Wednesday, August 24, 2011

National Debt Clock is really the National Equity Clock!



This should be called the National Equity Clock!


MMT should raise money to put up an identical electronic billboard right next to this one, but we'll call it the "National Equity Clock," because that's what it really is!

18 comments:

Anti said...

How about a foregone output clock?

Райчо Марков said...

Mike, that's great idea!
Let's do it!
By the way, who installed that stupid debt clock?

Anonymous said...

I would put money toward this. It'd at least grab a lot of attention.

wh10 said...

I'd be interested in chipoing in too!

mike norman said...

We'd probably need a lot of money. Getting the clock made, leasing the building space, etc. But it would get a lot of publicity and WHAT a way to redirect the entire, debt, bankruptcy, argument!!!

Anonymous said...

It could also be a symbol of inequality. How much of that money benefits the average person and their community?

Clonal said...

I do not believe that the word national equity really explains the purpose of the National Debt.

We start with

1)
Government creates money by spending it into existence. This money is spent for public purposes that improves the well being of the entire community. To achieve these, the government purchases goods and services from the private sector by money, that is nothing but a tax credit (or in other words an IOU) This tax credit or IOU is redeemed when entities pay taxes to the government. And the National Debt is born.

2)
When taxes are paid to the government, these tax credits or IOUs are torn up and destroyed. Between the birth and death, these IOU's serve the purpose of money.

3)
A thriving economy requires a sufficient amount of money (or IOU's) to facilitate exchange. A growing economy, whether due to reasons of an increasing population, or due to an improving standard of living, requires an increasing amount of money.

4)
Some of these IOU's (money) are saved by the private sector. These savings have to be compensated for by increased government spending.

5)
When resource limits are reached (population is stable, or other real resources are constrained,) then the economy cannot produce more, and increasing the money will result in inflation. This is when the government spending has to be reduced, or taxation increased, to reduce the IOUs)

This leads me to believe, that the term used instead of "National Debt" should be "Financial Resources available to the Economy."

This nomenclature will immediately lead to a follow up question - "Who controls these financial resources?" That is when real enlightenment dawns on the person asking the question!

googleheim said...

The reason why Buffett wants to raise taxes on the rich is so that it can go down for the middle class which would mean more money for his clients and finally for himself in return especially in a down market.

The national debt clock is really also a hologram for different looks - the MMT look at it as misconstrued and foundationless against assets created - the ultra rich Buffett Billionaires should see it as a chance to stimulate the economy by paying higher taxes and for spending their dough to generate tax deductions.

Clonal said...

According to Pierre Rinfret, Ronald Reagan used a form of MMT to defeat the Soviets. Basically expanding available financial assets by increasing the deficits, and channeling the spending to defence.

Leverage said...

Governments always do MMT on "war time", and citizens don't overreact then to deficits and debts but there are more important things to worry about.

And this could happen to some extent even with gold standard, so now it wouldn't be so problematic. So, the question is why can be MMT be used 'for the bad' and not 'for the good'?

This world is pretty screwed up.

Anonymous said...

maybe we can get the peter peterson foundation to sponsor it. LOL

mike norman said...

Clonal:

That's an awful lot to get on the billboard! ;)

Tom Hickey said...

Right. Art Laffer of the Laffer curve was his adviser on it. Warren was at Laffer's shop when he wrote "Soft Currency Economics," which launched MMT, and Laffer knew about it through Warren. This is why Cheney could say that Reagan showed that deficits don't matter (as long as the deficit goes to military spending and crony capitalism, that is).

This was the voodoo economics scorned by Bush I representing the fiscal conservatives. Laffer's economics dominated the GOP until the Tea Party fiscal conservatives reasserted traditional fiscal conservatism. So, yes, the GOP insiders know what's up, which is why the Bushies and now battling the TP for control of the party. They realized that the fiscal conservatives will kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Clonal said...

Tom
Rinfret's encounter with Reagan was way before Art Laffer got involved. Warren's meeting with Laffer was in the very early 1990's - Rinfret's encounter with Reagan was in 1980 - during the campaign.

Rinfret says

"Reaganomics, then, was the personal economic position, beliefs, assumptions of Ronald Reagan and not of any of his professional economists!

Laffer had nothing to do with it as I found out - in 2 1/2 hours of debate, argument, on the Reagan tax proposals the name was never even mentioned"

Tom Hickey said...

Clonal; "Rinfret's encounter with Reagan was way before Art Laffer got involved. Warren's meeting with Laffer was in the very early 1990's - Rinfret's encounter with Reagan was in 1980 - during the campaign."

True.

WillORNG said...

The Imperial US military is a giant Job Guarantee scheme, rather like the Imperial Roman Military one, apparently at the fall of the Roman Empire 1/3 of the population (male?) were military, 1/3 were (indebted?) slaves...without applying macro-economic understanding to an economy, entropy and spiralling debt/wealth inequality is the 'natural' result.

Anonymous said...

Government must hang this billboard in the government house not public in place.

LED signs

Unknown said...

Very good Debt Clock.