Monday, November 4, 2013

Eureka! Warren Mosler FINALLY Beginning To Be Plagiarized By The Orthodox. Only Took 20 Years.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)







So Rand Paul's not the only one.

At this point ... WHO CARES!

Can EVERYONE start plagiarizing Mosler? Please?

And Randy Wray? And Bill Mitchell? And Robert Eisner, Michael Kalecki, Abba Lerner ... on to Beardsley Ruml, Marriner Eccles, Thorstein Weblen, CH Douglas, JJ McGeer and ... and all the way back to John Law?

Then add some Bill Black ....

And even some enlightened policy operations, capable of at least TRYING to fuse at least credit, currency and criminology into one, adaptive, policy channel? Maybe in realtime?

Wow. Wouldn't that be minimal ... as a start?

15 comments:

mike norman said...

Yeah, but look at what Yglesias says: "Have the Fed put the money in the SS account..."

It's all wrong. These guys think the Fed prints money and spends (appropriates). They got it all wrong as usual.

Tom Hickey said...

No job guarantee though.

Roger Erickson said...

Hey, it's a start, right?

Only took us 80 years to regress this far. Give Yglesias 40 days & 40 nights to wander in his desert.

He's gonna be a star. :) [If he keeps going down this path long enough.]

mike norman said...

I was already plagiarizing Warren in 2002! ;)

geerussell said...

Hey, it's a start, right?

I'm with you, Roger and the best way to bring them along from the start to the finish is to declare moron amnesty. A face-saving path to citizenship allowing them to gain understanding and adopt constructive positions piecemeal without ever admitting to having been wrong in the first place.

Life isn't fair and credit doesn't go where it's due but at least we get a shot at some useful policy outcomes.

paul meli said...

"It's all wrong. These guys think the Fed prints money and spends (appropriates). They got it all wrong as usual." - Mike

This is one of the best signals…telling us that that these clowns don't understand shit. Good thing he isn't playing Poker.

Microphones for Morons™ should be an appropriate description of how policy is formulated the the USA (everywhere actually).

lastgreek said...

I've been plagiarizing off Mike Norman since early 2013.

Then after a few months I picked up the pace and started plagiarizing off Mosler, Wray, Kelton ... you know, the usual MMT suspects ;-)

The Rombach Report said...

I've been plagiarizing Warren Mosler longer than I care to admit. However, I give him attribution when the opportunity arises.

Roger Erickson said...

Ok. Altered the title appropriately.

JK said...

I like the idea of a land tax replacing an income tax. Why tax work when we can tax rental income via appreciating land? This would be perfect for federal taxes because there can not be a 'race to the bottom'; if states were enacting land taxes then there would the temptation for politcians to incentivize people and businesses to shop around: "Hey, here in our state we've got a lower land tax!"

Come to think of it…. since the land can't go anywhere, this is more akin to the MMT analogy of a gun to your head tax where you can't get out of the room without getting some worthless piece of paper A head tax, and the heads are landowners. Should be plenty to drive the currency.

Roger Erickson said...

tax static assets, NOT dynamic assets?

EXACTLY!!!

What part of encouraging return-on-coordination don't "educated" people understand? Everything they had beat out of them as kids?

The cost of coordination is always the highest cost.

The return on coordination is the ONLY return that swamps that cost.

So why on earth inhibit exploration of dynamic assets? Forget QE, "AE" or Adaptive Easing would gently push people out of static assets and into dynamic assets.

The real question is how to Shape the Behavior of the monkeys who still have a death-grip on policy development. It's gonna be far easier to trick 'em into evolving than to convince 'em ahead of time. That's a no-brainer, given they've no brains for it.

JK said...

Rodger,

What are other examples of static assets besides land?

Idle balances sitting in bank accounts? So, tax savings?

Roger Erickson said...

Isn't essentially everything that's "accounted" for a static asset?

Easier to search for any accounting of dynamic assets.

Do you know of any example of a dynamic asset on an accountants books? Training-related aspects of force-readiness in the military comes to mind. KM in industry? Do those things show up on asset statements?

Take an airline - or an airforce - for example. Equipment shows up on the asset sheet. The experienced pilots are far more valuable ... but do they show up on banker's asset sheet?

Unknown said...

Accounting is based on historical transactions.

The generally accepted definition of assets and liabilities has been developed over time. There are nuances between different jurisdictions, however, those can be reconciled to domestic standards.

Everything is reconciled to cash, meaning, in other words, that the transactions went through or affected the cash balance of the enterprise.

The classification of those transactions is dictated by GAAP. GAAP based financial statements are the accepted starting point for arriving at taxable income.

Your example of land being a "static asset" is recorded at historical cost and the book value does not change unless it becomes permanently impaired. At which point it would be written down to reflect that impairment.

There are GAAP requirements, which often differ from Tax requirements as what qualifies as an asset, in particular when concerning deferred costs which are capitalized as an asset.

If you wish to tax the Balance Sheet, instead of the income statement, which is valid in my opinion. Bear in mind that the Income Statement results is equal to the penny to the change in the Balance Sheet for the same period.

Then you would be interested in concepts such as Capital Taxes, which have been employed in the past. Other countries than the US.

Roger Erickson said...

So, SEVE141, where does, say, pilot experience, show up in GAAP guidelines?