Job Losses Spike, 1/3 Can't Pay Rent, Depression Imminent

Rents are far too high for average workers salaries in all 50 states right now. They have to come down or we are going to have many millions living on the streets. Better to have it rented at a lower rate, than have it sit empty because people can not afford it.

 

So don't rent. Renting is a choice, after all.

 

1) No, I said communism prevented them getting ahead. But it's the only thing which has ever stopped them from thriving. Brutal regimes, long marches, starvation, etc etc ... they never let that history become an excuse for failure.

2) I have never EVER claimed such a thing. I state only that they work harder, and do self-discipline better.

3) Apparently you either don't know, or have forgotten, that I am indigenous.

 

But the MSM is certainly denying this simple proposition:

The sovereign currency-issuing government can support all laid-off workers during this pandemic, for as long as it takes, without taxing or borrowing the money from anyone.

Is it a truth that cannot be told?

A full-employment economy (in normal times) is surely likely to be more attractive to investors than one that is squandering resources on the poverty industry (inc. unemployment, prisons,and iIl-health industries)

But neoliberal economists certainly teach the NAIRU fiction, following from the disastrous washington consensus based on wrongheaded explanations of the 70's stagflation. as espoused by the Chicago School.

..." in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. Friedman (1970) The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory. Quantity Theory of Money"

.......but Keynes debunked the quantity theory of money way back in the 30's.

Inflation will not eventuate if an increase in the economy's potential productive capacity can be activated by government spending on available resources.

Spot the difference from supply-side Friedman?

Keynes recognised wages have to be high enough to create effective demand in the economy; the issue is availability of resources and productive capacity, not the supply of money.

Friedman said wages have to be low enough to ALLOW effective demand in the economy. Hence he relates inflation to limiting the money supply, rather than resource supply.

 

Why are you asking me? I'm not the media.

You sidestepped my question.

There you go again with the "neoliberal" BS. There is no such thing as a "neoliberal economist." In fact, there are various criticisms of MMT coming from different economists including liberals like Krugman.

Keynes was wrong about money. Friedman was right about inflation.

If there is more money than goods and services we can be produce at current prices, those prices will increase.

Why can't you get your head around what I said about too much money circulating for the goods we can produce?

I guess you either don't want to deal with the issue I raised or you don't understand enough about economics to address it.

 

Because you are a supply-side neoliberal mainstream economist, who lacks the courage to inform the public the currency-issuing government has the capacity the support the economy through this pandemic without taxing or borrowing from anyone. (Wages have been destroyed by the pandemic, so inflation is not an issue).

No I didn't. A full employment economy is more attractive for investors; and meanwhile profit seeking investors aren't known for investing in poor economies.

Classic denial. You believe in Friedman's supply side nonsense, and hence deny reality.
In normal parlance neoliberalism displaced Keynesianism as a result of the 70's stagflation era.

Krugman might be a 'liberal', but his economic orthodoxy is based on the classical school - chicago school - neoliberal - neo keynesian (which has nothing to do with Keynes) - branch of economic thought.

Friedman's supply side delusion has resulted in elevated levels of real un-employment, increasing public austerity, and low median wages growth with more profits going to capital and less to wages, since the 80's.

That's the supply-side lens. But more spending MIGHT increase production, increasing the economy's output Besides, we can increase wages even if production of consumer junk, as opposed to real wealth creation, is reduced, in contrast to your eternal growth BS. Just sayin'.

The limit of spending IS the productive capacity and availability of real resources, NOT money.

Addressed above; btw paying $millions to the CEO's of grog producers, and sugary drink producers etc etc is not "wealth" creation....

I'm ready to deal with any issue you raise. As for economics, our modern AI, IT and robot assisted economies will increasingly render your Friedman school, based on the scarcity in the face of unlimited wants classical theory, into the dustbin of history.

 

I thought you people say large scale immigration will make the economy more attractive to investors.

 

I've heard that repeated before, but it seems a little ambiguous to me what exactly it actually means.

Especially when I ask the person saying it to define what "monetary phenomena" means in this phrase.

 

No. In fact an economy can be attractive for investment even if population is stable.

But a related question is: investment by whom?

Sometimes public sector investment is much more urgent than private sector investment.

 

I was simply pointing out the inconsistency between being pro-immigration and coming up with crazy schemes trying to reach full employment, which seems mostly to be coming from the same crowd of people.


sorry, I assumed that would have been obvious

Again, inconsistencies...

 

Total nonsense you made up.

I've outlined several choices and one of them is to provide people with an income. Unless you want inflation (or deflation), you have to match the limited production we have now with they total money people want to spend.

I said Friedman was right about inflation. That's it.

What a bunch of malarkey!

This doesn't even make sense.

Yeah, sure. Prove it by telling us how you'll prevent inflation.

 

It means inflation (or deflation) is determined by the amount of money businesses and people have to spend on goods and services.

 

See where your evil neoliberal tendencies take you?
In the middle of an out-of-control pandemic currently claiming c.1000 lives per day in the US, you are blathering about "the total money people want to spend".

Guess what: they CAN'T spend (on non-essentials), or at least, they should not be so spending when a highly contagious virus is running amok.

Friedman didn't correctly identify the causes of stagflation in the 70's in the west, which included increasing competition from newly emerging post WW2 low-wage-manufacturing in Asia.

"A spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation confirmed the news to CNN. The cause was heart failure, according to Reuters. Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1976, helped interpret and popularize so-called supply-side economics, which came to dominate much of U.S. public policy in the second half of the 20th century."


Neoliberalism (def): "favouring policies that promote free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending".

To a supply-sider, perhaps, who doesn't know that resources, not money, is the chief issue of economics.

So what part of this doesn't make sense?

