Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

Yes you are, since you, along with most of the population are locked into a classical monetary paradigm, without even being aware of it.
That's why Roml's insights (along with many others) were never acted on; and entrenched power interests are determined to keep it that way.

But times are changing, MMT is upsetting the complacency of the mainstream economists; and Stephanie Kelton tells me its always the mainstream economists who unilaterally exit the debates with her...

 

Okay, so please describe how inflation can occur in an economy with no money (i.e. a barter economy).

 

[Note: your 'no money' descriptor is not restricted to a barter economy; a centrally planned economy, without money, is also possible].

Consider the management of, and choice between, non-infinite real resources; if the community decides to 'go green' ASAP (by building the required pumped-hydro storage capacity ASAP), then another choice, eg, to build a national high speed rail system, must at least be delayed, if there are not enough resources including (skilled) labour to do both.

Thus 'inflation' in either a monetary or non-monetary system - described as 'devaluation of the currency' in the former, is really only describing a (normally temporary) loss of access to resources (in either system).

 

Now you're redefining inflation? Economists define inflation as an overall increase in the level of prices. This can only occur in a monetary economy. Thus, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

 

Don't you just love when they redefine terms to fit their needs?

 

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

 

Made me chuckle.

Still looking for the word "coercion" in the generally accepted definition of "economic rent" too.

 

No, I'm explaining what inflation really is....and I already warned you of the blindness resulting from monetarism's captivity of the general population.

Thus you are endlessly repeating a circular argument like a dog chasing its tail.

Back to the goal: we can have guaranteed continuous, sustainable, universal above poverty participation in the economy.

 

Poverty is dynamic and you would only create new poverty levels

 

Inflation is an overall increase in the price level. You can't just pretend that isn't what it means.

 

He makes a great argument for real commodity based money, which is a resource that takes human effort to produce, and abides by the laws of supply and demand, like labor and every other product humans create, cultivate or dig out of the ground.

 

Price is what something traded for; value is what it WOULD trade for. While they are usually close, they are not the same thing.

I disagree. Gardening is a pretty ordinary service that trades in the market. However, there are certainly exchanges that occur at prices other than market value.

Everyone who is able to make a valuable contribution of labor, certainly. A significant number aren't, for various reasons.

That's a non sequitur. You are proposing an ineffective "solution" because you do not understand the problem. Unemployment is not caused by lack of demand or purchasing power, but by privilege, especially landowner privilege:

"Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on." -- Thomas Jefferson

 

Preference is not value.

One could call it a market, marginal, or price theory of value. When you understand that value is what a thing would trade for, everything is much clearer.

 

No, you said one individual. It's not just ONE individual, and thus not subjective.

Price is what something traded for, value is what it would trade for. While they are usually close in a normal market, they are not the same thing. This can be called a market, marginal, or price theory of value.

 

No it doesn't, any more than saying "A pitch is what a salesman would say to a prospective customer," implies I know what the salesman would say.

You are smacking an absurd strawman. The whole point of definitions is that they enable us to identify things of a particular sort without filling in all the particulars. It's like defining A and B as opposite angles where two straight lines cross. The fact that I know A would be the same as B doesn't imply I know what specific angles they are.

 

Not as far as I can tell. It's more like you need both a numerator and a denominator to have a quotient. Neither one will yield a quotient without the other.

 

What it would trade for.

There is no such thing as intrinsic value.

The market can.

Right: price is an objective fact (what something traded for); utility is a subjective opinion (the capacity to satisfy human desires); value is a collective determination (what something would trade for).

 

so how does that make a summation of subjectives objective?

 

You seem to be positing markets as the only scenario for measuring value or price, including that of labour.

And why is this the case (ie prices at other than market value)?
In any case, the wages of a gardener in a public park, or an assistant to the elderly to aid in remaining in their own homes for as long as possible, do not "trade in the (private sector) market". Also much volunteer and charity based work should be replaced with paid wages by the government.

