk food, gambling, alcohol - industries that should be shut down, because they are really wealth - ie wellbeing -destroyers, not wealth creators, except in a monetary sense, but wealth is much more than money. ​

"Creating more money, does not create any more wealth"

See above. Depends on what the money is used for. How about funding the closure of the fossil fuel industry. Even without mastery of nuclear fusion the physical resources, technology and know-how exist to power the world on renewables. Money need not have anything to do with a decision to go renewable, globally. Here we might actually be talking about ensuring the survival of civilisation. Are you prepared to indulge such a high-stakes gamble, just so you can remain comfortable with your delusion that money is the only form of wealth?

 

No.
It doesn't.

More money printed does not equal more resources to spend that money on.
Not ever.

If you want to build renewables, do so.
Printing money is not printing windmills.

The amount of metal and labour required to build a windmill is 100% unchanged by the amount of money you print.
The amount of labour available in the economy is 100% unchanged by the number printed on a dollar bill.

Printing more money creates precisely zero new windmills.

Adding £1 gazillion to the electronic registry in a bank, adds exactly no steel into the economy. Provides you with exactly zero of the extra resources you need to build an extra windmill.

All you do when you print money is change the value of money.
You do not create any wealth.
Make a $10 bill worth $20 but the same number of loaves of bread are in the shop.
So you don't get to eat any more bread because you changed the number of $ bills available.



So you aren't creating wealth.
What are you doing?
You are redistributing wealth.

Slicing the pie a different way.
Redirecting resources from one person to another.

Just as they did in Zimbabwe with farms, only you are suggesting doing it with windmills. Because you are a bigger economic expert than the people who currently have the money. Only you aren't. Are you?

 

"More money printed does not equal more resources to spend that money on" .

But there is no real shortage of resources; the question is one of sustainability, not possible shortage of resources in the future.

In fact at present Europe pays its farmers not to produce food; the US subsidises farm activity to maintain local employment despite the availability of cheaper overseas product; the GFC closed down much productive economic activity, and mining companies lost value because of lack of demand for their production.

Can you put forward something other than a repetition that money= resources?
"Printing more money creates precisely zero new windmills"

The world has enough of the necessary physical resoures to power many planets, renewably and sustainably. The application of skilled labour (funded by money printing) is all that is required to achieve that outcome.

(You ignored most of my post. I'm off to bed).

 

Sorry I didn't have time or the will to go through and correct you on the whole lot.
You want to spend money on renewable energy and you don't think money printing was the cause of hyper inflation.
In short.
Righto and incorrect.


Money Printing.

Resources are finite.
As human I have only so many hours in the day that I can work.
The ground will only support so many plants that I can eat.

There is only so much metal that I can mine, refine and smelt per hour.

So when you add more $ to the economy, supply and demand dictates you have more $ but the same supply.
Therefore the price of goods and labours inflates.

You don't get more goods or labour.


Resources are finite.
The numbers you can write on a piece of paper... infinite.

Demand is infinite. Supply is not.