"Friedman's neoliberal supply side delusion - the dominant regime since the 70's - has resulted in elevated levels of real un-employment*, increasing public austerity, and low median wages growth with more profits going to capital and less to wages, since the 80's".

* note the official unemployment of 3.7% before the pandemic was another neoliberal sham: real unemployment number in man hour equivalents was c.10% (U6 plus those not registered in the stats because they have given up looking for work).

Are you going to claim the keynesian near full employment era 1945 -1970's was maintained in the subsequent neoliberal-dominated era?

By limiting spending - whether government OR private* - to availability of real resources and the productive capacity of the economy. (That is done by asking factory owners and other producers how much of their capacity is being utilised, in any given period).

*desirable social outcomes, such as real full employment, will require government intervention and spending, because profit-driven, competitive free markets ALONE can't achieve desirable social outcomes....that's the nature of a competition.

 

Are you going to set prices? Stop people from producing and/or consuming what you deem "nonessential?"

How are you going to prevent inflation?

 

Begin with full employment, via government as employer of last resort. Prices will be anchored by the variable minimum wage 'buffer employment' pool of workers who are surplus to private sector requirements in any given period.

As opposed to the variable UN-employed pool of workers that acts as a brake on wages (and inflation) in the current evil neoliberal system, expressed as the NAIRU.

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/mmt-overcoming-the-political-divide.569365/

Given the potentially vast productive capacity of modern AI, IT, and robot assisted economies, the eradication of poverty is now achievable for the first time since hunter-gatherer societies in which everyone played a part simply by virtue of existing.

 

By judicious taxation to reduce demand in the inflating sector.

In MMT, one of the functions of taxation IS management of inflation, ie. excessive demand on the economy's capacity to produce, usually relating to a specific sector of the economy.

Of course, a sovereign currency-issuing government does NOT need to tax (or borrow) in order to spend.

So there's you answer, in conjunction with my previous post.

 

More tents less rents?

That could catch on.

 

Do you realize this makes no sense?

 

So, if you give them too much money, you'll tax it away? Is that it?

That's how they got too much money in the first place.

Give 'em money you tax away if they have too much.

 

Massive tent cities - sounds like an excellent plan in the warmer locals

 

Let me make it simple for you.

In our modern economy (vastly different to the still largely agrarian 18th century economy when classical economics was formulated), people have to get money in order to survive.

So therefore, anything less than real full employment (ie above-poverty work in say a 38hr/week, for all working age citizens) is the ultimate form of discrimination of society against individuals.

I realize you will have to abandon some beloved precepts about "free markets" and "non-intervention", but the above assertion remains incontrovertible.

Short of a fully planned economy, which we know doesn't work because it suppresses the creative vitality that results from the interaction of individuals' competitive greed in free markets, we need a mechanism to allow the government sector to act as employer of last resort.

MMT describes how a Job Guarantee can be implemented, as part of an inflation control mechanism.

So instead of the morally bankrupt NAIRU concept in neoliberal orthodoxy, we have NAIBER ie non-accelerating buffer employment ratio, BER being the ratio of the (variable) pool of JG workers compared with the total working age population.

Now the wages of this buffer pool are set as the acceptable minimum in the economy; the private sector will have to pay wages that are above this, or risk losing their workers to the JG buffer pool.

If excessive demand in a sector of the economy arises, yes.

Which is obviously a trade-off between free-markets and non-intervention, with its associated unemployment, soaring inequality (CEO wages have increased from 30 times to 300 times median wages over the last 5 decades of neoliberalism) and business cycle recessions on the one hand, compared with continuous above-poverty full employment via a JG on the other hand.

I wrote: "Of course, a sovereign currency-issuing government does NOT need to tax (or borrow) in order to spend", to which you replied

Government will spend into the economy ONLY as required for specific purposes, in the face of market failure to produce desirable social outcomes, eg maintenance of sufficient public housing with rents subsidized as necessary, given private market conditions in a given locality. So your assertion above is simplistic; rent subsidization by the currency-issuing government will not result in inflation.

Cf with the comment in Giftedone's post above.....is Spim really advocating 'tent cities'? ... the neoliberal solution...

 

ah...re my reference to Spim in Giftedone's post: I see the culprit is crank, the ultimate neoliberal no-hoper. She doesn't understand cleaners need to live in cities too....

 

was sarcasm to be sure - but, there is a bit of gold at the end of this rainbow.

What do you do with masses of people not being able to pay the rent - at some point having some centralized cut and paste housing complexes - communist style - makes a lot of sense - cheap cheap -

What are we going to do when - there is less work than labor due to machine's taking over the means of production -

Wealth inequality increasing at a rate faster than the pool is growing in an ever more competitive global chessboard.

 

I hope this is not a reference to actual gold....and a return to the gold standard...

That's where MMT comes in, allowing western style "free markets" to compete with Chinese "state managed" capitalism.

https://ellenbrown.com/2019/06/14/the-american-dream-is-alive-and-well-in-china/

Ellen has her public banking solution, (as opposed to private bankster-financed capitalism); MMT has the currency-issuer solution, China's "market" economy is financed by the PBC.

All offer solutions for the way forward, in a globally connected world experiencing increasing problems of global environmental waste pollution and possible global (man-made) climate change.

Certainly, the continuous-growth-in-GDP neoliberal model is fast approaching its use-by date.

A reduction in population CAN be associated with increasing prosperity and sustainability, along with a reduction in the size of the junk consumer economy that is normally erroneously considered to be a measure (in part) of the "wealth" of a community.

 

I am all for decreasing population - and while I have no idea what your solution entails - I agree that we need some drastic re-thinking of how we do things - to compete not only with China but every one else fighting for a slice of the pie.