Rather MMT sees temporary public sector work suppled by the ELR (not the regular full-time permanent public service) as setting the minimum above poverty wage acceptable to a 'moral' community; all private sector wages would be above this level.

"Valuable contribution"? According to whom? Please don't say...... the market!

I get your geoism argument. But recognising there are sufficient resources to eliminate poverty regardless of land ownership means other approaches are possible (to eliminate poverty).
including provision of public housing and public transport.

Then the remaining issue is ensuring universal participation according to abilities of individuals, AND local needs of the community, as opposed to meeting the exigencies of markets which can not satisfy all those local social needs that are NOT valued by markets.

"Unemployment is caused by privilege"......of the land-owning class, according to you.

Unemployment results because free markets never achieve equilibrium in supply and demand at full employment, at stable prices and above poverty minimum wages.

The vast unconquered lands of the US west - or rather, yet to be stolen from the native inhabitants - in Jefferson's time, means that quote has scant relevance to today.

 

Note: I introduced the concept of intrinsic value to allow me to posit separate methods of valuation in private sector markets on the one hand, and valuation of public sector, non-market "satisfaction of human desires" activity, on the other hand, in a fiat economy in which the quantity of fiat currency itself is limited only by available resources including labour.

[And just think of the savings in energy, transport and other resources, if the grog, confectionary, sugar drinks, and many processed foods (all of which are destroyers of health) and junk advertising industries were closed down...even the above poverty (minimum) JG wage backed by public housing and transport could be set a high standard of living).

 

Correct. Valuation requires at least a prospective buyer and seller.

Lots of reasons: non-arm's-length transactions; price floors and ceilings; compulsory liquidation; court orders; etc.

Equivalent labor does.

That won't be possible until such services don't have to be given away as a subsidy to landowners.

The MMT job guarantee is a bad idea because it does not recognize or address the actual cause of unemployment, which is NOT lack of demand or purchasing power. It is (especially landowner) privilege.

The market. There is no other possible measure of value.

But there aren't. If you don't abolish landowner privilege and restore people's rights to liberty first, landowners or other privilege owners will just legally take whatever you give the poor.

Can't work. Landowners or other privilege owners will just take it all.

We know some things have utility but can't be valued accurately by the free market because of market failure conditions. However, the inputs for those things CAN be valued, because they have other uses in markets that don't suffer market failure conditions.

And I am correct.

A market in which land is privately owned is by definition not a free market. Equilibrium is a chimera, and occupies roughly the same epistemological position in neoclassical economics that circular orbits did in pre-Keplerian astronomy.

False. It has always been relevant in every society in history where land has been privately owned and there have been unemployed workers, and it always will be.

 

It still requires reference to a market, and is therefore not intrinsic. Consider the "value" of a human life. It cannot be traded, so it doesn't actually have a market value. But how much society might be wiling to pay to save a human life depends on the context of the market. Today, we might be willing to pay a million dollars. 100 years ago, we would not.

 

It's not objective, as I already explained. PRICE (what something traded for) is an objective fact. UTILITY (the capacity to satisfy human desire) is a subjective opinion. VALUE (what something would trade for) is a collective judgement. It can never be either objective or subjective, although prices in liquid markets are almost always a very, very good measure of it.

 

How does this apply in HK or China, where there is no private ownership of land? Yet poverty in HK is real.

I can see this.....but... as you know, I don't hold free markets ALONE to be a good basis for valuing the totality of worthwhile human endeavour.

Of course; that was my criticism of neoclassical economics, ie that full employment never exists in equilibrium with market clearing at stable prices, as postulated by classical economics.

I note you ignored my comments re valuation in markets (whether legal or illegal, the latter largely arising as a result of people being locked out of legal employment) for grog, junk food, junk advertising, drug running, gun-running, unsustainable meat production, etc) which detract from, rather than add to human prosperity.

 

No ****. Everything that happened is an objective fact.